Tabetha S. Boyajian

Tabetha "Tabby" Suzanne Boyajian is an American astronomer and associate professor at Louisiana State University. She received a BS degree in Physics with concentration in Astronomy from the College of Charleston in 2003, an MS degree in Physics from Georgia State University in 2005, and a PhD degree in astronomy from the same university in 2009. She studied the sizes of nearby stars similar to the Sun, using GSU's CHARA array, a long-baseline optical and infrared interferometer located at Mount Wilson Observatory. Boyajian was awarded a Hubble Fellowship, and stayed at Georgia State University to study sizes of nearby stars much smaller than the Sun and stars with planets. In February 2016, Boyajian gave a TED talk where she explained why she and others thought they had possibly discovered a massive alien structure and speculation on Dyson's Spheres:

Wanting to understand the strange light pattern, Boyajian put several hypotheses to the test. The research team's first thought was that it was due to an exoplanet detected around this massive star, but the dips in light lasted anywhere from 5 to 80 days and were erratically spaced apart thus ruling out any kind of an orbit for one celestial object.

The SETI Institute mentioned what caught their eye and made them take on the research themselves: "Even more interesting, the timing of the present dip (in light) suggests that whatever this material is, it is situated at just the right distance from the star to be in the 'habitable zone,' where we believe life like ours could develop as it has on Earth."

Publications