Astrophysicists deal with unknown phenomena all the time. One such phenomenon is the case of mysteriously disappearing stars.

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Researchers with the "Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations" (VASCO) projecthave identified 100 such stars that once existed and then magically stopped. They did so by comparing catalogs from the 1950s to today's data sets.

"Finding an actually vanishing star - or a star that appears out of nowhere! - would be a precious discovery and certainly would include new astrophysics beyond the one we know of today", said project leader Beatriz Villarroel, Stockholm University and Instituto de Astrofsica de Canarias, Spain.

When stars die they either become white dwarfs or supernovas. Stars that don't fit in either of these categories are considered "impossible phenomenon" that could be attributed either to new astrophysics or to alien activity.

Out of 15% of the 150,000 candidate objects in the available data, the researchers have spotted approximately a hundred red transients. "We are very excited about following up on the 100 red transients we have found", said Beatriz Villarroel.

Before you get too excited that these 100 objects may be due to alien activity it should be noted that the researchers discounted that possibility.

"But we are clear that none of these events have shown any direct signs of being ETI. We believe that they are natural, if somewhat extreme, astrophysical sources", said Martin Lpez Corredoira, co-author of the paper, Instituto de Astrofsica de Canarias, Spain.

Now, the researchers are seeking help to examine all150,000 candidate objects. Through acitizen science project, they hope to find more information on these anomalies. And who knows with a bit of luck they may actually detect some alien activity.

"We hope to get help from the community to look through the images as a part of a citizen science project," said Lars Mattsson, Stockholm University.

The rest is here:

Mysteriously Disappearing Stars Lead to Theories of New Astrophysics and Alien Technologies - Interesting Engineering