DENVER – Scientists believe they might be closer to finding out whether a giant dim star is a star or something else. By “something else,” many astronomers are theorizing it could be an alien spacecraft.

Sounds kind of crazy, huh? Some scientists don’t think so.

“We’d never seen anything like this star,” Tabetha Boyajian, a postdoc at Yale, told The Atlantic. “It was really weird. We thought it might be a bad data or movement on the spacecraft, but everything checked out.”

Boyjian is referring to KIC-8462852, the name of the star.

“This particular star they’re not able to match the signature – it gets dim and then bright and gets dim – with something that orbits the star like a planet would be,” said Steve Lee, curator of planetary science at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Lee isn’t completely sold on the theory just yet. But he is amazed the “star” has been flickering abnormally for about four years,

“I think it’s hard to come up with a natural explanation, but it’s almost certainly a natural explanation,” Lee said. “You always wonder would it be like the first time somebody contacts us — another civilization or that we hear a signal from someplace else.”

Scientists are studying the “star,” with the help of the Kepler telescope, to try to figure out what it is.

In the meantime, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science on Thursday hosted a live Q-and-A with an astronaut in outer space.

Kjell Lindgren has been on board the International Space Station for a few months, and offered his time and expertise to the museum to help educate children on all things space.

“Do something you love,” he urged the children. “You’re going to do far better at something you enjoy.”

About 20 students had an opportunity to field questions to Lindgren ranging from “How do you stay clean in space?” to “How do you dispose of your trash?”

Overall, the event lasted about an hour. The museum and its planetary science curator hope to host something similar in the future.

“It was amazing,” Lee said.