This week, people who still use that Ancient Aliens meme were validated by news that the Kepler Space Telescope might have made the most important discovery in the history of telescopes. After The Atlantic dubbed it “The Most Mysterious Star in Our Galaxy,” space nerds and alien conspiracy theorists rejoiced over the revelation of a star now known as KIC8462852, because it is surrounded by a “big mess of matter” that simply doesn’t make sense. A paper written by Yale’s Tabetha Boyajian and her awesomely-named team of Planet Hunters, attempts to understand the mysterious star and that big mess of matter, but no one really cares about the logical explanation because ALIENS, YOU GUYS!
Boyajian and other astronomers will next attempt to detect radio waves to determine if there’s some sort of technology in play around this star, but that won’t start until at least January and that’s no fun. In the meantime, it’s our responsibility as science-ignorant pop-culture junkies to simply assume that this star is perhaps a power source for an alien civilization. Should we poke this presumably sleeping bear? Or should we mind our own beeswax and not invite these Prometheus-like engineers to come destroy us? Oh my God, you guys, maybe it’s like that episode of South Park and that star is really just a TV satellite and we’re being watched as the universe’s most beloved reality series and now that we know about it, they’re going to wipe us out? HOLY SH*T, maybe it’s Galactus! It’s definitely Galactus, you guys.
For more on the impending alien apocalypse, anchors Tom Storey and Briana Lane weigh in on today’s episode of The Desk.