It might sound like a nitpick, but whatever is happening to Betelgeuse that we are seeing today happened 700 years ago. I think it is an interesting thing to think about at least.
I’d just like to see it exploding and lighting up the sky. That would be very cool.
Yeah I’ve heard that too. Betelgeuse was supposed to have gone super nova a long time ago.
Do we really want a supernova going off only 700 light years away? And during a grand solar minimum when our sun’s ability to deflect incoming cosmic rays is minimized. Not that there’s anything we can do about it, at least not beyond prayer, but I hope someone has thought through how close we can survive a supernova of a given size and knows this in beyond the danger zone.
That was my first thought. The only thing happening in the next few weeks is that we find out what happened centuries ago.
It is a nitpick. We all know the facts of interstellar distances. It’s just convenient shorthand to say “it could explode any day now” rather than the more awkward “the explosion could have happened such that its light could be arriving any day now”.
And BTW (nitpick alert) it’s 640 light years away, not 700.
So, anytime between 700 years ago and 100,000 years from now something might happen.
Where can I get a job where someone else pays me to set around and study crap thats never gonna happen or if it does it wont have any effect on humanity or it will be so massively catastrophic there wont be anything you can do about it?
Im good at that kinda crap!