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tl;dr Betelgeuse, the closest red giant star to Earth, is exhibiting unusual behavior. Normally, the star cycles between bright and dim states every 400 days.
by isaacfrond 3y ago
tl;dr
Betelgeuse, the closest red giant star to Earth, is exhibiting unusual behavior. Normally, the star cycles between bright and dim states every 400 days. However, between late 2019 and early 2020, it went through a "great dimming" due to a dust cloud that obscured our view of the star. Currently, Betelgeuse is glowing at 150% of its normal brightness and is cycling between bright and dim states every 200 days, which is twice as fast as usual, making it the seventh brightest star in the night sky.
The great dimming was caused by a surface mass ejection of gas and dust, a phenomenon resulting from an anomalously hot convective plume. This ejection, which was several times the mass of Earth's moon, has caused changes in the star's forces and stability.
“If we were to throw one of our arms away from us, it changes the way our forces move in our body. And a similar thing happened with poor Betelguese,” says Webb.
Betelgeuse is anticipated to explode as a supernova in the next 10,000 to 100,000 years.
- belter 3y ago"Is Earth in danger if Betelgeuse goes supernova?" - https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/earth-danger-betelgeuse-supernova/ https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/earth-dange...
- candiddevmike 3y agoI hate articles filled with meandering fluff. The answer is buried 3/4 of the way down the page, and it's "No, it's too far away".
- djbusby 3y agoWhen headlines end with a '?' the answer is: No
- eimrine 3y ago> Betelgeuse is anticipated to explode as a supernova in the next 10,000 to 100,000 years. I would like Theguardian to expose a standard deviation for this kind of data (because I have read from other sources that nobody has the data, it easily may be tomorrow).
- afavour 3y agoThe article states that we don't know, a scientist is quoted saying that it could have already happened for all we know.
- tanseydavid 3y ago642.5 light years is a pretty sizable lag time, in human terms.
- denton-scratch 3y ago> it easily may be tomorrow Tomorrow is in the next 10,000 to 100,000 years.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- DirectorKrennic 3y ago> Betelgeuse is anticipated to explode as a supernova in the next 10,000 to 100,000 years. Too long. Speed it up.
- queuebert 3y agoLet's put all this cancer research on hold and figure out a way to accelerate heavy metal burning in stellar cores!
- esotericimpl 3y agoNo different than spending money on the military to accelerate heavy arms ordinance manufacturing instead of hospitals and schools.
- ben_w 3y agoAll current human activity combined will have less impact on when the star explodes than a single snarky comment has on heavy ordinance manufacturing. Space is big. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=size%20Betelgeuse%2Fsize%20earth http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=size%20Betelgeuse%2Fsiz...
- marcosdumay 3y agoThe idea that stars change in state on single-causes from features on their completely chaotic magnetosphere is quite frightening.
- firstlink 3y ago> which was several times the mass of Earth's moon It strains intuition that this would even be observable, it's such a tiny fraction of the total mass of the star.