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Eta Carinae, Soon To Be a Local Supernova

Posted by kdawson on from the don't-point-that-thing-at-me dept.

da4 writes "Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy has a great article about Eta Car, a star approx 7,500 light years away from us that's ready to supernova sometime Real Soon Now." Larger versions of the Hubble-Chandra image of Eta Car are available at the Chandra site. Of course when astronomers say it's "about to explode," they really mean it probably exploded 6,500 to 7,500 years ago and we're awaiting the news.

4 of 317 comments (clear)

  1. Re:thanks by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Of course when astronomers say it's "about to explode," they really mean it probably exploded 6,500 to 7,500 years ago and we're awaiting the news.
    could you clear up that 'sun rise' and 'sun set' thing for me as well?
    How about this: even though this expected supernova happened thousands of years ago, for all causal purposes, it won't have any effect upon us until we can see it. After all, the speed of light is really just the speed of causality.

    So, in a local causal sense, it hasn't happened yet. The distance just means that if we thought to have any influence on it before it happens here, we'd have to have done something thousands of years ago or longer to exert a causal influence.
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    Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
  2. Bipolar Symmetric Objects by pln2bz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There's something that doesn't quite follow with this article. The article states that we are only in danger when the bipolar configuration faces us. However, when the bipolar morphology faces us, it will look just like a sphere. The other lobe will be obstructed by the one closest to us. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong, but how often do we see spherical objects in space as being identified as a bipolar configuration pointing at us?

    Couldn't a person make a pretty convincing argument that the bipolar configuration is in fact the primary configuration of all such objects, and that anything that looks like a sphere to us is in fact just the bipolar configuration pointing at us?

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    "A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.
  3. Re:What makes you tick, pln2bz? by Cheapy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."

    I think any theory on the universe's nature would require extraordinary proof. My theory? Turtles, man. Turtles all the way down.

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    Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
  4. Re:What makes you tick, pln2bz? by Short+Circuit · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If fusion occurs where and how your sources says it is, it should be a simple matter to perform a laboratory-condition demonstration of this effect. If you can demonstrate fusion without the temperatures found at the center of the sun, I might be less disinclined to believe the EU concept.

    Don't tell me none of the labs will touch it, though. At the very least, The EU folks should be capable of annoying "mainstream" scientists enough that some mainstream scientist would perform the experiment. Quantum mechanics annoyed Einstein and other physicists sufficiently that they came up with a thought experiment intended to discredit QM.

    If such a thought experiment can be turned in favor of QM because of QM's merit (see a Slashdot article from last week or the week before about "spooky action at a distance"), then surely, if EU has merit, experiments intended to disprove EU can be turned in EU's favor.

    Come back when that happens. If it already has happened, provide links to and/or names of actual papers, not more sites that describe the theory in layman's terms. Basing arguments on layman's terminology is disingenuous; An analogy can never be more true than the evidence.

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