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Telescopes have been collecting copious amounts of data on exoplanets in recent years. One of the most common datasets tracks what are known as transits, when an exoplanet crosses in front of its host star and dims the star’s light slightly as it does so. The majority of exoplanets have been found this way, but other interesting details might be hidden in the data.<\/p>\n
For example, what would it mean if the transits happened in a way that disagreed with typical Newtonian physics? One answer to that question is that there might be an intelligent force behind the discrepancy\u2014and that’s what a group of researchers at Breakthrough Listen began looking for in a paper recently published on the arXiv<\/i> preprint server.<\/p>\n
Technically, the researchers weren’t looking simply at transits but at a data set called a lightcurve. These graphs track an object’s brightness over time\u2014transits usually are identified by a noticeable dip in a star’s lightcurve.<\/p>\n
But how a star’s lightcurve is affected by a planet could vary in several ways. For example, the path might vary somewhat across the star’s surface or at a slower speed on a second pass. Anomalies like that keep astronomers awake all night\u2014to do their job, of course.<\/p>\n \n
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