Posted on 01/22/2011 8:58:26 PM PST by Red Badger
THE super-giant red star Betelgeuse in the constellation of Orion is destined to explode, but maybe not next year as some recent news reports have suggested and will not be as bright as some predicted FoxNews.com reported Betelgeuse has already become a red giant, which indicates it wil explode and become a supernova. But experts say it is not likely to happen soon and it will happen far enough away that it wil not hurt Earth US astronomer Phil Plait noted on his blog that a supernova would have to be no farther than 25 light years away to "fry us with light or anything else and Betelgeuse is 25 times that distance" The story at www.news.com.au predicted that a giant explosion will occur, tens of millions of times brighter than the sun, and suggested the event could happen before 2012. The story quoted a physics lecturer at the University of Southern Queensland, Brad Carter, who predicted that when Betelgeuse blows, night time will turn to day for several weeks on Earth“This is the final hurrah for the star,” Dr Carter told www.news.com.au.“It goes bang, it explodes, it lights up - we’ll have incredible brightness for a brief period of time for a couple of weeks and then over the coming months it begins to fade and then eventually it will be very hard to see at all.” That story is helping fuel internet rumors and doomsday theories by confounding the impending supernova with the Mayan calendar's conclusion in 2012 - which some believe is a prediction of the end of the world. But there's no reason to think Betelgeuse will blow in 2012, Mr Plait explained, or even this millennium"It's hard to know just when a star will explode when you're on the outside," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
Whew! I'm glad that's settled. I was worried......
We would not find out until it was too late.Betelgeuse is 640 light years away. The light we are seeing came from Betelgeuse 640 years ago. The light we are see from the sun came 7 minutes in the past.
And six minutes ago our sun went out like a bad bulb.
LOL
A CFL BULB..
“Huh. Good to know.”
Betelgeuse appears to be bad news for all those Orion slave girls, no matter how you figure the odds.
Has it been growing brighter by the day recently? By this change in brightness are they thinking that it did indeed explode 641 years ago? I care, but I just don’t have the time to read the damn article.
Supernova explosions are probably the most violent events in the universe. There is enough dust to create 10,000 earths.Because supernovae are relatively rare events within a galaxy, occurring about once every 50 years in the Milky Way
FROM PC MAG:
Tweet 01.22.2011 Comments
In a bit of news from the, “technological innovation is not a calendar” department, reporting from news.com.au claims that scientists believe the star Betelgeuse is on the route to a fiery oblivion before 2012 Really? That’s accurate in the sense that Betelgeuse, the tenth brightest star in terms of apparent magnitude— the brightest stars one can see from earth—is indeed going to transform from a red supergiant into a supernova As for when that could happen, however, don’t believe everything you read: This has a high unlikelihood of happening in 2012 (the star would have had to supernova in the middle ages). There’ssimply no accurate way to predict when such a celestial event might occur.”But what’s all this fuss about the star exploding by 2012? That’s complete garbage,” writes Discovery News’ Ian O’Neill. “There is absolutely no indication that the star will explode in the next year or so Even the most advanced telescopes and sophisticated computer models cannot predict an exploding star with that precision!” But even if it were to go boom tomorrow, don’t expect that the mighty blast would be equitable to the scene in Star Wars where Luke Skywalker stares out across the dessert, framed by the planet Tatooine’s two suns. Nuh-uh. Neither will the supernova affect Earth in any painful capacity—using the same Star Wars analogy, Betelgeuse’s death isn’t going to be akin to the shockwave one sees when the Death Star blows up. The star’s distance from Earth, 640 light-years, will play a large part in its overall effect.”At that distance, it’ll get bright, about as bright as the full Moon. That’s pretty bright! It’ll hurt your eyes to look at it, but that’s about it,” says Discover’s Phil Plait. And as for claims that we could have a second sun on our hands? “That’s totally wrong,” he adds. “It won’t even get 1/100,000th that bright. Still bright, but it’s not going to cook us. Even if it were going to explode soon. Which it almost certainly isn’t.”
That said, it’s not as if Betelgeuse isn’t packing some serious stellar power: The star itself is roughly 18 to 19 times the mass of the Sun, with a brightness (or luminosity) of 100,000 times greater than the Sun itself. Were one to pick it up and plop it directly into our solar system, replacing said Sun, the width of Betelgeuse would easily extend out to around Jupiter’s current orbit..
You can chalk me up as being a supernovae denier.
When it does explode it will either be a black hole or a neutron star. This depends on mass.
Betelgeuse is BIG. If placed in our solar system it would be as large as Mars’ orbit around the Sun. Think about that for a minute...
I heard that Betelgeuse was the arabic word for Armpit, as the star is the armpit of Orion. Anybody know if that is true?
Which means if we see it next year, then it actually exploded about 640 years ago.
“Too late”??? Too late for what? For Obama to convene a summit and explore how the federal government can stop this monstrous explosion?
Correct.
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