Could Betelgeuse Go Boom? 383
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!"
Yes (Score:5, Informative)
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:New doomsday scenario? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
You must be ... (Score:3, Informative)
... new here. ;-)
Re:New doomsday scenario? (Score:4, Informative)
The neutrinos [wikipedia.org] will do no such thing.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Informative)
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? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Poof (Score:4, Informative)
That assumption relies on a lot of theory. One things for sure, if that star goes bang our theories will improve at a rapid rate.
Well, put another way, the theories have to be wrong in exactly the right way for the results to be hazardous. If they're wrong in some other fashion (such as our misjudging what exactly causes a GRB), then hey, no problem. If the theories surrounding gamma ray bursts and supernovae are right, we're probably safe. They have to be mostly right, but get the directionality of the burst wrong, before we're in trouble. Or the star would have to shift on its axis and point precisely where we don't want it.
Re:Oh noes! (Score:2, Informative)
Potatoes come in many different shapes.
Nearby Supergiant stars (Score:5, Informative)
...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... ..and here's some analysis of whether it's a danger. ...or has done so already
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eta_Carinae [wikipedia.org]
http://stupendous.rit.edu/richmond/answers/snrisks.txt [rit.edu]
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/246576/files/th-6805-93.ps.gz [cdsweb.cern.ch]
Re:Wow, Great Summary (Score:2, Informative)
In 800 pixels wide it's 7 lines of text.
Not that it makes it any longer. And on a 30" it must be like half a line. Just saying...
New Sensationalist (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wow, Great Summary (Score:5, Informative)
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 [drexel.edu]
Re:Nova Post! (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse [wikipedia.org]
I don't think the submitter read TFA (Score:5, Informative)
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:i wished i could (Score:2, Informative)
Our Sun is not massive enough to go Supernova.
Re:Yes (Score:3, Informative)
Anybody remember seeing this or am I in the early stages of Alzheimer [?]
If you are, it must be a unique case where the memory is not lost but gained :-)
Inventing memories (confabulation) is a fairly common symptom of Alzheimer's disease.
Re:Correction - not a supernova (Score:3, Informative)
So is that "Disaster Area wioll onhaven be tuning up" or "Disaster Area weres beening tuning up"?
Join the fight against time-machines. Crush the time-traveling grammar nazis.
Re:New doomsday scenario? (Score:5, Informative)
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.)
ANTHROPIC principle (Score:4, Informative)
It's called the antrhopic principle [wikipedia.org].
The anthropomorphic [google.com] principle would be that the stars are smiling on us...
Gravity Waves (Score:2, Informative)
No, no, no, the first way to tell if a star has already gone supernova is by the change in graviton waves.
I know you are trying to be funny but if there are gravity waves (possibly transmitted by gravitons) they would still arrive at the speed of light much like the visible and other EM radiation with very little lead time, if any. These are predicted by General Relativity and as such cannot violate relativity's golden "no information faster than light" causality rule. Even if the current gravity wave detectors were sensitive enough to detect any gravity waves it would be an after the fact detection since it takes thme time to analyse the data and so they would undoubtedly use the visible artifact to search a region of data carefully.
Re:Only if they exist (Score:3, Informative)
Yes it was. [nobelprize.org]
From the linked page:
Re:Nova Post! (Score:4, Informative)
But it would also destroy Zaphod's home (Betelgeuse V). Now, Zaphod's just this guy, you know, but he's still the public President of the Galaxy, man!
I guess we can just not panic and relax in the fact that, where the Guide is inaccurate, it is at least definitively inaccurate, and in cases of major discrepancy it is always reality that has it wrong.