Betelgeuse Going Supernova soon-ish?

[hitchcockgreen]

One version of the story here

The article author is retarded, but the story is mirrored on many other news sites.
I've put it past the producer of Discovery Space for confirmation.

That'd be pretty damned cool. Charging video camera....

[hitchcockgreen]

lol

ok that was for BFT.

I couldn't keep a straight face there, so to speak.

[Dx.]

Just 1300 light years away... won't there be a gamma burst?

[hitchcockgreen]

No one is sure just how far away it is. Observations put it anywhere between 180 to 1300 light years away. Current popular opinion is about 640 light years. No one is 100% certain. Betelgeuse has some uncommon properties for a red giant. It's only about 10 million years old - young for a star - and near the end of it's lifespan. It's continually expanding and contracting and on top of that it's a runaway star...it's not stationary, it's hurtling through space.

Gamma ray bursts aren't going to be an issue with Betelgeuse. It's the wrong kind of star to produce a gamma ray burst.

The referenced article in my first post was horrible. Some quotes from Dr. Carter sprinkled here and there but mostly the ill-conceived and ignorant musings of a crappy star wars fan reporter.

Betelgeuse will explode one day. But probably not for a good million years...maybe more. Oh and when it does, it isn't going to be anything close to as bright as the sun. Maybe as bright as a full moon.

[Sno]

Will this supernova BBQ Croatia?

[hitchcockgreen]

Will this supernova BBQ Croatia?

Not even close.

If there's even a Croatia when it happens.

[Sno]

I found it interesting that if we are to ever see this supernova in our lifetime, it's technically old news. It would have to have "gone kaboom" during the middle ages.

I would like to place a wager that retail stores will have a "SUPERNOVA BLOWOUT SALE!!!" when this happens.

[hitchcockgreen]

Haha Suckers bet.

And yeah, the only way to know when it'll supernova is to witness it and count backwards.

[Blunt Force Trauma]

Yea, it will blow, but the timing is even worse than our terrestrial earthquakes.

"Soon" in stellar lifetimes can be 50,000 years and "imminent" can be 10,000.

I wouldn't put the distance error so high. I would say 450 to 750 lys.

Celestia has it at 475 lys.

[hitchcockgreen]

The distance differences really do range that much.
Like I said though, current popular belief has it at 640.

And you're being far too generous with your estimates. We're talking astrophysics here. "Soon" can mean a billion years.

[Blunt Force Trauma]

For going nova or making transitions along the main sequence, you're right, it can be in the billions. I was thinking more in line with Asymptotic branching where transitions can be evaluated in units of 10,000 years.

[hitchcockgreen]

True. And Betelgeuse could fall into that category.

Even faster to 'die' are the Wolf-Rayet stars. At best several million years total life span. Those things are INSANELY huge.
One of the biggest ones known, YV Canis Majoris, is something of the order of 3 063 500 000 km in diameter.
Meaning if you were able to fly along it's surface at a steady 900 km/h, it would take you 1100 years to circle it once.

[Blunt Force Trauma]

The awesome thing I ponder about is surface curvature.

On earth, out on the open ocean, on a ship and you're on the bridge . . .say. . 60 feet above the surface, you can see a small boat that has a height of say, 8 feet. . .you can spot it at around 12 miles.

Take the star you mention and you could actually float on its fusion surface . . .the distance you could see with the same variables. . and the boat is sailing away. It could be seen for hundreds of thousands of miles before it pasted under the horizon.

Basically you would have to be several hundred thousand miles above the surface before you would perceive a curvature.

Insane.

[Ded10c]

Let's ignore the fact that you'd die of radiation poisoning and vaporise long before you got there, shall we?

Typical physicist - ignore anything that's too inconvenient for you

[Blunt Force Trauma]

Hi Ahadley. Nice to have a visitor in this BZ backwater.

[Ded10c]

Finally got around to registering myself the other day, Dx tempted me with Battlegrounds

[hitchcockgreen]

Of course we ignore the obvious obstacles to actually sitting on or near the surface.

Just easier to do so and illustrate the size in a comprehensible way.

When you start talking "big" objects in an astronomical sense, most average people wouldn't grasp the scales you're talking about.

[{911}scrapmkr]

Of course we ignore the obvious obstacles to actually sitting on or near the surface.

Just easier to do so and illustrate the size in a comprehensible way.

When you start talking "big" objects in an astronomical sense, most average people wouldn't grasp the scales you're talking about.

Funny, I never have that problem. I just open my... uh never mind.

Hi guys. finally have a chance to get online briefly. to write a note.

RL things are going ok.

{911}scrapmkr

[Ded10c]

Of course we ignore the obvious obstacles to actually sitting on or near the surface.

Just easier to do so and illustrate the size in a comprehensible way.

When you start talking "big" objects in an astronomical sense, most average people wouldn't grasp the scales you're talking about.

Yes, I know, I'm a physics student myself

[Blunt Force Trauma]

When you start talking "big" objects in an astronomical sense, most average people wouldn't grasp the scales you're talking about.

That is one of the bigger obstacles in astrophysics and also in quantum physics. The interesting thing is they are directly related. Energy, volume and density, all play a role.

Take the volume of the atomic shell/cloud around the nucleus. Take a "middle-size" atom such as copper(29) with a nucleus/outer electron cloud diameter ratio of around 1 to ~60,000. Remove the protons and leave nothing but the cloud of neutrons to then vastly increase the volume differential far more. You can easily see why neutron star material is so off the charts dense and massive that once you have enough packed together, known physics says WTF and throws in the towel and gives up the ghost for a black hole.

So yes, I agree that scale is a major hurdle in so many aspects in understanding our reality. All of them, time, distance, volume, density, etc. all can be inconceivable to visualize, as I've tried to express many times.