Rumor of Betelgeuse's Death Greatly Exaggerated 356
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 ..."
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
News? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
Betelgeuse isn't millions of light-years away from Earth. It's in our Galaxy, about 600 light years away.
Re:Doomsday forum (Score:3, Informative)
They have to have some place to share tips on the best places to buy seed vaults, share bunker plans, and learn the proper use of the crowbar vis-a-vis ventilation access.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
in other important astronomy news... (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:News? (Score:4, Informative)
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
Re:Who cares? (Score:3, Informative)
Neutrinos were detected along with photons from the 1987 supernova. I expected that this would be the same, except closer and brighter.
Re:News? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Of course it is. (Score:1, Informative)
Spreading like wildfire? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What are the odds? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Who cares? (Score:1, Informative)
Har har. You're hilarious.
NOT!
Re:Who cares? (Score:2, Informative)