31–40 of 78 posts
Since I had to look it up out of curiosity/paranoia, I figure someone else might also be interested/relieved to know: Betelgeuse has frequently been the subject of scare stories and rumors suggesting that it will explode within a year, leading to exaggerated claims about the consequences of such an event. The timing and prevalence of these rumors have been linked to broader misconceptions of astronomy, particularly t…
Something about the contrast in the image makes it seem to "pulse" as I look at it...eerie! Edit: Maybe it's just the coffee I drank?
No, it's totally the image; I see it too and I didn't drink any coffee recently. It's one of those weird image effects that sometimes happen. Related, a combination of red and dark blue text on a black background tends to jump out from the screen for me, seemingly gaining a third dimension. I wonder how sensitive are those effects to things like ambient light levels and your display's color calibration. I'm also curi…
This effect is called "chromostereoscopy":
https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/physics/research/cfsa/peo...
This has been commercialized into something called ChromaDepth (using special holographic lens glasses to enhance the effect):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChromaDepth
Strangely, the above patented system notwithstanding, I recall from being a kid this (or something similar) being marketed (with glasses too) as part of a really cheap and cheesy comic book (I most likely still have copies of that comic book at home), sometime in the 1980s. Unless I am mis-remembering the timeframe (possible), it was long before ChromaDepth (I also recall it being used for firework displays, too).
"causing it to have only a short life expectancy. The star is just about eight million years old" everything is relative
Since I had to look it up out of curiosity/paranoia, I figure someone else might also be interested/relieved to know: Betelgeuse has frequently been the subject of scare stories and rumors suggesting that it will explode within a year, leading to exaggerated claims about the consequences of such an event. The timing and prevalence of these rumors have been linked to broader misconceptions of astronomy, particularly t…
However according to Wikipedia this is: >the star where the Elder Gods came from to battle the Great Old Ones [...]. Betelgeuse is also mentioned as the homeworld of the 'Ithria, a star-faring fungoid race.
What's with the weird shape in the bottom left? I don't suppose stars can get squished like that, so it must be some sort of optical artifact?
Since I had to look it up out of curiosity/paranoia, I figure someone else might also be interested/relieved to know: Betelgeuse has frequently been the subject of scare stories and rumors suggesting that it will explode within a year, leading to exaggerated claims about the consequences of such an event. The timing and prevalence of these rumors have been linked to broader misconceptions of astronomy, particularly t…
When we notice it exploding it would have actually exploded 600 years prior.
That's amazing resolving power, even if it's been done (maybe not in the exact same way) for quite a while now. Hopefully newer telescopes like the James Webb Telescope will be able to resolve even the _planets_ around other stars, which we are already able to do with the biggest of exoplanets today (good example -> [1]). [1] http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/files/2014/05/1RSX_J...
At the risk of uncovering my ancientness, I remember reading astronomy books as a kid which specified that stars are so far away that they can't appear as anything more than dots of light even when viewed through the largest telescopes. Always makes me wonder what can be achieved in the future, especially since we're probably somewhere on an exponential progress curve. Of course, assuming a lot of optimism about not…
Since I had to look it up out of curiosity/paranoia, I figure someone else might also be interested/relieved to know: Betelgeuse has frequently been the subject of scare stories and rumors suggesting that it will explode within a year, leading to exaggerated claims about the consequences of such an event. The timing and prevalence of these rumors have been linked to broader misconceptions of astronomy, particularly t…
When we notice it exploding it would have actually exploded 600 years prior.
If you think of causality itself moving at the speed of light (which of course it does), and think in light cones rather than referring to a nonexistent universal frame of reference with an authoritative clock, the "now" language seems more appropriate. Intuitively, it also feels quite wrong — but I attribute this more to a failure of intuition than of language.