3 ms·

Good luck dyson sphering that star :) It's massive and very violent! It might be that this violence is causing the dimming by discharging massive amounts of du

by tyfon 7y ago

Good luck dyson sphering that star :) It's massive and very violent! It might be that this violence is causing the dimming by discharging massive amounts of dust and gas. I hope it's a prelude to fireworks but that is unfortunately not probable.

raxxorrax 7y ago
I just hope that there is nobody wanting our sun to explode for scientific curiosity.
- tyfon 7y ago
  Betelgeuse can not sustain life and it _will_ blow up very soon in cosmic timescales. There is nothing we do to stop it blowing up so yes, I hope to see this event in my lifetime :) Our sun is much more stable.
  - detritus 7y ago
    How can you know that? I mean, you're probably correct, but given we have precisely one datapoint for life, it's a bit much to extrapolate further - there might be aeons-old silicon-skinned space whales congregating around Betelgeuse for their thrice giga-millennial spawning season, or something... . Probably not. - ed 'thrice kilo or mega millennial' seems a bit less unlikely!
    - tyfon 7y ago
      Well, disregarding radiation resistant space whales (which would be able to migrated to another star anyway), I think it's pretty clear the radiation and onslaught of solar winds from Betelgeuse will sterilise everything in the vicinity. But you are right, nothing can be ruled out ;)
      - hinkley 7y ago
        If we're talking hypotheticals, a tidally locked planet would lose its volatiles pretty quickly, but one could in theory bunker up on the far side of the planet and survive. But you'd be stuck there forever, right? Diffraction means that the shadow only goes out so far before you're being cooked again by one form of particle or another.
    - Recurecur 7y ago
      Giant stars are quite short-lived, with Betelgeuse estimated to have at most a 15 million (not billion!) year life before becoming a red supergiant . If simple life did evolve in time, it was wiped out about 100,000 years ago as Betelgeuse became a supergiant. One last fun fact: Betelgeuse is about 125,000 times brighter than the Sun in absolute luminosity.
- bart_spoon 7y ago
  Well if Betelgeuse explodes, it technically already happened back in the middle ages and we are only just now seeing it.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    I've started finding this sort of comment very irritating since I've converted to the idea that everything on the surface of a light cone is simultaneous. The meaning of the so called "relativity of simultaneity" appears to me to be that you just shouldn't talk about simultaneous events with spacelike separation.
    - whatshisface 7y ago
      If you agree that you can say Betelgeuse is far away without someone objecting with "only in a reference frame that isn't close to it!" then you should also agree that there is an implied set of reference frames that are reasonable to use in the interpretation of comments written on Earth. In the same way that "Betelgeuse is far away" means "Betelgeuse is far away from me," the claim that "an event on Betelgeuse that we are observing today happened in the Middle Ages" means that "an event on Betelgeuse that we are observing today happened in the Middle Ages from a reference frame comoving with anyone on Earth."

by tyfon 7y ago

raxxorrax 7y ago

I just hope that there is nobody wanting our sun to explode for scientific curiosity.

tyfon 7y ago
Betelgeuse can not sustain life and it _will_ blow up very soon in cosmic timescales. There is nothing we do to stop it blowing up so yes, I hope to see this event in my lifetime :) Our sun is much more stable.
- detritus 7y ago
  How can you know that? I mean, you're probably correct, but given we have precisely one datapoint for life, it's a bit much to extrapolate further - there might be aeons-old silicon-skinned space whales congregating around Betelgeuse for their thrice giga-millennial spawning season, or something... . Probably not. - ed 'thrice kilo or mega millennial' seems a bit less unlikely!
  - tyfon 7y ago
    Well, disregarding radiation resistant space whales (which would be able to migrated to another star anyway), I think it's pretty clear the radiation and onslaught of solar winds from Betelgeuse will sterilise everything in the vicinity. But you are right, nothing can be ruled out ;)
    - hinkley 7y ago
      If we're talking hypotheticals, a tidally locked planet would lose its volatiles pretty quickly, but one could in theory bunker up on the far side of the planet and survive. But you'd be stuck there forever, right? Diffraction means that the shadow only goes out so far before you're being cooked again by one form of particle or another.
  - Recurecur 7y ago
    Giant stars are quite short-lived, with Betelgeuse estimated to have at most a 15 million (not billion!) year life before becoming a red supergiant . If simple life did evolve in time, it was wiped out about 100,000 years ago as Betelgeuse became a supergiant. One last fun fact: Betelgeuse is about 125,000 times brighter than the Sun in absolute luminosity.
bart_spoon 7y ago
Well if Betelgeuse explodes, it technically already happened back in the middle ages and we are only just now seeing it.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- perl4ever 7y ago
  I've started finding this sort of comment very irritating since I've converted to the idea that everything on the surface of a light cone is simultaneous. The meaning of the so called "relativity of simultaneity" appears to me to be that you just shouldn't talk about simultaneous events with spacelike separation.
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    If you agree that you can say Betelgeuse is far away without someone objecting with "only in a reference frame that isn't close to it!" then you should also agree that there is an implied set of reference frames that are reasonable to use in the interpretation of comments written on Earth. In the same way that "Betelgeuse is far away" means "Betelgeuse is far away from me," the claim that "an event on Betelgeuse that we are observing today happened in the Middle Ages" means that "an event on Betelgeuse that we are observing today happened in the Middle Ages from a reference frame comoving with anyone on Earth."