INT. RECORDING STUDIO – LATE NIGHT

The segment producer and an intern – CONNOR – stand in front of the sound board, peering into the recording booth.

PRODUCER: [yawns] You got that coffee?

CONNOR: [hands over a steaming mug]

PRODUCER: How are we for time?

CONNOR: Two minutes to air.  If you don’t mind my asking, why are we putting him on so late?  Why even have him on if we’re going to bury his segment at three a.m. like this?

PRODUCER: [raises eyebrows] You think that was management’s call?  It was him.  He’s the one who insisted!  Said he wouldn’t come on any other time; says the graveyard shift crowd are the only ones who are actually wise to what’s really going on in the world.

—[booth flies open]—

PETE CARROLL: We ready, guys?

PRODUCER: We sure are.  On air in three…two…one…[points at CARROLL]

CARROLL: Good evening!  And welcome to Request Line, where we’re going to talk about the Majestic Twelve, we’re gonna talk about the melting temperature of steel beams, and I’m gonna tell you folks the real reason Donald Trump won’t release his tax returns.

PRODUCER: [makes circling gesture]

CARROLL: Oh, right, and, uh, play some music.  Let’s get right to it, Tabetha, you’re…[interrupted by loud feedback noise]…someone’s jamming her signal!

PRODUCER: [pushes button, breaks into call]  Turn down your radio, Tabetha.

CARROLL: Whew, for a second there I thought that someone didn’t want us to hear what you had to say.  Tabby, what have you got for us?

TABBY: Hiya, Pete.  So I wanted to call in and tell you about a really fascinating star that we’ve been observing.

CARROLL: You mean, like, a celebrity?  Don’t tell me the Can-toi have started to infiltrate our entertainment world, too, I thought they were just going after politicians…

TABBY: No no, an actual star in the sky.  It’s called KIC 8462852, it’s about 1400 light years away, and the Kepler telescope observed some very strange fluctuations in its light output…

CARROLL: [begins to reach for cutoff button]

TABBY: …that some people are beginning to theorize is caused by aliens.

CARROLL: [snaps back to attention] Go on…

TABBY: So you know how Kepler works, right? It looks at a star and watches for any significant dip in its brightness, which indicates a planet is passing between the star and us – sort of like an eclipse.  It’s not a very big dip – a Jupiter-size planet would reduce a star’s brightness by about one percent – but we can measure it.  And that’s how we’ve been discovering planets in different star systems.  So anyhow, we’re looking at this KIC 8462852, and on March 5th, 2011, the star’s brightness dropped off by 15% for a short time.  And then, two years later, it dropped by 22%.  That’s a LOT.  It’s way too much for a planet.  A stellar object that big would have some kind of gravitational effect we could see.

CARROLL: [snaps gum] So…Dyson sphere under construction?

TABBY: Well that’s the big question, right?  There’s a couple of other theories, like a comet swarm with a very strongly elliptical orbit.

CARROLL: Gonna have to be one hell of a comet swarm.

TABBY: Exactly!  What’s crazy is that of all the different potential explanations – all of which would be something we’ve never seen before in the universe – an alien megastructure is actually one of the most plausible.  But here’s where it gets even more interesting.  Based on the full-field Kepler measurements, in addition to these occlusions the luminosity of the star has been decreasing – by about 1% over the first thousand days and another 2% over the last two hundred.

CARROLL: The star is dying?

TABBY: Far from it!  For one thing, stars don’t die like that.  Now, KIC 8462852 is an F-type star – that’s a bit bigger and brighter than our own sun.  But that also means it’s going to have a shorter lifetime.  Only about three billion years, compared to our own G-type sun, which is good for about ten billion.  So if you’re going to build a megastructure, why do it around an F-type star?  It’s too hot and, relatively speaking, by the time you’ve got your house finished it’s halfway burnt out.  But what if you could siphon off material from the star? You’d be able to accomplish two things simultaneously.  First you’d cool off the star, giving yourself something nice and toasty that’s going to last…well, pretty much forever if you pull off enough to get it down to a red dwarf.  Second – assuming you have adequate control of fusion processes, which you’ve probably got covered if you’re advanced enough to siphon material from a star – you’d have all the matter and energy you need to actually build your structure!

CARROLL: Wow.  So has SETI taken a look at this?

TABBY: Well, yeah, and they didn’t find anything, but that’s pretty much irrelevant because that would really only deal with intentional communication in the electromagnetic spectrum…

CARROLL: Yeah, and SETI is in the Rand Corporation’s pocket, anyhow.

TABBY: …and odd are good that – if these are indeed aliens – they communicate in ways we’ve never even considered.  Unfortunately, that’s all we know so far.  So hopefully in the next couple of years we’ll be able to find some more answers.  But as you can imagine, it’s INCREDIBLY exciting to consider the prospect of an alien race, especially one technologically advanced enough to engage in stellar engineering over this kind of time scale.  But if that is actually the case, you can start imagining all kinds of things, maybe even that they’ve started exploring the rest of the neighborhood and have even visited Earth…

CONNOR: [knocks on glass, makes eye contact with Carroll and points to coffee cup]

CARROLL: [glances at CONNOR] Well.  So I’ll be honest, Tabby, that’s all very interesting, but that’s not really what we’re looking for here, so I’m gonna shut you down [hits cutoff button, which is followed by a flushing noise] so we can move on to a new theory about how the Warren Commission was compromised.  But before we do that, let’s rock out a bit.  This one’s for you, Tabby, you old kook! [pushes play button]

PRODUCER: [through intercom] Nice work, Pete.  I’m surprised, though, I thought you’d find that interesting.

CARROLL: [eyes glazed over] Nah, sounds like…nonsense…to…me…[trails off].

PRODUCER: [long pause]  So…Pete…your eyes are starting to water a little bit…maybe you want to, uh, blink.

CARROLL: [shakes head, blinks repeatedly] Yeah.  Sure.  Huh, don’t know what came over me there.

PRODUCER: No worries, we’re good.  Connor, maybe some coffee for the man?

CONNOR: [breaking eye contact with Carroll] You bet.  Be right on that.  Next caller is Howard from Chino, wants to talk about Princess Diana.  That should be a lot more fun that a bunch of silly nonsense about aliens, right?  You sit tight, Pete.  I’ll go grab that coffee.

—

Today’s topic: Science Fiction!  Drop all your favorite songs about aliens, technology, and other science fiction concepts into the comments and we’ll give ’em a spin.