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 ..."

Comments

Of course it is.

[0100010001010011]

Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse.

There he is right there.

Who cares?

[Locke2005]

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...

Re:Who cares?

[HFXPro]

No. For you it occurs tomorrow. Relativity is awesome.

Re:Who cares?

[mog007]

Betelgeuse isn't millions of light-years away from Earth. It's in our Galaxy, about 600 light years away.

Re:Who cares?

[Locke2005]

A supernova can only effect us if it is within 25 light years of us. Betelgeuse is much farther away than that; new estimates say 640 light years. At any rate, it is way beyond the point at which I give a flying fuck because it doesn't effect me one whit. However, it may be really upsetting to Zaphod Beeblebrox!

Re:Who cares?

[owlstead]

Vell, Zaphod's just zis guy, you know?

Re:Who cares?

[oldspewey]

it is way beyond the point at which I give a flying fuck

The reason you give a flying fuck is that an event like this (a supernova the brightness of the full moon lasting for weeks or months) will bring out all of people's craziest fears. For some span of time, society will operate in a significantly less rational way. So you want to do your best to figure out two things: how long will this period of irrational behaviour last, and will that irrational behaviour manifest in ways that affect me?

Re:Who cares?

[__aasqbs9791]

With the crazies I have around me, who'd notice?

Re:Who cares?

[nitehawk214]

I don't think any neutrino detector can detect them. Not even IceCube.

What about Dr Dre?

Re:Who cares?

[volsung]

Super-Kamiokande would light up like Christmas from a supernova only 600 light years from Earth. (Hopefully they still have a trigger configured to save such data, despite being used now as a target for the T2K experiment.) Super-K is 10x larger than Kamiokande-II and Kamiokande-II was able to detect 11 events from a supernova that was 250x further away than Betelgeuse. Granted, not all supernova have the same intensity, but still, I think we'd have a pretty good view from here.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think any neutrino detector can detect them. Not even IceCube.

What about Dr Dre?

Oh right! Forgot about Dre.

Re:Who cares?

[forand]

Informative? Really? For the difference between 495 light years and 600 light years? Do I get modded 'informative' for correcting it to 640 ± 140 light years?

Re:Who cares?

[thePsychologist]

Well, 640 light years ought to be far enough for anyone!

Seriously?

[PingXao]

I mean, does this story warrant inclusion on slashdot? There are plenty of other places to go for bad rumors and conspiracy theories.

Re:Seriously?

[Locke2005]

Sure, but of all the places to go for bad rumors and conspiracy theories, slashdot is my favorite!

Re:Seriously?

[squiggleslash]

Yeah, and Slashdot is also a site that covers this kind of thing.

Plus it beats yet another "Something has tenuous link with iPad"/"Someone wrote hype piece about iPad"/"iPadipadipadipadipad!" story.

Doomsday forum

[interkin3tic]

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?

Reason four:

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody yet knows where the Hrung is, nor why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven.

Check for puppeteers

[MichaelSmith]

I don't see any Pierson's Puppeteers around. I think we should get out of here.

I also heard...

[Itninja]

...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.

ugh

[nomadic]

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.

Spreading like wildfire?

[mmcxii]

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

[davidbrit2]

...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...

Nice try, but I'm not falling for that one.

Re:What are the odds?

[Max Threshold]

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!

Why is it?

[JoeGee]

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. :)

Re:Why is it?

[John Hasler]

Ever considered that it might not be the same people doing both?