http://www.sciencealert.com/that-alien-m...eaking-out
EXCERPT: The strangest star in the Universe has suddenly kicked into gear again, with researchers reporting that its light has started dimming in bizarre ways - just like it did two years ago when it baffled scientists with its irregular light emissions. This time around, we get to watch the investigation in action, because over the weekend, astronomers started freaking out on Twitter, telling everyone with a telescope big enough to train in on the star and help them figure out what's actually going on here. "
As far as I can tell, every telescope that can look at it right now is looking at it right now," astronomer Matt Muterspaugh from Tennessee State University told Loren Grush at The Verge. When [Jason] Wright took questions from the public over the weekend, he said it's unlikely that the mystery of about KIC 8462852 will be solved immediately. But we've now got astronomers from all over the world on the case, and a whole lot of new data, so we're better placed than ever before to figure out what's behind these unexplained light patterns....
'Saddle-shaped' universe could undermine general relativity
http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/saddl...relativity
EXCERPT: [...] In recent years, researchers have used computer simulations to predict the existence of ‘naked singularities’ – that is, singularities which exist outside an event horizon. Naked singularities would invalidate the cosmic censorship conjecture and, by extension, general relativity’s ability to explain the universe as a standalone theory. However, all of these predictions have been modelled on universes which exist in higher dimensions. For example, in 2016, two Cambridge PhD students predicted the existence of a naked singularity, but their predictions were based on a five-dimensional universe. The new research, by Toby Crisford and Jorge Santos from Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, has predicted the existence of a naked singularity in a four-dimensional universe - three spatial dimensions, plus time - for the first time. Their predictions show that a naked singularity can form in a special kind of curved space known as anti-de Sitter space, in which the universe has a distinctive ‘saddle’ shape. [...] Anti-de Sitter space has a very different structure to flat space. In particular it has a boundary which light can reach, at which point it is reflected back. “It’s a bit like having a spacetime in a box...."