Scientists say destruction of some comets could be blamed for dimming of star KIC 8462852, instead of some previous theories. In 2011 and 2013, something caused the star to dim by about 25%. Since then, the dimming was mystery for scientists.

Massimo Marengo, physics and astronomy associate professor at Iowa State University, and two other researchers examined infrared data on KIC 8462852 from Spitzer Space Telescope of NASA. They concluded the star’s brightness was dropped due to comet fragments. The findings have been published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The researchers said, “The scenario invoking the fragmentation of a family of comets on a highly elliptical orbit is instead consistent with the lack of strong infrared excess found by our analysis”.

The new findings could disappoint Penn State researcher Jason Wright. In a paper, Wright explained a theory on the dimming ofKIC 8462852. As per the researcher,an alien megastructure could be behind theconsistentdimming of the star.

The paper by Wright was criticized by many physicists and astronomers. Some scientists even started looking for alien signals originating from the dimming star. According toMarengo, he has gone through the new findings, but he still believes that his theory was more promising. Wright’s paper showed that there were almost no chances of any comet orplanetary collision.

While talking about alienmegastructure theory, Marengo said the new findings do not deny or support Wright’s theory. The star’s dimming is very strange, and it is difficult to ignore any theory, Marengo added.