Hi, Please see section 4 of this paper http://arxiv.org/pdf/1509.03622.pdf <http://arxiv.org/pdf/1509.03622.pdf> Thanks for your interest, Tabetha
On Oct 16, 2015, at 1:40 AM, Warren D Smith <warren.wds@gmail.com> wrote:
To T.Boyajian & J. Wright 15 Oct 2015
I have a possibly stupid and possibly correct explanation for KIC 8462852. (If the former, you likely can rapidly recognize that.)
See, it would be handy to explain it, if there were big dense clouds of asteroids, sometimes occluding the star. But it seems a priori nutty for a suitable cloud to be able to exist, and stably enough that it still is here.
But actually: two such clouds, called the TROJAN ASTEROIDS, do exist in our solar system, 60 degrees ahead and 60 degrees behind, Jupiter. And they are stable enough to still be here over 4 billion years later. And our trojan "clouds" are physically very large in diameter, I think easily larger than the sun. No problem about that. But our trojans produce only a tiny occlusion effect on our sun as viewed by some suitable extrasolar observer. KIC's would have to be a much more severe occulder.
So postulate KIC 8462852 contains 1 (or perhaps more) jupiter-analogues orbiting it -- which might be massive planets, perhaps more compact than jupiter and more massive. Whatever parameters are needed to make it work. Or perhaps they might even be a cold neutron star or white dwarf, not a "planet." The question of whether those jupiter-analogues exist could be addressed by more observation including doppler wobble observations, incidentally. Have any been done?
The jupiter(s) (my hypothesis would guess) are herding clouds of trojans, with much more surface area than our solar system's trojan clouds, hence capable of much more occluding. But having enough random motions and/or low enough mass so these clouds stay clouds, not condensing into new planets. (There are stability demands, known since Routh, about systems of this type which force the clouds of trojans each to have much less mass than the star and the jupiter, anything below 1% should suffice.)
So, that's about it. Oh, of course, if this turns out to be a good candidate, it has to be named the "trojan horse."
-- Warren D. Smith (PhD) https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__RangeVoting.org&d=AwIBaQ... <-- add your endorsement (by clicking "endorse" as 1st step)