Like people spent years of their life scientifically studying the problem and didn’t think of this before making the claim?
It was multi-wave analysis not just visible light, IR spread can differentiate this.
It’s been missing since 2015. Probability of something being large enough to cover the star and stay on a path completely obscuring it for 10 years is shall we say, not likely.
It didn’t rage against the dying of the light, it just switched off.
>As many as 30 percent of such stars, it seems, may quietly collapse into black holes — no supernova required.
TFA says the astronomers checked for that. It's still a possibility, but pretty unlikely.