Posted on 07/21/2020 6:24:02 PM PDT by MtnClimber
new study just published shows that, within the past few hundred thousand years, it’s entirely possible that Betelgeuse ate and digested a whole other star.
This would explain at least one weird thing about it, and we know such stellar mergers can happen, so why not? It’s the least strange thing I’ve heard about Betelgeuse in the past couple of years anyway.
Betelgeuse is a red supergiant, a massive (roughly 15 times the Sun’s mass) star that’s nearing the end of its short life. Stars like this live for only some millions of years, and Betelgeuse is already about 8–10 million years old, so it doesn’t have much time left. It’s already run out of hydrogen in its core to fuse to helium, and is likely fusing helium into carbon, with a thin shell of hydrogen fusing outside of that. This produces prodigious amounts of energy, and the outer layers have reacted to that by swelling hugely (like a hot air balloon getting an infusion of heat); Betelgeuse is well over a billion kilometers in diameter.
(Excerpt) Read more at syfy.com ...
When...for breakfast?
“DID BETELGEUSE EAT ANOTHER STAR?”
All right. Spit it out this instant!
I thought this was about the homo Pete Buttigieg eating some celebrity.
If it did, it happened a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far...well, not in one far away because it’s in the Milky Way.
That’s the Betelgeuse I remember.
A few months ago there was a lot of talk that Betelgeuse was about to go supernova.
Is it like when worlds collide?
Betelgeuse is near end of life and estimates are that it will go supernova within 100,000 years. It is about 640 light years away so no danger to eartn although a supernova would be quite a show.
Could Bomb 20 (U2B, 4min) take care of it? /Darkstar
I thought such a close supernova would be a problem for Earth?
There’s a star, with its pole pointed at Earth, that’s just over 1000 lys away that’s expected to go supernova, if it hasn’t already.
The resulting GRB should screw up the atmosphere’s molecular polarization, allowing Sol to irradiate the planet.
May already have, between now and 642.5 years ago.
That looks like Ronald McDonald with Mick Jagger’s lips.
If a supernova happened within 100 light years of Earth, it could be a serious (extinction-level) problem. One answer to the Fermi Paradox (where are they?) involves supernovas killing any life forms in the Milky Way less than 20,000 light years from the center (we are ca. 30,000 light years from center, last time I checked our best guesses). Revised - 27,000 light years away.
Too many stars closer in, and chances of one star going supernova too close range from several percent at Earth’s location, to well over 80 percent nearer the galactic core.
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