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What Happens When Betelgeuse Explodes?
StartsWithABang writes: One of the great, catastrophic truths of the Universe is that everything has an expiration date. And this includes every single point of light in the entire sky. The most massive stars will die in a spectacular supernova explosion when their final stage of core fuel runs out. At only an estimated 600 light years distant, Betelgeuse is one (along with Antares) of the closest red supergiants to us, and it's estimated to have only perhaps 100,000 years until it reaches the end of its life. Here's the story on what we can expect to see (and feel) on Earth when Betelgeuse explodes.
Our planning horizon is the next paycheck, not millenia, and we'll be long dead by then anyway. And by 'we', I mean the civilization. So, no reason to be concerned.
The article doesn't say shit about feeling anything.
It would be roughly as bright as the 1/4 moon.
There, now you know everything of any substance in the linked article.
From Earth it will appear about as bright as the 1/4 moon. So enough to cast shadows at night, and be visible in daylight (like Venus) if you know where to look.
I have supernova insurance
Table-ized A.I.
Nope, nothing happened.
where Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox come from?
A long winded article where the crucial information "a little brighter" is hidden between 2 pages of fluff.
I don't have anything to say... I tried to think of something but nothing at all came to mind. The whole experience was disappointing, from the moment I closed FF and updated to v36, re-logged into /. and clicked on the link to find out what the cockroaches would 'feel' in 100,600 years from now. Probably nothing as sound can't travel in space. No big bang here... move along pls.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
...will probably activate all the garage door openers of the galaxy. This could be a funny thing to observe.
I was under impression that gamma bursts are a lot more interesting things when supernova expodes. What are the chances of it hitting Earth (they are focused, not omnidirectional ?) and how bad it would be for supernova so close to us?
In Q2 we are all going to die, so we should shift as many receivables into Q1 as possible to make our metrics.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Poul Anderson pointed out in a 1967 story that a supernova could have devastating electromagnetic pulse effects.
Since then, we've found that supernova explosions are asymmetrical. There is plasma moving at very high speeds near a new neutron star's magnetic field and not in a neat way where the effects cancel out.
How far away would you have to be in order not to have all your electronics fried?
I assume Betelgeuse is on a slightly different orbital trajectory around the galactic center. So, if Betelgeuse is going to explode in about 100,000 years, won't its distance to Sol have changed by then?
You are confusing the medium with the message. That's how you end up with crappy greeting cards.
What would happen? We all watch the media struggle to pronounce Betelgeuse. "Scientists are reporting that Behtehlgoose has supernova'd. we go live now to the director of the astrology to see how this will effect our love lives."
The medium is blocking the message, and it's getting tiresome. Though then again, maybe it's actually protecting us since it all looks suspiciously like clickbait fluff filled with copy/pasted half-read papers from elsewhere. To the point that reading the source papers is about as much work and more understandable. No wonder this guy usually "forgets" to also link to the sources he's used to stuff his hipsteriffic blog with.
Medium.com, shitty articles posted by people who should kind of know better.
User StartsWithABang is just a shill for medium.com, look at his history. he's not a real community user.
The answer: It gets it gets brighter.
No need for a question headline. That is bullshit.
> They've been saying this ever since [...] just updating the date to keep the scam running.
I can't imagine what your agenda is, but it must be downright evil.
It gets as bright as a quarter full moon on a pinpoint in the sky.
Where the feel of "what we would see (and feel)" comes into it, I have no idea.
Long article, for simple answer, that isn't even that interesting.
Personally, the most interesting bit was the bit about a previous supernova in the 1000's that looks like a cloud of dust now.
A lot of fluff with only one useful information : it would be as bright as a quarter moon.
No mention of any other effects (or lack of thereof) like radiations, possibility of observing gravitational waves, what could be a dangerous distance etc. etc.
If it blows before I'm dead, sure I can see it as maybe being a problem. However, by all estimates, it'll blow 5000 generations after I'm dead.
I will caveat this with the following:
Astrophysicists claim the Earth is 4.5 billion years old because the ratio of uranium isotopes to lead isotopes says so. However, this ratio only applies to when the uranium was formed from the previous supernova from which our solar system condensed.
This means the age of the Earth is much less than what they are calculating from the age of the uranium/lead isotopic ratio, perhaps even a billion years less, depending on how long it took the Earth to form from the primordial solar disc.
Don't worry, be happy. Climate change is real, but it's not caused by humans. The Earth was hot and without glaciers until asteroids knocked it out of a circular orbit 65MYA and killed the dinosaurs and most of the larger creatures.
Al Gore can suck it, and pay back the money too.
Because I dont know what that word means, dont wanna look it up, dont wanna read the summary, not gonna google it. Im just gonna move on with life, Dicedot. captcha - thankful
Ok so its apparent magnitude is -16 when it explodes, that's assuming it stays still which its not. The article is a little shallow on how the relative movement of Betelgeuse and the sun will modify this. It could be its so far off by the time it does explode it could be vastly less magnitude.
In the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. Then you'll know that something terrible has happened.
Orion needs rotator cuff surgery and scorpius has a wave of schadenfreude? Until Antares goes nova, then tears for it's own broken heart.
I look at the sky every night, knowing the light is hundreds of years old. Half of the stars might have gone supernova already. Maybe we can't blame StartswithaBang for just blogging for slashdot effect.
Gently reply
Asy Ray to write it up in his blog. Ray will be the only one of us still alive in 100,000 years.
really
Please have exploded 600 years ago!
The link to the article text indicates we will be enlightened as to what we will see and feel should Betelgeuse explode. Nowhere in the the article was "Feel" mentioned. I guess we should expect to feel similar to seeing our shadow at night from a quarter moon, or seeing Venus during the daytime.
For those folks who may see it 599.99 years before us, a little brighter may not fully capture the magnitude of it. Insensitive clods.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
We might see not much at all because Betelgeuse happens to be located almost exactly in the ecliptic plane (10 degrees or so below it), so at certain times of the year you can't see it because it's just 10 degrees away from the sun. It would really suck if the supernova occurred during those months. I think even Hubble can't observe that close to the sun, so you'd need a telescope in deep space, which we don't really have atm.
But it's so much easier when /. links to an article with no substance
The article isn't entirely without substance. For instance, it helpfully points out, twice, that the sun is the brightest object in the sky.
In the night sky. In the night sky. In the night sky. In the night sky. Is that some sort of drinking game?
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
Supernova will be ~1/4 the brightness of the Luna.
There, you can now skip to your loo and read your Kindle.
He makes Bennett look good. If there's a Bennett article right now, I'm gonna go read it. What am I saying, of course there is a Bennett article. Maybe we could have a slashdot poll where we range Medium dude against Bennett against...government press releases. Ok, I'll submit that too. Man, my morning has sure filled up.
I look at the sky every night, knowing the light is hundreds of years old. Half of the stars might have gone supernova already.
The life cycle of even the largest stars is still in the 10-100 million year range. The chance that one of them has exploded in the last few hundred years is tiny. Galaxy-wide we expect one supernova roughly every century so, unless you get really lucky, practically every star you can see with the naked eye has an extremely good chance of still being there...even Betelgeuse which they estimate has a 100k year lifespan remaining and is only 600 light years away. Of course if you had RTFA you would have known most of this...hope you appreciate the irony!
... I made the assumption that it would address how such an explosion happening so close to our own solar system would likely affect this planet.
But.... nothing. Lots there about what to see, but not a speck of text anywhere in the article that addresses what would actually happen for us.
I already have a pretty rough idea of my own on what will happen on Earth anyways... and I suppose I went looking to the article in the hope of seeing either confirmation or denial, but I found neither. If I'm right, however, then talking about what there will be to see when it happens is really kind of pointless.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I mean, what is he, a twelve-year-old?
How do we know it hasn't happened already? It could have exploded five hundred years ago, and we wouldn't know.
Proverbs 21:19
What they didn't mention, is that it is the brightest object in the _day_ sky. I lost my time searching for it yesterday night.
who bought...*cough* I mean "named" a star after someone at the "international star registry." What a sh*tty gift.
With an article title like this, there's supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom! Fortunately, if the article's correct, it seems like we just get a really bright star for a while, but no fatal gamma-ray bursts or anything like that.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
But it's so much easier when /. links to an article with no substance
The article isn't entirely without substance. For instance, it helpfully points out, twice, that the sun is the brightest object in the sky.
To be fair, that's probably specifically tailored for the slashdot audience:
"You know, that hot yellowy-white thing that warms your skin when you're walking outside?"
"Huh?"
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Yeah, I think that was the joke.
1 ) This could've already happened.
2 ) How long would this be visible for?
Worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, as bright as a quarter moon for a while, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry.
There would be considerably more worrying were it not for Slashdot filters.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
You know, just once I'd like to click on an article from a /. summary and see only the following:
"For a lively discussion on this topic, go to www.slashdot.org"
> that hot yellowy-white thing that warms your skin when you're walking outside?
Please don't talk about my girlfriend that way.
Maybe it already has exploded.
I plan to be around forever. So far, so good.
IK Pegasi is a binary with a white dwarf component near the Chandrasekhar limit. ~1.4 M(Sol). A Type 1A supernova is far more dangerous than a type II core collapse event. All that degenerate matter undergoes fusion all at once having already been compressed for a "faster burn" than rebound from "maximum scrunch".
Here comes the GRB [cue appropriate 1960's Hanna-Barbera sound effect]! Yep, everyone gets hurt, including those in gated communities, atheists, those who think that their plaques on the wall entitle them to run the lives of "lesser people", and people having middle names beginning with the letter "R".
I started reading the article thinking it would be cover the question from this angle: The star blew up 599 years, 364 days ago, meaning tomorrow we'd see the result in the sky (it gets bright - to be expected) and what about other effects? Gamma ray burst? nuked power grid? nuked satellites ? nuked everything ?
"The Nine Billion Names of God" is a 1953 science fiction short story by Arthur C. Clarke.
Now that the Tibetan Monks have laser printers, it is only a matter of time.
Come to think of it, it would also take a great deal of coordination for all the star lights to wink out on earth at nearly the same time.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
I was near the Rio Grande River when the ATM machine refused my PIN number.
This happened once before, within sight of Mount Fujiyama.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.