Posted on 12/31/2019 10:26:42 AM PST by jonatron
When you take a look at the stars in the night sky, they generally appear the same regardless of time. Only a small number of stars ever appear to change on human timescales, as most stars burn through their fuel very stably, with almost no variation in their continuous brightness. The few stars that do appear to change are either intrinsically variable, members of multi-star systems, or go through an enormous evolutionary change.
When very massive stars get close to the end of their lives, they start varying by tremendous amounts, and do so with significant irregularity. At a critical moment, most of these stars will run out of the nuclear fuel holding up their cores against collapse, and the resulting implosion leads to a runaway cataclysm: a core-collapse supernova. Could Betelgeuse, whose variability intensified in a novel way over the last few days, be about to explode? Here's what astronomers know so far.
The last time our species witnessed a supernova from within our own galaxy with the naked human eye, the year was 1604. A new point of light in the sky suddenly appeared, brightened, and briefly outshone every single star before slowly fading away. This wasn't the first such event, as prior supernovae had illuminated Earth's skies like this in 1572, 1054, and 1006, among others.
But all of those supernovae occurred from stars that were thousands of light-years away, with Kepler's 1604 explosion being traced back to a stellar remnant located some 20,000 light-years across the Milky Way. Of all the stars we see in the night sky, one bright member stands out as the most fascinating possibility as our galaxy's next supernova: Betelgeuse, one of our sky's 10 brightest stars, located a mere 640 light-years away.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
I had to look it up.
Interesting.
The explosion is in all directions but the collapse to the black hole and the resultant GRB shoots out the poles. I did read an article in recent years that said one of Betelgeuse’ poles is pointed almost directly at us but that at 640 light years away the actual direction of the pointing is too difficult to determine precisely. If the collapse is of a certain type and it is pointed directly at us, it could strip away our atmosphere.
:)
It’s an interesting movie, if you get the chance.
If the collapse is of a certain type and it is pointed directly at us, it could strip away our atmosphere.
That quick ... we’ll know soon enough
https://www.obspm.fr/the-slow-rotation-of-the-red.html?lang=en
A Gamma Ray Burst is not associated with a Betelgeuse-type red supergiant explosion. GRBs are short lived events that are believed to be caused by the catastrophic collision between two stars spiraling in on each other, typically neutron stars, or the explosion or a Wolf-Rayet type star.
So no Incredible Hulk super powers?
I thought I heard it said that it could be in the next 200,000 years....hard for a non-scientist to get excited about it today....
Thanks for the pings!
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Whoever wrote this thing must have slept through grammar class.
/I F***ING LOVE SCIENCE!!>
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