If you can, take a look at the Orion constellation tonight. You may notice that the left side shoulder of Orion (the star Betelgeuse) is a lot dimmer than usual. I noticed that it's been dimmer lately, last 2 weeks or so. I usually take my dog out at night, and like to look at the stars when I do. Betelgeuse is usually the second brightest star in the constellation, and around the ninth brightest star in the night sky. It can very in brightness, and can fall to around the tenth or eleventh brightest star. Added: Forgot to add, currently Betelgeuse is the dimmest it's been in the last hundred years or so. Astronomers have also noticed that it's been dimmer than usual. There is a small possibility that it could go, or has already gone supernova soon. Soon can mean anytime in the 100,000 years or longer. If it has already gone supernova, the light takes 600 years to reach us. So yeah, very small possibility that if it has, we may see it happen. When it does, or if it has it will be aground as bright as the full moon for a few months then dim away and become a neutron star.
Closer to 3 months or so, then dim out. But a gamma ray burst from the explosion could kill us all, so there's that.
Nah, Betelguese is too far for that, I thought. And the burst would have to be pointed straight at us, which is . . . unlikely.
It would have to be pointed at us, but a powerful enough gamma ray burst can affect us from a few thousand light years away. But even a tilt of less than a degree that far away is enough to completely miss us. The second largest extinction event, the Ordovician Silurian event may have been caused by a gamma ray burst, which was about 6000 light years away. Betelgeuse is around 600 light years away.
Astronomers are worried about us getting hit by the gamma-ray burst from a pair of stars 8K lightyears away. Betelgeuse is a mere 600 lightyears away, but thankfully is pointed in the wrong direction to hit us with a GRB.
That's crazy. I always forget just how big Betelgeuse is compared to our sun. It would basically encompass Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and the asteroid belt.
You should get my energy producing physics. No laxatives required for gigantic mass ejection. The only problem is my containment field fails all the fucking time.
It’s acting weird again. https://www.universetoday.com/161751/betelgeuse-is-almost-50-brighter-than-normal-whats-going-on/
What if it is already a supernova? Technically we are arguing over what happened 640 years ago. Yes, I get that is a very short time in a star's life, but it is probably a fool's hope that any of us will see it in our relatively short existence. Even if it went supernova tomorrow it would be generations before humans see it. For instance, if it went supernova tomorrow Captain Pickard's earthbound dad, or brother, or whoever the fuck was picking grapes would not have seen the light from it with his own eyes.