The Limit of Human Power (We're Not Even Close)

What would it take to control a star?

Far out into the cosmos, there is a star that doesn't seem to have gotten the memo that it's a star.

Every so often, Tabby's Star (KIC 8462852) does something unthinkable. It twinkles. No, really—as in, it loses more than a 5th of its light at totally random intervals for no apparent reason. Which is something that stars just don't do. As if something massive is blocking its light.

When astronomers first saw it, they tried every explanation: dust, debris, instrument error. None of it fit. For a moment, some scientists considered a possibility they almost never say out loud: What if something out there was powerful enough to harness a star? But that's the wrong question.

Long before we had telescopes, we were already imagining what it would mean to control the sky. To harness the power of our sun, and bend it to our whim. An old story about a Demi-God from the Pacific Islands—who did something impossible—tells of capturing the sun as it raced across the sky.

That same question captures us today, as we ask: not what's out there, but how much power a civilization—how much power we—could ever truly possess. Is it truly possible to control a star? What's the true future of our technology? And what limits there are really– to being human? And why is one particular star in the night sky twinkling, for real?