The Kardashev Scale: the Case of "KIC 8462852" (2)

Now, in an article submitted to the scientific community on September 11th and signed by 29 scientists led by Tabetha Boyajian of Yale University, which will soon be followed by another article by Jason Wright of Penn State University, attention is drawn to the anomalies recorded in observations of the star KIC 8462852 in the constellation Cygnus, about 1,480 light-years away and one and a half times the size of our Sun. KIC 8462852 is a class F5 star (yellow-white dwarf) on the main sequence, invisible to the naked eye (the Sun is a class G2 yellow dwarf) and observable only with very sophisticated instruments.
Observations by the Kepler space telescope have shown variations in the star's brightness that cannot be explained by any "natural" hypothesis known to date, except for a highly unlikely swarm of comets, which would in any case be incompatible with the star's age. Two in particular are the "mysterious" episodes: the first with a single 15% dip in brightness (2011), the second about 750 days later (2013) with a series of dips whose maximum was 22%, which would suggest a series of objects transiting in front of the star. A previous episode had been recorded in 2009. The one expected in 2015 was not recorded because Kepler partially malfunctioned (as always, when something "new" is glimpsed).