The Mysterious Phenomenon The Kepler Space Telescope Discovered

In 2011, scientists made a note of something quite interesting that the telescope had captured. The Atlantic reported that this finding appears in line with the tight debris cloud that might surround a young star. However, the star identified by Kepler is quite old and therefore scientists can’t yet deduce what is floating around in its orbit. Researchers have worked through a number of hypotheses to try to figure out what this debris might be, but none have proved conclusive so far.

One hypothesis that seems the most likely is perhaps one that requires the highest degree of coincidence. Because the star at the center of this system is old enough to have cleared an immature debris field, scientists have landed on the idea that another star could have passed through this system, pulling a large field of comets along with it. The problem, however, is that just like the debris of an immature star system would eventually clear as a result of solar and planetary gravitational pull, so too would a wave of comets eventually make their way into orbit around other bodies or crash into them and be consumed. The existence of this debris field would indicate that its establishment was more recent.

If this explanation were true, the timing would be impeccable, lending itself to a degree of kismet that nearly defies logic itself.