North Star May Be Wasting Away

sciencehabit writes "The North Star, a celestial beacon to navigators for centuries, may be slowly shrinking, according to a new analysis of more than 160 years of observations. The data suggest that the familiar fixture in the northern sky is shedding an Earth's mass worth of gas each year."

Comments

Re:Oh my god!

[ackthpt]

Polaris must be losing nearly the equivalent of Earth's mass—or a little under a millionth of its own mass—each year,

In a little over a million years, we won't be able to use that particular star to navigate any more. IT'LL BE CHAOS!

It's more likely to collapse and blow off gas in a nebula before then, but agree, it's very hard to use nebulas as navigational aids during the daylight hours and tricky enough at night.