Aliens? Who knows.

The hypothesis that aliens are building a megastructure around the star to
harvest its energy runs into the same problem the comets did: any object in
orbit around the star should absorb light and re-emit it as excess heat, but
astronomers aren't detecting excess heat.

Illustration of a Dyson sphere around a star

Danielle Futselaar/SETI International

Illustration of a Dyson sphere around a star

But who knows, maybe an alien civilization capable of building star-sized

structures has also figured out how to utilize all of the sun's energy, including
heat. That's the problem with alien-related hypotheses--there's no good way
to disprove them, since we don't know what such a civilization would be like
or what they'd be capable of. It's also impossible to calculate the odds of
intelligent alien life out there in the cosmos, so it's kind of tough to say how
this hypothesis stacks up to the rest. However, we know interstellar material
exists, and we don't know whether aliens exist, so our money would be on the
natural (non-alien) hypotheses.

Wright has been careful to point out that aliens should always be a last resort
hypothesis, after everything else has been ruled out. Nevertheless, he and
Boyajian and other scientists are investigating Boyajian's Star using the most
thorough alien-hunting equipment available.

Meanwhile, all manner of telescopes have turned their attention to Boyajian's

Star, from the Swift Observatory to the Spitzer space telescope to the
backyard spyglasses of amateur astronomers. They are monitoring the star in
optical, infrared, UV, and x ray spectrums. The next time something weird
happens around Boyajian's Star, scientists around the world will be ready to
collect as much data as possible, to help settle the question of what the heck
is going on around this star.

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