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Rumor of Betelgeuse's Death Greatly Exaggerated
The Bad Astronomer writes "A rumor is spreading on the Net like wildfire that the red supergiant star Betelgeuse is about to explode in a supernova. This rumor is almost certainly not true. First, it's posted on a doomsday forum. Second, it's three times removed from the source, and is anonymous at each step. Third, the evidence is shaky at best. Plus, even if true, the supernova is too far away to hurt us. But other than that ..."
Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse.
There he is right there.
If Betelgeuse goes supernova tomorrow, it will take 495 years for the light to reach us! Or are we arguing about whether or not it went supernova 495 years ago...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I mean, does this story warrant inclusion on slashdot? There are plenty of other places to go for bad rumors and conspiracy theories.
Hmm... That's almost more interesting to me. Seems pretty odd to have a doomsday forum. If you think the world is ending soon, you're going to be online, chatting about it? Are the doomsday predictions spinning off to places other than Earth because doomsayers realized they're tired of being wrong and if they're right about predicting the earth's demise, they won't get any credit for it?
Nobody yet knows where the Hrung is, nor why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven.
I don't see any Pierson's Puppeteers around. I think we should get out of here.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
...on very good authority that, in two weeks, Mars will appears as big as the MOON in the night sky!!
I swear I have assuage my Mom's fear about that one every year. I would just send her to Snopes. But the copious pop-under ads, malware, etc. makes me think I would be causing more problems that I would solve.... "No Mom. You cannot make win a free XBox by punching that monkey...". But I digress.
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In other news, the M1 nebula is NOT... I repeat, *not* about to disappear.
Bernard's Star is also NOT going nova this week. Probably not next week either.
Also, do not panic. Neptune is quite stable in its orbit and is NOT about to collide with Jupiter, say astronomers. Repeat, it *will not* collide.
What's new is that the doomsday tomorrow nuts have something else to latch on to, since 2012 has been thoroughly debunked.
Of course it is possible that it already has gone supernova, and that the light and hard gamma front will reach us tomorrow morning.
Fortunately it's far enough away that the only people who are going to notice anything other than a bright light in the sky are gamma ray astronomers, and astronomers who work on supernova theory.
It'll be a great day for astronomers when it does go, however, a supernova that close and that thoroughly studied will give us a lot of hard information on supernova. For example, IIRC Betelgeuse was the one of the first stars to actually have it's angular diameter measured (1921) and surface imaged using interferometry.
I'm old enough to remember when they imaged it's surface, at the time it was an incredible achievement.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
The blog writer complains that this rumor is "spreading like wildfire" but only cites to a single forum where the rumor apparently started. The blow writer then makes a snide comment about a "doomsday" forum, and then spends time with what appears to be an exasperated manner of speaking declaring that a supernova at that distance wouldn't cause any danger, only the original forum post never said it would--it basically saying how cool this would be to see. Why does it feel like a manufactured controversy? As best I can tell this anonymous forum poster may have been mistaken, but the reaction from the Discover blog is ridiculously out of proportion to that mistake.
When I Googled "I was talking to my son last week (he works on Mauna Kea), and he mentioned some new observations" to see how far this had spread it came up with a glorious 5 hits. That's spreading like wildfire?
Nice try, but I'm not falling for that one.
The average galaxy experiences a supernova roughly once every hundred years. Yes, we have seen some; there was one in a neighboring galaxy in 1987. What's really whack is that there are about 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. Using the estimate of one supernova per galaxy per century, this works out to like thirty supernova every second! Shit's blowin' up like crazy!
The rumour was it will occur in the next few weeks, similar to SN 1054 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1054
[quote]SN 1054 (Crab Supernova) was a supernova that was widely seen on Earth in the year 1054. It was recorded by Chinese, Japanese, Native Americans, and Persian/Arab astronomers as being bright enough to see in daylight for 23 days and was visible in the night sky for 653 days.[1][2][3] The progenitor star was located in the Milky Way galaxy at a distance of 6,300 light years and exploded as a core-collapse supernova.[/quote]
People will take a phenomenon verified by hundreds of scientists in dozens of studies, global warming, and dismiss it because they got stuck in a snow drift. Then they'll turn around and forward an email that cites a brother's wife's uncle's cousin as breathless proof of impending calamity? I know the answer -- people are stupid. The question is purely rhetorical. :)
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
The real doomsday sign is the cubs wining it all!
Global warming affect them, and they know that if true, it could point back at their own excess, or force them to change their lifestyle. A big problem. Whereas beltegeuse exploding, it won't affect anybody, so they don't mind spreading the rumor as a joke. The one REALLY stupid which REALLY think that would affect them, would not be able to come with the idea anyway.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
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