>>7613076"While interstellar medium features are not typically related to indicators of astrophysically interesting happenings in stars, we note the presence of stellar and interstellar Na D lines in our spectra. In the bottom panel of Figure 5, we show a close up of the region containing the Na D lines ( 5890
; 5896 A). Within the two broad stellar features, there are two very deep and narrow Na D lines with split line profiles, indicating the presence of two discrete ISM clouds with different velocities of 20 km -1)"
This is a wink and a nod to randomness. That is all I need.
For the cheap seats: "While we would not normally mention this, nothing here is normal, and since we have nothing but Kepler photometry for these events, and clouds are highly random things, and ISM is totally unsexy in our field, we are required to mention this, because peer review."
What the paper does have in abundance, is evidence that a ring system is ruled out:
"Thus a scenario in which material in a gas-dominated protoplanetary disk occults the star due either to accretion columns or non-axisymmetric azimuthal or vertical structure in the inner disk (e.g.Herbst et al.
1994;Herbst & Shevchenko 1999;Bouvier et al.1999;McGinniset al.2015) is disfavoured."
>This type of star doesn't do that. It is not that young, If it were, it would be a unicorn, for reasons settled by everyone before us."The high rate of change in the KIC 8462852 light curve translates to a lower limit on
the transverse velocity of the orbiting material of about 9 km s 1 , which corresponds to an upper limit of 16 AU for material on circular orbits."
>If this were like anything we've seen anywhere, it would be inside of 16 AU and would radiate in the exact infrared wavelengths we paid dearly for Keck to observe for us.You ever been outside when a tiny cloud obscures the sun enough to throw shadows for a few seconds? It's like that. But they CYA'd it with that paragraph ending 2.2.
