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To: doorgunner69
I've heard it theorized that if Betelgeuse ever goes (ultra)super-nova -- and it's certainly going to in the universal 'short term' perception of time -- our planet Earth may be fried chicken even though we're somewhere around 650 light years away from it. It depends on the direction that the star's poles are facing if we'd get bathed in X-Ray and Gamma Rays or not.

So far, every supernova that Mankind has witnessed was a star smaller than our Sun and no closer than 20,000 light years away -- I think I got that right.

Betelgeuse is so massive that our own Sun looks like a grain of sand next to a regulation NBA basketball. Astronomically, Betelgeuse is basically just next door in our galactic neighborhood.

10 posted on 02/27/2012 5:11:37 PM PST by The KG9 Kid
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To: The KG9 Kid
If it is 650 light-years away and it exploded 640 years ago, we're in trouble. There seems to be a lot of uncertainty about its distance--I have an old World Almanac which says 520 light-years (so we are seeing the light that left there in 1492) but there are lower and higher guesses.

It's supposed to explode within the next million years. So I won't put it high on my things to worry about. As Louis XV would have said, Apres moi, le poulet frit.

12 posted on 02/27/2012 5:51:08 PM PST by Verginius Rufus
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