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 ...
Thus making this very old news.
A more accurate statement of this question:
Is The Light From an Exploding Betelgeuse About To Reach Us?
Thus making this very old news.
It will be years before we know and it may have already happened
Similar dimming events have occurred before, reducing the brightness of Betelgeuse below even what it currently is at. But to see a dimming event occur this rapidly and this severely really hasn't been seen before over the past century at all. It's unlikely to be a signature of an imminent supernova ... Whether there's a detonation about to happen or not, something fascinating is truly occurring.
Relatively speaking.
I didn’t see any reference in the article to the Star of David. Isn’t a supernova around the time of Christ’s birth believed to be the sign that drew the wise men and others to Bethlehem?
Not an astrophysicist, but I’m not sure I’d want a supernova going off that close to us.
I don’t know why you say that. It looks like perfect Ebonics to me. :-P
If our star suddenly exploded it would take 9 minutes to find out.
“Hope so. It would be very cool.”
At 640 light years, it may be a bit more than just a light show.
...anyway, who knows.
The profession of 'editor' transformed to 'political propagandist,' then with the advent of free news, and lower budgets, editing seems to have become althogether obsolete.
No.
There's a 'squashed bug' vibe going on with that. It just shows that Hollywood got there first with the real pronunciation.
It's largely agreed by astrophysicists that at 640 light years away, Betelgeuse isn't close enough to be dangerous. Supernovii within 50-100 light years away are the ones to worry about and these occur about once every 240 million years or so.
In the observable universe, a star goes supernova every second.
I’m more worried about our sun exploding.
And if you are traveling at the speed of light, from your perspective you would be everywhere at once. :)
Greta may use it a further proof of...climate change.
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