Discover Magazine is late to the party. The changes in Betelgeuse have been observed and commented on for several years now.
“Betelgeuse, considered a supergiant star, is so large that it would reach to Jupiter’s orbit in our solar system. But at a radius of about five astronomical units, the star has shrunk in size since 1993 by a distance equivalent to Venus’s orbit.”
“The distance to Betelgeuse is not known with precision but if this is assumed to be 640 light years, the star’s diameter would be about 950 to 1000 times that of the Sun. Betelgeuse has a color index (B-V) of 1.86 and is thought to have a mass of about 20 solar masses.[3]
It is likely that Betelgeuse will become a supernova.[3][19] Considering its size and age of 8.5 million years – old for its size class – it may explode within the next thousand years—if it hasn’t already.[19] Since its rotational axis is not toward the Earth, Betelgeuse’s supernova would NOT cause a gamma ray burst in the direction of Earth large enough to damage its ecosystem even from a relatively close proximity of 640 light years.[19]
A Betelgeuse supernova could easily outshine the Moon in the night sky.[19] It will likely be the brightest supernova in recorded Human history, easily outshining SN 1006. After it explodes, it will likely linger for several months, being visible in the daytime sky and lighting up nighttime skies in the Solar System for a long time, after which the “right shoulder” of Orion will disappear forever.”
Do you have a link to that excerpt you posted? Looks like it might be from Wiki.
With that size and being 20 solar masses, it looks like maybe Betelgeuse is at the end of its helium burning phase. Typically a main sequence star of 8 solar masses will end of life blow off enough mass so that it would be under the Chadrasekhar limit of 1.4 solar masses, so it will end its life as a white dwarf. Above the limit, the gravitaional collapse exceeds the electron degeneracy pressure, thus a neutron star or even black hole is formed, depending on the mass of the remnant. Now the question is will the star undergo further fusion reactions, such as carbon-oxygen? Such reactions are very short lived, and result in further explosions. These explosions distribute a lot of heavy elements (in cosmology BTW, anything helium and above is considered to be a “metal”).
Well if it blows or if it already has blown then hopefully it will be earlier in the usurper’s fraudulent admin so we can get the misery over sooner than later.
At least if we are vaporized then we do not have to look at his spousal wookie anymore.