Name: タビーの奇妙な星は、単に奇妙になった (Tabby's Strange Star Just Got Stranger)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T06:42:54.000Z
Duration: 4 min 25 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

法助動詞 B1

You might remember that almost exactly a year ago, there was a lot of buzz about one particular

様態の副詞

There were strange signals coming from this star, and no one was exactly sure what was

Some people were even saying that the signals could have been caused by an alien civilization.

Well, last week, the story got even weirder.

Because not only does the star’s light flicker unpredictably, but it’s been getting dimmer

This star’s called KIC 8462852, and it’s been nicknamed Tabby’s star after Tabetha

Boyaijan , the scientist who described its weird properties — and who Hank interviewed

Tabby’s star caught the attention of astronomers after it was observed by the Kepler telescope’s

Kepler spots exoplanets by watching for stars to dim slightly as a planet passes in front

Most planets that it spots do this regularly, once every revolution around the star.

Its light dims unpredictably, at irregular intervals, and scientists aren’t sure why.

The most likely explanation is that a comet has recently broken up in front of the star,

and dust and chunks of debris are obscuring our view at random.

The far less likely, but way more awesome, explanation is that an alien civilization

is using some kind of huge structure to harness the star’s energy.

Astronomers have been scratching their heads ever since this phenomenon was announced last

Then, in January of this year, another researcher announced that Tabby’s Star has gotten dimmer

overall since 1890, based on old photographic observations.

But, as you can probably imagine, data collecting methods have changed a little since the nineteenth

century, and comparing old photographic plates to new digital data could introduce some errors.

In a paper being published by The Astrophysical Journal, researchers at Carnegie and Caltech

checked into this claim using more recent data: the observations from Kepler over the

Kepler would check in on the star every now and then to look for changes in its light.

Plus, because of the way Kepler works, it has to make a lot of observations to calibrate

So there are lots of observations made by the same instrument.

Tabby’s star is dimming over time, the researchers say.

Over the first three years of Kepler observations, it got darker by one percent.

That might not seem like much, but stars are huge, so that amounts to a whole lot of energy.

Then, in the next six months, the star’s brightness plunged by two percent, before

leveling off for the rest of the observation period.

A few of the other stars in Kepler’s dataset got a little dimmer over the same period,

If the star had only dimmed in the past six months, a comet or planet breaking up would

But four years of dimming is harder to explain — and the dimming might go all the way back

We’ve never seen another star act this way, and we don’t have a good explanation for

And another space news closer to home, Blue Origin, the spaceflight company run by Amazon

CEO Jeff Bezos, has pulled off a pretty cool flight test — and it went way better than

Blue Origin’s New Shepard launch system consists of a crew capsule sitting on top

And both the capsule and booster are built to be reusable.

On October 5th, New Shepard passed a crucial test.

The flight was aborted — on purpose — partway through launch.

That meant the crew capsule fired an engine to separate itself from the booster.

Blue Origin intentionally picked a time, 45 seconds into the flight, where the spacecraft

The capsule used parachutes to land in the Texas desert, and it was recovered safely,

which means the crew of a launch system like this could probably survive an accident mid-launch.

As an added bonus, the booster survived too, and it wasn’t really expected to.

Blue Origin predicted that the capsule’s escape motor would send the rocket into a

Which is an acceptable loss, when you’re trying to save the crew.

But the booster was fine, and came back to land on its pad like nothing was wrong.

So, with five successful tests in less than a year, Blue Origin seems ready to get off

As for New Shepard, it’s flown five successful test missions and will now be retired.

It’s done its job of proving that Blue Origin can build a rocket that works, is reusable,

But it was also only meant for short flights that don’t achieve Earth orbit.

The next planned spacecraft, New Glenn, will have a lot more power under the hood.

It’s designed to be capable of orbital flight.

And they plan to make even bigger rockets after that.

Crewed Blue Origin test flights could happen as early as next year, and the company eventually

No word yet on how much a ticket will cost, but you might want to start saving up.

Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow Space News, and thanks especially to our patrons

on Patreon who help make this show possible.

If you want to help us keep making episodes like this, you can go to patreon.com/scishow.

And don’t forget to go to youtube.com/scishowspace and subscribe!