Seeking Alien "Megastructures" Around a Puzzling Star, Astronomers Debate Intelligent Design

A fascinating article for The Atlantic describes a disagreement among astronomers over intelligent design. Though the phrase isn't used, it's clearly about design detection and when such a determination is legitimately triggered.

A star some 1480 light years from us, KIC 8462852, emits a peculiar pattern of light, alternatively obscured and revealed, obscured and revealed -- "irregularly shaped, aperiodic dips in flux down to below the 20% level."

In 2011, several citizen scientists flagged...