Could Betelgeuse Go Boom?

An anonymous reader writes "The answer is No. In space, nobody can hear you scream. However, it might go supernova in the near future, if it hasn't already. I wanna see that, even if it would permanently disfigure Orion. Ka freaking bam!"

Comments

Yes

[MaskedSlacker]

The anonymous reader is wrong. A supernova would be accompanied by a large amount of shockwaves through the star, and a large amount of pressure waves. There would be no sound, in the sense that there would be no neurological interpretations of these phenomena, but they would still happen.

Re:Yes

[RsG]

Won't matter much.

First up, let me preface this by saying a supernova happening at six hundred light years is probably no big deal. Probably. However, there is some evidence that gamma ray bursts might be the product of a sufficiently massive star dying and producing a black hole, in which case we could be in trouble if we were struck be such an event at close range.

But having the bulk of the earth between yourself and such an event would not save you. Remember that we're talking about enough energy here to be detected over intergalactic distances using fairly rudimentary instruments. That much ionizing radiation will cause sufficient damage to the world's surface on the facing side to ensure the deaths of everyone globally.

However, this presumes that A) GRBs are in fact supernovae emanations, B) Betelgeuse will produce such an event if (when) it dies and C) the energy will be directed at us. There is some support for the idea that long GRBs occur as "jet" effects in two polar opposite directions, which would explain why we don't see them every time a star goes kaput. We need to be in the line of sight. If this were a common occurrence for the earth, it is very likely we would not be here at all.

Re:New doomsday scenario?

[RsG]

Would the neutrinos affect us at all? Is this another doomsday scenario?

Please, please tell me this was a joke. Please tell me you actually understood what a neutrino is, and were intentionally posting something absurd.

In the off-chance you were serious, a neutrino doesn't interact with matter enough to do any damage. This is not a matter of any uncertainty. A single neutrino would have a chance of passing through several light years of solid lead without interacting with a single atom. Neutrinos are sleeting through your body right now from the centre of the sun; they pass through the suns outer layers unimpeded, and if the sun isn't overhead wherever you are right now, then they've also passed through the innards of the earth.

Neutrinos can't affect us. Or the earth, or much of anything, really.

Re:New doomsday scenario?

[Viadd]

The neutrinos from a core collapse supernova would be lethal to humans at the distance of Jupiter. Any given neutrino has very little chance of hitting interacting with normal density matter it passes through, but there are a LOT of neutrinos: about 0.05 solar masses of them.

Furthermore, they are the first things that escape from the core (apart from gravitational waves) since they move at near-lightspeed and have very little chance of interacting with the envelope of the star. The big flashy special effects are driven by the shockwave from the core reaching the surface, and that takes hours. So if you were at the distance of Jupiter, you would have time to die from neutrino effects before the blast hit you.

Admittedly, Betelgeuse is somewhat further away than Jupiter, and the only neutrino effects are likely to be a lot of very excited astrophysicists. But both Jupiter and Betelgeuse are much closer than 99.9999999999999999999% of the Universe, and much further away than everyone you've ever met, so the distance scales aren't that different.

Nearby Supergiant stars

[syousef]

...are candidates

You get a lot of talk about how spectacular Eta Carinae would be if it went up. There's already been a Supernova "imposter" event...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eta_Carinae ..and here's some analysis of whether it's a danger.
http://stupendous.rit.edu/richmond/answers/snrisks.txt ...or has done so already
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/246576/files/th-6805-93.ps.gz

New Sensationalist

[Charles Dodgeson]

Somebody ought to go through back issues of the New Sensationalist and look at all of their predictions or reports of great inventions or processes "that will be commercialized in two or three years" to see what their track record is. I wonder if they can live up to the standards set by astrologers.

Re:Wow, Great Summary

[Sir_Lewk]

tacky photos, weird fonts and poor layouts

Don't worry, they're currently hard at work on it.

http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~jlg95/stuff/shittycode.png

Re:Nova Post!

[beowulfcluster]

"Since its rotational axis is not toward the Earth, Betelgeuse's supernova would not cause a gamma ray burst in the direction of Earth large enough to damage its ecosystem even from a relatively close proximity of 520 light years."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse

I don't think the submitter read TFA

[kwerle]

OK, I read the article. It says that the star has been shrinking and mentions a few hypothesis.

None of them say anything about nova - super or otherwise.

Some of the comments on the article do.

Could we fire the editor? Please?

Re:New doomsday scenario?

[radtea]

And how these neutrinos are supposed have an ionizing effect, exactly?

Charged current interaction, which is one aspect of the weak nuclear force. If you think about it, electrons must feel the week force, otherwise beta decay wouldn't happen.

Most neutrino detectors use see solar neutrinos this way: Cherenkov light from electrons kicked out by the charged current interaction. (The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, in contrast, was also sensitive to the neutral current interaction, which is what made it possible to determine that neutrinos have mass.)