It's a bold prediction, which is fine as long as they are prepared to be proven wrong.  The cool thing is that this is something that amateur astronomers can keep an eye on over the next year and possibly collect a lot of useful data.

Quite so.  I've just gotten to reading through their paper and checking their figures, and they actually place a lot of emphasis on alternative models and how further observations can be used to test them.  

For example, one other possibility (possible but unlikely) is that the system orbits with an unseen companion such that the changes in light travel time are -- at least for right now -- mimicking the expected behavior of a binary merger.  It can't stay that way forever though (the merger is an exponential, while the other option is cyclical so can only look like an exponential for a short while), and they make some models to show the evolution in different scenarios:



So further observations are pretty important.  With further time, the "unseen companion" scenario is either verified or made increasingly unlikely because it would take a more precise combination of parameters to mimick a merger.

I think this also emphasizes why it's good to check the papers whenever they're available.  Much more detail and insight that is often glossed over or omitted entirely in the popular articles.

I've made a small add-on for this system.
Boom Star - KIC 9832227

Maybe Tabby's Star doesn't contain alien mega-structures, but it's just the effect of a planet that have been ate by its parent star.

It makes sense, since that kind of collision would create an high blast of energy with a slow decade (what we're seeing on the luminosity of the star, on an high scale), and would also create an huge number of debris that might be what we've seen passing in front of the star.

I still think that the mega-structure thing is possible, or, at least, I hope so 

Legit timelapse of exoplanets orbiting star HR 8799

http://www.manyworlds.space/index.php/tag/hr-8799/

Motion interpolate was used on 7 images of HR 8799 taken from the Keck Telescope over 7 years to create this image.

[youtube]KVgKidAuf4o[/youtube]

That is quite impressive

Freakin' awesome!

That HR 8799 thing is amazing. Also, why is no one mentioning Proxima Centauri b? There is probably a 90% chance it will be a desert planet or an oceania, but a rocky planet in the habitable zone of a star so close to home is awesome.

The ISS is getting an upgrade! https://www.nasa.gov/feature/progress-underway-for-first-commercial-airlock-on-space-station

Also, why is no one mentioning Proxima Centauri b?

Proxima Centauri b

Proxima b by Cirax (6 versions)

JackDole, i knew about that, i was talking about this thread.

i was talking about this thread.

Perhaps this is because it is no news anymore.

Yeah, I'm more interested in this metallic hydrogen 

Perhaps this is because it is no news anymore.

It is just insane that a potentially habitable planet is this close to Earth
Also, saw something in the news about a star taking 10 years to get eaten by a black hole in a galaxy 1.8 billion light years away, and the normal time it takes a black hole to eat a star is 1 year.

Xoran, well, the chances are, it's not habitable

Tornado at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility today
[youtube]qIGt7mFk7as[/youtube]