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Waiting for Betelgeuse: What's Up With the Tempestuous Star?

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday December 31 2019, @10:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the tempest-in-a-belt dept.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Waiting for Betelgeuse: what's up with the tempestuous star?:

Have you noticed that Orion the Hunter—one of the most iconic and familiar of the wintertime constellations—is looking a little... different as of late? The culprit is its upper shoulder star Alpha Orionis, aka Betelgeuse, which is looking markedly faint, the faintest it has been for the 21st century.

When will this nearby supernova candidate pop, and what would look like if it did?

[...] Fortunately for us, we're safely out of the 50 light-year 'kill zone' for receiving any inbound lethal radiation from Betelgeuse: A supernova would simply be a scientifically interesting event, and put on a good show. Ancient supernovae may have had a hand in the evolution of life on Earth, and a recent study suggests that one might even have forced early humans to walk upright.

What would a supernova in Orion look like? Well, using the last supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud (also a Type IIb event) as a guide, we calculate that when it does blow, Betelgeuse would shine at magnitude -10. That's 16 times fainter than a full moon, but 100 times brighter than Venus, making it easily visible in the daytime sky. A Betelgeuse-gone-supernova would also easily cast noticeable nighttime shadows.

[...] For now though, we're in a wait-and-see-mode for any New Year's Eve fireworks from Betelgeuse. Such an occurrence would be bittersweet: We would be extraordinarily lucky to see Betelgeuse go supernova in our lifetime... but familiar Orion the Hunter would never look the same again.

Also at CNET

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 01 2020, @02:09AM (15 children)

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Wednesday January 01 2020, @02:09AM (#938098) Journal

    A long time ago, near a star not so far away...

    Works of fiction could already be invalidated since it's a sure thing that Betelgeuse will explode within a relatively short amount of time (~100,000 years).

    I would doubt that it has habitable planets given its age and properties.

    In general, there has been a lot of speculation about exoplanets prior to their actual discovery. Science fiction writers might get lucky since it seems like planets and habitable planets are embarrassingly common.

    Wow! What if 1 in 4 sunlike stars has an Earth? [earthsky.org]

    One of the big questions will be whether or not red dwarfs (most common star type) are likely to have habitable zones (tidal locking and flares could cause problems).

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 01 2020, @03:26AM (6 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday January 01 2020, @03:26AM (#938115)

    it's a sure thing that Betelgeuse will explode within a relatively short amount of time (~100,000 years).

    The first article I read about Betelgeuse's recent "fainting spell" came down pretty hard on the side of: it's not likely at all to go supernova this cycle, it's a variable star, it does these things, sooner or later it will go nova but the odds that this cycle is "the one" are really really small.

    That's boring talk - never saw another article like that one again. The story got respun into "this _might_ be the one, big boom, oh how bright it will be!!!" and I've seen that spin echoed and repeated all over for weeks now.

    I guess my point is: check your sources on the 100,000 year horizon. Are they serious astronomers trying to give the most accurate estimate, or are they more sensationalists? Generally speaking the sensationalist spin is the one you run into more often.

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    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 01 2020, @03:34AM (1 child)

      by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Wednesday January 01 2020, @03:34AM (#938116) Journal

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse#Life_phases [wikipedia.org]

      It's a star with a very short life span compared to the Sun, and nearing the end of that span. It has probably done a lotta damage to whatever protoplanets have been orbiting it.

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      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 01 2020, @02:46PM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday January 01 2020, @02:46PM (#938207)

        It has probably done a lotta damage to whatever protoplanets have been orbiting it.

        Very true, and when its time comes the Sun will probably do a lotta damage to Earth and Mars before it finally hits the Iron phase...

        In fact, I'm surprised that the news articles aren't talking about spectral shifts, but, I suppose those changes in fusion fuels are masked by the outer layers - until the (local) big bang, that is.

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    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Wednesday January 01 2020, @04:28AM (3 children)

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 01 2020, @04:28AM (#938123) Journal

      The problem is "we don't know". 100,000 years wouldn't be surprising, but neither would tomorrow morning. Now if you figure the odds, the odds of it blowing tomorrow are pretty low. But we don't know. So whenever it acts in an unexpected manner, which this is, the question come up "Is this what the prequel to a supernova looks like?". So far the answer's always been "no", but we don't know what it should look like. And when it acts unusual, the odds go up. (OK, still pretty low.) But the assurance that "it won't be tomorrow" is false certainty.

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      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 01 2020, @02:43PM (2 children)

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday January 01 2020, @02:43PM (#938204)

        So whenever it acts in an unexpected manner, which this is

        And, that first article I read about this recent behavior basically said: It's a variable star, it's unpredictable. This is a change in magnitude, but not so different from previous changes in magnitude that have been recorded over the centuries. Odds are up for the moment, but still very low.

        So, I guess "unexpected" is a matter of degrees. We know enough to know that it's expected to change, we know enough to know that the changes are not a simple periodic pulsing, but we don't really have enough data to say: "this is a precursor to nova type of fainting."

        when it acts unusual, the odds go up. (OK, still pretty low.) But the assurance that "it won't be tomorrow" is false certainty

        True, and the odds that my next lottery ticket won't hit the jackpot aren't a certainty of failure, either - which is another thing the press likes to point out: "Local man wins $3M from a $1 scratchoff ticket!!!!!"

        While I'd like to see a bright flash in the sky, I'm not sure that I want it to be Betelgeuse... I know we _think_ we're outside the kill radius, but those estimates are not by enough orders of magnitude (~50 vs ~700 IIRC) to give me the warm fuzzies. It doesn't take too much imagination to dream up a concentrated jet spiking out of the explosion due to some previously unforeseen confluence of circumstances, and the bad unknown-unknown factors are even more likely than that. But that's not something that makes for a popular news article...

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        • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday January 01 2020, @05:14PM (1 child)

          by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 01 2020, @05:14PM (#938283) Journal

          An astronomer I talked to called the current actions "quite unusual" and "unexpected". So I've got to question that palliative article you read. If you've got a source for it, I might take it more seriously, but "an article I read" could be on "Wired".

          OTOH, he might be an astronomer, but he's also a bit of an excitable chap, given to believing in things like bigfoot. So my source it's all that great.

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          • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 01 2020, @06:44PM

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday January 01 2020, @06:44PM (#938317)

            "an article I read" could be on "Wired".

            It's entirely possible it was "Wired" - I'm not very discerning about my entertainment news sources, they mostly come in via the Google Home feed (or whatever that leftmost page swipe on Android is...) The thing that stuck out for me was that the palliative article was the first one to show in my feed, then there was a lag of several days, then there was a flood of more sensational articles.

            Things I care about, I e-mail a link to myself for future reference. Stuff like stars that may or may not go nova... while interesting, they're not exactly actionable items.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @05:30AM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @05:30AM (#938504)

    Earthsky.org looks like just a phenomenal site. I'd never found that before. Do you have any other links related to science/astronomy/cosmology?

    Search engines have become just so completely worthless. A google for 'astronomy and space' yields, of the 9 links: bbc, csiro.au, wikipedia, uppsala university, and... forbes.