SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Wednesday January 01 2020, @04:28AM (3 children)
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.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 01 2020, @02:43PM (2 children)
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."
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...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday January 01 2020, @05:14PM (1 child)
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.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 01 2020, @06:44PM
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.
🌻🌻 [google.com]