We use energy much more efficiently now than in the past, but that hasn't kept us from using about 10 times as much of it as we did a century ago.
We don't really know what's causing the dimming of Tabby's Star. A Dyson Swarm is just a popular idea about this, based on our own, very limited notions of how a highly advanced civilization would conduct its affairs. The real explanation might be something stranger than we can imagine, at present.
The semaphore idea has also been discussed in the SETI context. There's nothing to prevent an advanced civilization from combining the functions of a stellar semaphore with a partial Dyson swarm, either.

If they're collecting stellar energy with giant solar panels, these could be purposely arranged to have an obviously artificial distribution; some kind of orderly plan. Where star light is collected we see a dimming. Where they aren't, we see bright star light. The combination of light and dark sectors could be made to give a simple message.

Only logical thing would be to put those "big artificial structures" in Lagrange points of a planet...dims we've seen so far have been corresponding to those - Lagrange points of a cca 750d planet revolution!
;)

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non-profit org. Play4Life in Zagreb, Croatia, EU

Still think megastructure is a bunch comets.

‘Alien megastructure’ star keeps getting more mysterious

A mysterious star that some astronomers believe could harbor an "alien megastructure,” continues to confound researchers.

A study accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal has only “deepened the mystery” surrounding the strange light pattern emitted from the star known as KIC 8462852.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2016/10/05/alien-megastructure-star-keeps-getting-more-mysterious/91597718/

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Still think megastructure is a bunch comets.

‘Alien megastructure’ star keeps getting more mysterious

A mysterious star that some astronomers believe could harbor an "alien megastructure,” continues to confound researchers.

A study accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal has only “deepened the mystery” surrounding the strange light pattern emitted from the star known as KIC 8462852.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2016/10/05/alien-megastructure-star-keeps-getting-more-mysterious/91597718/

I agree +10

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

Still think megastructure is a bunch comets.

‘Alien megastructure’ star keeps getting more mysterious

A mysterious star that some astronomers believe could harbor an "alien megastructure,” continues to confound researchers.

A study accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal has only “deepened the mystery” surrounding the strange light pattern emitted from the star known as KIC 8462852.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2016/10/05/alien-megastructure-star-keeps-getting-more-mysterious/91597718/

not much IR light on observations have ruled out "bunch of comets"!

but's still a mistery:
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2016/10/milky-way-mystery-deepens-for-a-strange-star-doing-things-never-seen-before.html
:/

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non-profit org. Play4Life in Zagreb, Croatia, EU

Hope they find ET!

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37777731

Dish to listen for ET around strange star


A $100m initiative to listen for signals from alien life is targeting a star with an unusual dimming pattern.

The Breakthrough Initiative, backed by Prof Stephen Hawking and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, will train a US radio telescope on a target called Tabby's Star.

Tabby's Star has been a subject of attention and controversy over its irregular dimming pattern.

Some scientists have been puzzled by large dips in the star's brightness.

Hawking backs new search for aliens

One of the most favoured explanations for this behaviour is that a swarm of comet fragments is periodically blocking light from the star, which also known by its official designation - KIC 8462852.

One very remote and speculative idea - yet one that has attracted much attention in the media - is that the pattern is caused by some kind of artificial structure, or a collection of structures, around the star.

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If I recall, Tabby's star is 1500 light years away. If they are focusing a radio telescope on that star, just what do they expect to find at that distance.

Do they detect any "signal" from that area of the sky to begin with ?

As the article linked below confirms, the Green Bank Telescope is capable of detecting the equivalent of one of our aircraft radar, at any one of the 1000 nearest stars. That works out to a distance of up to about 50 light years.

Such radars typically radiate about 25 kilowatts of peak power. Using the inverse square law, about 25 megawatts would give the equivalent signal strength at a distance of 1500 light years, if I'm not mistaken. That's a good deal of power, but not extraordinary. One of our own large power plants can put out from 500 to 2000 megawatts.

Dr. Wright, et al, are using the Green Bank Telescope, as I write this, to monitor KIC 8462852.

https://public.nrao.edu/news/pressreleases/gbt-breakthrough-listen

Aircraft radars are in the Mega watt range not the kilowatt range. A M Radio is at a max 0f 50 Kilowatts. and TV can be 5 Megawatts on UHF. I don't think that we could hear anything at that distance other than a highly focused, powerful beam broadcast into space that happened to hit the Earth.

I thought that SETI @Home was already getting Greenbank data

The linked article, below, from the Federal Aviation Administration, gives the peak power of typical aircraft radar as 25 kilowatts. I would like to see any authoritative information that includes a significantly different figure.

http://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/asr-11/

I thought that SETI @Home was already getting Greenbank data

All guppies are from Green Bank.
Tullio

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includes a significantly different figure

Check Wikipedia.

There may be low power aircraft radar but the kind found around airports and in the military are Much much higher than your figure.

I worked on the ANTPQ-XX system 50 years ago and these were for locating Mortars in the vicinity --these are probably 50 KW or so.

The linked article, below, from the Federal Aviation Administration, gives the peak power of typical aircraft radar as 25 kilowatts. I would like to see any authoritative information that includes a significantly different figure.

http://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/asr-11/

Sounds correct. And that would be ERP. The actual transmitter power is much lower, it is the gain of the antenna.

Amazing advances have been made in receivers in the last couple decades in getting them to be low noise. Also airport/weather radar as opposed to Military radar does not attempt to deal with stealth tech, the transponder is on for civil operations and the aircraft is actively transmitting its position.

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includes a significantly different figure

Check Wikipedia.

There may be low power aircraft radar but the kind found around airports and in the military are Much much higher than your figure.

I worked on the ANTPQ-XX system 50 years ago and these were for locating Mortars in the vicinity --these are probably 50 KW or so.

I did look at Wikipedia, and a number of other sources. Found nothing to contradict the FAA source cited. It clearly referred to airport radars. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory source referred to 'common aircraft radar', which appears to amount to the same thing.

I did find a reference to the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) using 2.5 megawatts, but that is far from being a common aircraft radar.

not much IR light on observations have ruled out "bunch of comets"!

but's still a mistery:
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2016/10/milky-way-mystery-deepens-for-a-strange-star-doing-things-never-seen-before.html
:/

Maybe a giant asteroid collided with a planet in this solar system forming a dust cloud? What do you think of this hypothesis?

Article about SETI, and video.

'Alien Megastructure' Star Targeted by $100 Million SETI Search


If intelligent aliens actually do live around Tabby's star, astronomers are determined to find them.

The Breakthrough Listen initiative, which will spend $100 million over the next 10 years to hunt for signals possibly produced by alien civilizations, is set to begin studying Tabby's star with the 330-foot-wide (100 meters) Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, project team members announced Tuesday (Oct. 25).

"The Green Bank Telescope is the largest fully steerable radio telescope on the planet, and it's the largest, most sensitive telescope that's capable of looking at Tabby's star given its position in the sky," Breakthrough Listen co-director Andrew Siemion, who also directs the Berkeley SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement. [13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Alien Life]

http://www.space.com/34505-alien-megastructure-star-seti-search.html

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Could there be a nebula filament between us and Boyagian's Star?

It'd have to be virtually on a straight line between us and Boyajian's star, or we'd probably have noticed it before now. The odds of such an alignment seem rather long. Should be a rather conspicuous object, if it can dim the star by 22 percent.

It'd have to be virtually on a straight line between us and Boyajian's star, or we'd probably have noticed it before now. The odds of such an alignment seem rather long. Should be a rather conspicuous object, if it can dim the star by 22 percent.

Yeah, I know it's a stretch.
I only proposed it because every proposal I've heard is a stretch.

Article has a graph of light from the star.

The Search Is On For Alien Signals Around Tabby’s Star

There’s a remote chance that inexplicable light variations in a star in the Northern Cross may be caused by the works of an alien civilization.

1,480 light years from Earth twinkles one of the greatest mysteries of recent times. There in the constellation Cygnus the Swan, you’ll find a dim, ordinary-looking point of light with an innocent sounding name — Tabby’s Star. Named for Louisiana State University astronomer Tabetha Boyajian, who was the lead author on a paper about its behavior, this star has so confounded astronomers with its unpredictable ups and downs in its brightness, they’ve gone to war on the object, drilling down on it with everything from the Hubble to the monster 393.7-inch (10-meter) Keck Telescope in Hawaii.

Tabby’s Star was uncovered by the Kepler Space Telescope during its examination of of more than 150,000 stars in the Milky Way. Kepler sought out stars accompanied by planets. By recording tiny, repeating fading of the star’s light as a planet passes in front a star, astronomers could determine the planet’s size, orbit and much more. All told, Kepler nabbed more than 2,300 new planets orbiting a host of stars in the constellations Lyra and Cygnus.

http://www.universetoday.com/131680/search-alien-signals-around-tabbys-star/amp/

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Here is an exploration of a number of models for this star:
http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/11/possible-reasons-for-unusual-dimming-of.html