Posted on 05/23/2023 11:59:28 AM PDT by Red Badger
Red giant star Betelgeuse. (ALMA - ESO/NAOJ/NRAO, E/O'Gorman/P.Kervella)
Since what has come to be known as the Great Dimming that took place in the latter half of 2019 and early 2020, the red giant star Betelgeuse just will not stop with the wackiness.
The dying star's regular cycles of brightness fluctuation have changed, and now Betelgeuse has grown uncharacteristically bright. At the time of writing, it was sitting at 142 percent of its normal brightness.
It's been fluctuating back and forth on a small scale but on a steady upward trend for months and hit a recent peak of 156 percent in April.
Currently, Betelgeuse is the 7th brightest star in the sky – up from its normal position as the 10th brightest, triggering speculation that Betelgeuse is about to blow in a spectacular supernova.
Sadly, it probably isn't. Although Betelgeuse is on the brink of death in cosmic timescales, on human timescales, its supernova could be 100,000 years away.
According to scientists, its current behavior is more likely a bit of ongoing wobbliness following the 2019 dimming, and the star will return to normal within a decade.
Betelgeuse, located around 700 light-years from Earth, is one of the most interesting stars in the sky. It hangs above us, glowing like a bloodshot eye, a star in the red giant stage that marks the end of its life.
But Betelgeuse is an uncommon type of star, even for a red giant. Once upon a time, it was an absolute monster: a blue-white O-type star, the most massive stellar weight class.
Stars of this mass range burn through their hydrogen stores more rapidly than lighter-weight stars; Betelgeuse is only about 8 to 8.5 million years old. Compare that to a star like the Sun, which at 4.6 billion years old, is only about halfway through its hydrogen-burning lifetime.
Betelgeuse changed its spectral type since it has almost run through its hydrogen reserves. It's now fusing helium into carbon and oxygen and has puffed out to a gargantuan size: about 764 times the size of the Sun and about 16.5 to 19 times its mass.
Eventually, it will run out of fuel to burn, go supernova, throw off its outer material, and its core will collapse into a neutron star.
The Great Dimming event saw the star decrease in brightness by a considerable amount, almost 25 percent. Astronomers scurried to figure out the cause; it turned out that cooling on Betelgeuse's surface caused a massive cloud of dust to condense on the star.
This cloud was subsequently ejected, partially obscuring Betelgeuse, causing it to appear to dim. Fairly normal behavior for a red giant star, scientists say; we just don't usually get such a front-row seat.
Before the Great Dimming, Betelgeuse also had brightness fluctuations on regular cycles. The longest of these cycles is around 5.9 years; another is 400 days. But it seems the Great Dimming has caused some changes in these fluctuations.
A new paper, led by astrophysicist Morgan MacLeod of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, uploaded to preprint server arXiv, found that the 400-day cycle seems to have halved.
This pulsation cycle is driven by expansion and contraction inside the star. According to simulations MacLeod and his colleagues conducted, a convective plume inside Betelgeuse could have welled up, becoming the material that breaks away from the star.
During the process, this upwelling disrupted the phase of the 400-day cycle, producing instead a roughly 200-day cycle that the star is currently exhibiting.
So, Betelgeuse is still reeling from the Great Dimming, meaning it's not unlikely that its current brightening is also related to ongoing issues.
As astrophysicist and Betelgeuse expert Andrea Dupree of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics – a co-author on MacLean's team – told Scientific American, "Just imagine if you take a hunk of the material out. Then everything else is going to swish in, and it's going to slosh around … I think what's happening is that the top layers are having a problem coming back to normal."
However, the team predicts that eventually, normalcy will set back in for Betelgeuse, and it will continue to live out its twilight millennia relatively peacefully for some time to come.
Turn it up to 11 Hotblack!
Betelgeuse dims - its going to blow
Betelgeuse brightens - its going to blow
Scientists know nothing
They really do not know it is near its life end.
All theories and speculation.....mostly for attention.
I’m skeptical. The “scientists “ quoted oh so smugly about this oscillating star returning to “normal” never justified their conclusions.
And, if they really did know what was happening, “they” should have been predicting this dimming and the changes BEFORE they happened.
Rather, they are merely inventing reasons for each new phenomenon AFTER it occurs. 550 years ago.
We are merely looking at what occurred before the light got here to see!
Keep in mind that we haven't seen a supernova this close since long before the dawn of modern astronomy and physics. We don't know much about how to read the signs of an approaching one.
They really don’t know how far it is. It could be much closer. Maybe around 500 light years. As long as a supernova is at least 50 light-years away we should be safe here on Earth.
I guess that means it may have gone supernova 699 years ago and we will find out about it next year. Dems will blame it on Trump, climate change and white supremacy.
Hollywood is making a sequel to the movie....
I bet this is just ‘buzz’ from the studio.
Make them go away.
Betelgeuse! Betelgeuse! Betelgeuse!
Betelgeuse, located around 700 light-years from Earth, went supernova 695 years ago so that gives everyone time to “party like no tomorrow” because there won’t be one ....
You left out gas stoves.
People tend to miss the great INTEL inside the puns.
Genesis 1
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
Willie Nelson was really onto something when he sang that the stars are raindrops searching for a place to fall.
Sneaky -- who would ever believe it, being mixed in with the fake news that "I never cared for you."
Bet-el-geuse,
ביטלג'וז
Bethel: The house (Bet) of the God (El) of the Jews, aka the Temple.
A true pun star!
ביטלג'וז
= 67, the same as Lev Yehudi [לב יהודי], a Jewish heart.
“the red giant star Betelgeuse just will not stop with the wackiness.”
Whatever it was doing 700 years ago, it is probably doing something else today.
The article reads as if Betelgeuse is fluctuating now. For all we know, it went supernova about when Columbus discovered America.
let them be for signs.............................
Right, astrophysicists who’ve dedicated a lifetime to this science and have a reputation to protect just spout this stuff to annoy you.
Nope. I studied this stuff myself. Like climate change, we really don't know enough about the end life of stars. We really don't know about unusual stars. This could just be a really unusual star behaving odd for some reason we cannot fathom and have never observed.
When the data is limited, you can make a hypothesis, but you really cannot be sure.
Venus was very bright last night.
Thought this was about former mayor Lightfoot!
It’s about the coming fate of Stacey The Whale Abrams. There she blows!
Obviously this was caused by global warming and income inequality.
Has anyone estimated how bright the supernova will be from Earth? How will this compare to past famous supernovas? Visible during the day?
Now we know why they’re giving those satellite phones to all those Senators...
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