What Happens When Betelgeuse Explodes? 203
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.
I'm not worried (Score:2)
I have supernova insurance
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I once had Chevy Nova insurance.
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My brother's friend could have used that. They drove that thing everywhere it wasn't made to go.
Go ahead, make my millennium (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope, nothing happened.
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Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, BEETLEJUICE
Nope, nothing happened.
How about Hastur Hastur Hastur?
Nope. Still nothi...
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Mushroom Mushroom
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New lyrics for the Badger song (Score:2)
Yeah, I think that was the joke [userfriendly.org].
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Isn't that (Score:5, Funny)
where Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox come from?
Re:Isn't that (Score:5, Funny)
It was a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse. So it could have been a neighboring system. Because when talking on astronomical scales, the vicinity of a star can cover a tremendous amount of space. After all, space is big, extremely big. You wouldn't believe just how big it is...
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It was a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse. So it could have been a neighboring system. Because when talking on astronomical scales, the vicinity of a star can cover a tremendous amount of space. After all, space is big, extremely big. You wouldn't believe just how big it is...
Is that when the universe is viewed in the perspective of say petunias or when it's viewed by mice?
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Mice are all fuckers.
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Nope, from the Total Perspective Vortex.
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After all, space is big, extremely big. You wouldn't believe just how big it is...
That's why it's called space - because there is such a lot of it.
(The rest of the movie where that quote came from was quite forgettable. I don't even recall it's name.)
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Google says it's based from a Carl Sagan quote. Various movies/shows probably reference it.
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Well it would be came from. Get your tenses right.
a little brighter (Score:5, Insightful)
A long winded article where the crucial information "a little brighter" is hidden between 2 pages of fluff.
Re:a little brighter (Score:5, Informative)
A bit more than "a little brighter".
It would go from 0.5 (now) to -10 apparent magnitude. That's about 15000 times brighter.
It would be much brighter than Venus/Jupiter/Sirius, and be visible during daytime.
It would be about as bright as a quarter moon.
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It would be about as bright as a quarter moon.
Yes, so nothing special. 90% of the people wouldn't even notice, unless it was pointed out to them.
Re:a little brighter (Score:4, Insightful)
It will have roughly the same magnitude as the quarter moon, meaning the total flux. Unlike the moon it will appear as an extremely bright pin point of light
So saying as bright as the quarter moon greatly understates the apparent brightness.
Re:a little brighter (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, a poorly written article. Plenty of pictures, but not a single one showing a daytime sky with some clouds, a quarter moon, and an accurate representation of what the nova would look like in comparison.
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They call it "medium" because it's neither rare nor well done.
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And yet it takes so long to say what you summarise in four lines.
Yes, the all the math is good to see, it's not just making this all up. But this article starts out so promising and ends abruptly just when it gets around to the interesting bit.
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It would be about as bright as a quarter moon.
I wonder what that means. Is the light density the same as of a quarter moon, or is the total amount of light the same? If it is the first, is this really that different for a quarter moon and a full moon?
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I'm not sure about the 2 first questions.
http://www.sr.bham.ac.uk/~tjp/... [bham.ac.uk] seems to suggest that apparent magnitude is based on flux (=total amount of light), and not on intensity (=light density).
It means that the light density of Betelgeuse supernova would be much higher than the light density of the quarter moon. The total amount would be approximately the same. If I'm not mistaken, since the sun (32.7 arcminutes) is much bigger than Betelgeuse (0.056 arcseconds), Betelgeuse supernova would also have a m
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But it is hard to imagine a star with the whole flux of the quarter moon, that must be an extremely bright tiny spot, maybe like a laser.
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Thank you for the "TL;RD" comment. The article is really full of fluff, which is interesting for the layman. The facts you pointed out would have sufficed for me. Lesson learned again: DRTFA.
Out of my head the full moon has apparent magnitude of -13, Venus is about -4.3 at its brightest. So the full moon would makes a better comparison, it would easily be visible during daytime. Nobody would have to be told it's there to notice it.
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If that's what you concluded from the article then you may want to re-read it with more care.
A Little Brighter? (Score:3)
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.
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You complain about earth-centricness, and then base a time measurement on how long it takes the earth to travel around the sun.
Think about what you have done Kent.
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Gamma burst (Score:2)
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?
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Good questions that aren't answered in that disappointing article.
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Even if the gamma ray burst were aimed straight at us, the exploding star would have to be within 50 light years to hurt our ozone layer (source: google).
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Seems to depend on type of nova:
http://news.nationalgeographic... [nationalgeographic.com]
Here, they claim 6500 light years - but it might be for hypernova rather than supernova.
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I doubt that the ozone layer has any influence on gamma ray bursts.
I guess a huge deal of life on the side of the earth aiming to that burst would die. And the other side of the planet would 'colonize' the dead part later again.
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No, the atmosphere would shield you from the gamma rays. However, a side effect of that would be the generation of massive amounts of ozone-destroying chemicals in the upper atmosphere. The subsequent lack of ozone and massive UV exposure would be the real risk, especially because almost all of our food grows in sunlight.
Re: Gamma burst (Score:2)
The atmosphere would boil and we'd all die. Basically.
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This is not that obvious.
If hypernova expode 5 LY away from us and points gamma ray burst at us, we boil away.
If 'normal' nova expodes 10000LY away from us, then we we hardly notice that.
Between nova, supernova and hypernova and 5, 600 and 10000LY there is a lot of difference. I was hoping for some more exact data about Betelgeuse in particular...
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I'd suggest reading Phil Plait's Death From The Skies [amazon.com]. He goes into the details about the Earth being destroyed by supernovae, gamma ray bursts, etc.
Would there be a detectable EM pulse? (Score:2)
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?
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600 light years from us (Score:2)
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?
Re:600 light years from us (Score:5, Informative)
Yes.
But not by much. It's nearly 200 parsecs away now, and it's moving at about 30 parsecs per million years. So it'll be less than 2% farther away when it booms. Much less, since its relative motion is such that most of those three parsecs will be lateral motion instead of motion away from us.
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Sooooo, How many Kessel Run's is that?
Re:600 light years from us (Score:5, Informative)
Answer (Score:2)
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.
Ray Kurzweil's Blog (Score:2)
Asy Ray to write it up in his blog. Ray will be the only one of us still alive in 100,000 years.
Please (Score:2)
Please have exploded 600 years ago!
Not much. maybe (Score:2)
Relevant Info.... (Score:3)
Supernova will be ~1/4 the brightness of the Luna.
There, you can now skip to your loo and read your Kindle.
Since the link to the article said "feel"... (Score:2)
... 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,
How do you know? (Score:2)
How do we know it hasn't happened already? It could have exploded five hundred years ago, and we wouldn't know.
Who is the sucker... (Score:2)
who bought...*cough* I mean "named" a star after someone at the "international star registry." What a sh*tty gift.
Questions (Score:2)
1 ) This could've already happened.
2 ) How long would this be visible for?
Article summary (Score:2)
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 considera
who knows (Score:2)
Maybe it already has exploded.
Re:Nothing important. (Score:4, Funny)
Now you left me wondering about what's could possibly be the civilization's next paycheck.
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Er, no.
The Club of Rome said total collapse before 2000. Back in 1970. They've been saying this ever since I've been alive - just updating the date to keep the scam running.
In the 1960s it was overpopulation that would kill us. It has been several other things since. But the two fixed points that they always make are that:
1 - Human Civilisation is just about to collapse
2 - The Club of Rome needs more money...
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Overpopulation is still a risk.
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Overpopulation is self-adjusting. It's not pretty, famine, war and diseases comes in to play, but it is still self-adjusting.
We are not going to see the end of the world because of it.
As the technological level of a civilisation increases, the birth rate decreases. So population does tend to be seld adjusting.
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Not even technology in general, population growth drops off precipitously in the presence of three factors:
1) Cheap, effective birth control - because not many people are ever going to give up sex.
2) Family planning education - because the benefits of planning the size and timing of your family is a lot more obvious in retrospect, especially in cultures where (1) is a new phenomena.
3) Affordable, quality childhood medical care - children are the retirement plan, if you can't rely on your kids surviving to a
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You left out educated women who can take advantage of numbers 1 and 2.
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Overpopulation is self-adjusting. It's not pretty, famine, war and diseases comes in to play, but it is still self-adjusting.
We are not going to see the end of the world because of it.
That's not entirely true. Check out the history of Easter Island and also the many simulations and experiments
that have been done. If everyone only gets 50% of what they need then everybody dies. Yes, war, disease,
and cannibalism can help but it still might not prevent a complete collapse. More importantly, like in easter
island, the most likely outcome of overpopulation is that we screw up our ecosystem and make the world
uninhabitable by us. It's possible that a few people will survive but any simblanc
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Pandemic???
Africa has 1.1 billion people. With an average life expectancy of 71 years. Which means about 15 million deaths per year.
Ebola has killed about 8000 people in the last 15 months.
Which means that ebola has accounted for ~0.04% of African deaths since the end of 2013.
Sorry, 0.04% of your deathrate does not a pandemic make....
Note, by the by, that there were more traffic deaths in each of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eg
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Not Ebola, the drooling morons that refuse to vaccinate their kids. THEY are the problem.
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The virus that's most likely to cause an epidemic is the flu, mostly due to how often it mutates. Vaccinations don't help much for a new strain of the Spanish Flu.
The real danger is common bacteria. With the overuse of antibiotics and the resulting antibiotic resistance of bacteria we're likely to be back where we were a hundred years ago with simple infections being the leading cause of death.
Re:Nothing important. (Score:4)
If only it were that simple. Vaccines aren't a magic bullet, they only give your immune system a chance to practice fighting a disease without your life being on the line. The process is fairly random though - your body throws random shit at the infection until something sticks well enough to wipe it out, and then keeps a record of what worked. As a result many people find really effective solutions and become effectively immune, but others just get a boost in their resistance - hopefully enough to keep them alive until their immune systems can find a better solution, but there are no guarantees.
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Actually they are not. The one who are vaccined survive. The ones who aren't risk to die. The problem is for the minority of children below roughly 12 month, they are to young to be vaccined and if they catch the desease they might die from it. Everyone who actually is vaccined does not need to bother how many others are vaccined. Except if it is the postman, the milk man and another important servant who suddenly dies from an easily preventable illness.
I am not sure I am going to be too upset about an event that keeps the snotting, drooling, noisy, stinky, bulky, and slow crotch droppings from being dragged out into inappropriate public places all the time.
"Let's keep Junior and Juniess at home for the first several years cuz they might catch something and die" is OK in my book.
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It seems as though the quality of ACs has been deteriorating the last few years, while the number of them rises. It's too bad.
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Er, no.
Mankind did stuff to 'prevent' the dooms day scenarios of the CoR. Hence the probably date of no return got postponed.
Obviously some nations did not do enough, e.g. looking at the drought situations in the USA and the general farming situations where the draughts are not 'that server' yet.
The idea that the CoR needs money and posts doomsday scenarios to get funding is retarded.
Perhaps you should read one of their books and try to understand them. You certainly have a friend who can help you with diff
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Continuously compound interest equation accumulates error in predicted growth rate logarithmically.
That's easy for you to say.
Re:Nothing important. (Score:4, Interesting)
The Club of Rome said total collapse 2040-ish.
Even if they have, so what? There's two things to note. They've been wrong before.
And second, total collapse isn't going to impact the developed world like it will the worst off parts of the world. Places like Africa or Asia would be hit far harder than places like North America or Europe. This is quite relevant because those are also the places causing most of the overpopulation problem in the first place.
This is one of the ugly facts about overpopulation that groups like the Club of Rome tend to gloss over. Population growth is only happening in certain locations. And since the consequences of population growth also will happen in those same locations, it gives a strong disincentive to care if the shit hits the fan. We aren't all in this together.
My point behind this is to point out what should be obvious. The developing world has the overpopulation problem and has the extreme vulnerability to global trade collapse. Meanwhile the developed world has fixed its shit more or less. Sure there's a few Californias and Greeces out there, but for the most part, the developed world is going to weather any "total collapse".
The Club of Rome is all set to blame the people who aren't causing the problems. Why? Because that's where the money is.
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And second, total collapse isn't going to impact the developed world like it will the worst off parts of the world. Places like Africa or Asia would be hit far harder than places like North America or Europe.
Thats an odd thing to say, considering there are millions of people in Africa that still live as if the developed world doesn't exist - subsistence farming using manual labour, hoes and oxen (just like we did a few hundred years ago), little to no access to modern medical practices (just like us a few hundred years ago), little access to education (just like us a few hundred years ago), little access to electricity (just like us a few hundred years ago) etc etc.
These people go about their daily lives tendin
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In the event of a global collapse, these people will simply carry on as before.
If civilization collapses, there will be a reason that it collapsed. Such as a pandemic disease, crop destroying volcanic eruption, asteroid impact, nuclear winter, or runaway greenhouse effect. In any of these events, Africans will not "carry on as before". They will be the hardest hit, because they have nothing to fall back on.
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The CoR books/reports are not about overpopulation per se but about scarseness of resources, polution etc.
So the main problematic zones are not random nations with a high population growth but a few specific nations that consume most resources of the planet, notable the USA.
Regarding a total collapse, I doubt any developed nation can weather off a total stop of oil, coal or other imports. Most international long distance trade is done by ships. Granted they burn stuff that does not really count as oil, but
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Sure there's a few Californias....
Do you mean states that provide the highest percentage of a country's food and send more money to the federal government than they receive? Or states that run a deficit...which is about half of them, red and blue alike?
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Do you mean states that provide the highest percentage of a country's food and send more money to the federal government than they receive? Or states that run a deficit...which is about half of them, red and blue alike?
Yes, I mean that state.
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Sure there's a few Californias and Greeces out there
These two are nothing alike, unless you think the whole of the developed world can be judged solely by the condition of the central governments. Besides, California's debt-to-GDP ratio is only about 20% - Greece's is 175%.
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MBA response (Score:5, Funny)
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In Q2 we are all going to die, so we should shift as many receivables into Q1 as possible to make our metrics.
Wait you've been waiting for a reason to do that? Did you fail MBA school?
Re:Nothing important. (Score:5, Insightful)
If Betelgeuse was going to supernova tomorrow, there'd still be nothing to be concerned about -- just something to be excited about.
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How would we know?
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How would we know?
In theory, a star's brightness should fluctuate as it becomes unstable. This may happen over weeks, days, or even hours. We really don't know, because there have not been any close before/after observations. But there would likely be some sign that it is about to blow.
Ultraviolet glow from impending supernova [scientificamerican.com].
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Whoosh!
It would take 600 years for us to find out.
But where's the kaboom? (Score:2)
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.
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Indeed, it doesn't really say much interesting. Half the article is about the definition of absolute and relative magnitude (yawn...), then they say it will be about a quarter as bright as the moon. What about radiation? Lots of highly charged particles will be coming our way. Could give a pretty significant EMP pulse.
Re:The Media is not Hoopy. (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, will be pronouncing it "Throat Warbler Mangrove"
Re:The associated EMP pulse... (Score:5, Funny)
The associated EMP pulse
* will make all the WiFi Barbies hiccup
* Pebble Smartwatch with AC synchronous motor all start running backwards
* hasten return plague infested gerbils
* make Slashdot say "read rest of comment..." when is no rest of comment to read or is whitespace (oops already happened)
* make AT&T undercharge customers
* will change spelling of some words even in old dictionaries
* will change hidden embedded satanic message into incomprehensible phenomic gobblegook
* will turn chemtrail into contrail
* will contaminate Portland Reservoir with water they will drain and refill at taxpayer expense
* will do nothing out in the desert no surprise there
* will cause brain cloud
* will change Lady Gaga name to Ydal Agag and Huckleberry Finn to Fuckeberry Hinn no one will notice
* will solve discrete logarithm and knapsack problem by making people realize that despite their insolubility everyone is all ok the kids are alright so there really is no problem
* will make apocalypse crazed people reset back to factory defaults and they will walk around with default wallpaper for faces
* will reveal that we have two suns but only to drunk people
* will short out Hillary Russia reset button because it used cheap copper click disc design and was not properly shielded and we do not need woman president we need more female engineers
* will not be televised
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ATM machines have built in redundancy. At least when you call them ATM machines. (Automated Teller Machine machines?)
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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.
Re:fuck medium.com (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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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?"
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Please don't talk about my girlfriend that way.
Very Unlikely (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
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Ah, sorry, I saw this part, which I didn't take to be very definitive.
"We do expect a few supernova in our galaxy every few hundred years, so there are a number of stars that are nearing the ends of their lifetimes within our galaxy. It’s hard to predict exactly when a star will transition from “close to the end of its life” to “exploding in the next week”, so while we expect that none of these will be exploding in the next little while, it’s difficult to predict which