Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why is Betelgeuse glowing so brightly and behaving so strangely?

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 81 posts

Re: Why is Betelgeuse glowing so brightly and behaving so strangely?

#41

Post by [deleted] »

bell-cot wrote: post #26
Tangurena2 wrote: post #8

When it explodes, Betelgeuse is expected to be brighter than the full moon. Gamma ray bursts appear to follow the axis of rotation of the star, and since that axis does not point directly at Earth (it is off by about 20 degrees), that's not a threat. So it will be exciting, scary and safe - like a rollercoaster that everyone on Earth gets to ride at the same time.

Ah. About that "gamma bursts appear to follow the spin axis" rule - do Earth's astronomers have good data, with a comfortable n, to justify confidence that their little planet can't possibly get toasted by this rather large and unstable stellar neighbor? Asking for a friend.

[deleted]

Re: Why is Betelgeuse glowing so brightly and behaving so strangely?

#43

Post by marktangotango »

h2odragon wrote: post #37
peteradio wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turns out they are wrong, what are you gonna do about it? "Betelgeuse... no... stop..."

Prosecute the astronomers for inaccuracy in their warnings. "Italian scientists convicted for not warning about deadly 2009 quake" https://www.cbsnews.com/news/italian-scientists-convicted-fo...

How did that turn out? Were they acquitted? I've noticed in other cases that Italian prosecutors seem have an unusual amount of latitude, or is that normal?

Re: Why is Betelgeuse glowing so brightly and behaving so strangely?

#44

Post by rishav_sharan »

awb wrote: post #42
nixass wrote: post #7

I'd really love to see major space event like Beetlegeuse blowing up during my insignificant life-span

> Betelgeuse is expected to explode some time in the next 10,000 to 100,000 years.

I'll settle for staying alive for 10000 years. Bring on the blood-boys!

Re: Why is Betelgeuse glowing so brightly and behaving so strangely?

#45

Post by epberry »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #35
jmclnx wrote: post #27

>There are records from ancient Egypt of what appears to be a star exploding as a supernova. The Egyptians described the appearance of a “second sun” in the sky, says Webb. That statement interests me, I did a search and the closest thing I found was SN 1006: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1006 But that did not come close to the brightness of the Sun and it happened a bit over 1000 years ago. To me, ancient Egypt r…

Are you looking back far enough? Ancient Egypt really fucking ancient. Like it was about as ancient to classical antiquity as classical antiquity is to us now.

This is always a startling fact about timelines.

Re: Why is Betelgeuse glowing so brightly and behaving so strangely?

#46

Post by oskarkk »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #35
jmclnx wrote: post #27

>There are records from ancient Egypt of what appears to be a star exploding as a supernova. The Egyptians described the appearance of a “second sun” in the sky, says Webb. That statement interests me, I did a search and the closest thing I found was SN 1006: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1006 But that did not come close to the brightness of the Sun and it happened a bit over 1000 years ago. To me, ancient Egypt r…

Are you looking back far enough? Ancient Egypt really fucking ancient. Like it was about as ancient to classical antiquity as classical antiquity is to us now.

My favorite fact about timescales is that Cleopatra lived closer to the moon landings than to the building of pyramids.

Re: Why is Betelgeuse glowing so brightly and behaving so strangely?

#47

Post by marcosdumay »

isaacfrond wrote: post #3

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, w…

The idea that stars change in state on single-causes from features on their completely chaotic magnetosphere is quite frightening.

Re: Why is Betelgeuse glowing so brightly and behaving so strangely?

#48

Post by raducu »

belter wrote: post #19

From this paper : "Spectroscopic evidence for a large spot on the dimming Betelgeuse" - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2108.03472.pdf "Evidence for a large cool spot: What could lead to a temperature drop by 170 K? It should be noted that the lowest temperature obtained on 31-01-2020, Teff = 3476 K, would be one of the coolest effective temperatures measured for a Galactic RSG... According to the stellar evolution theory, the…

But do we know if the amount of temperature drop is reasonable enough for a mass loss, or it's too great and automatically implies supernova?

Re: Why is Betelgeuse glowing so brightly and behaving so strangely?

#49

Post by ben_w »

esotericimpl wrote: post #25
queuebert wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's put all this cancer research on hold and figure out a way to accelerate heavy metal burning in stellar cores!

No different than spending money on the military to accelerate heavy arms ordinance manufacturing instead of hospitals and schools.

All 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%2Fsiz...

Re: Why is Betelgeuse glowing so brightly and behaving so strangely?

#50

Post by nixass »

awb wrote: post #42
nixass wrote: post #7

I'd really love to see major space event like Beetlegeuse blowing up during my insignificant life-span

> Betelgeuse is expected to explode some time in the next 10,000 to 100,000 years.

I don't think any natural law would be broken if it goes off 10-100,000 years before "schedule". It's 10M years old after all, nobody would mind if it happens sooner :)
Post reply on HN