Betelgeuse, Ready To Go Nova?

[smartboyathome]

It probably has already gone Nova, since we get the different waves of light much later. If only we could bend space time and go faster than the speed of light. ;)

[billgoldberg]

It probably has already gone Nova, since we get the different waves of light much later. If only we could bend space time and go faster than the speed of light. ;)

It's only a matter of time.

[MikeTheC]

What does a star generating a bow shock have to do with a star going nova, exactly? I read the article, and it doesn't say one single thing about Betelgeuse exploding.

[MaxIBoy]

It probably has already gone Nova, since we get the different waves of light much later. If only we could bend space time and go faster than the speed of light. ;)

Doubt it. Betelgeuse is far too close for us to be that out of the loop. We're only 600 light years from it, and even 10,000 years before a supernova, it's obvious that something is wrong.

[forrestcupp]

I hope Ford Prefect is alright.

[gnuvistawouldbecool]

Maybe this is what Douglas Adams meant by "Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster".

[Tristam Green]

Just don't say his name twice, lest you never be rid of him!

[Giant Speck]

Just don't say his name twice, lest you never be rid of him!

I thought it was three times...

[cmat]

I thought I'd never see it in my lifetime. If it goes out it will be one of the most documented supernovas. But the article really doesn't talk about a nova but rather its interaction with the ISM.

[MikeTheC]

I thought I'd never see it in my lifetime. If it goes out it will be one of the most documented supernovas. But the article really doesn't talk about a nova but rather its interaction with the ISM.

+1 for the first sensible observation and actual reading of the article (apart from myself)

Everything generates a bow shock; the question is whether or not it's observable or significant. As an example, Sol generates a bow shock, and heck, we even have maps of Earth-, Jupiter- and Saturn-generated bow shocks.

[jespdj]

I don't think Betelgeuse is expected to go supernova anytime soon. The bow shock does not mean it is going to go supernova - it just means that the star is flying through an enormous gas cloud in space. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse) it's about 600 lightyears from Earth, but according to Stellarium (http://www.stellarium.org/) (an excellent free and open source astronomy program, and it's in the Ubuntu repository), it's 427.47 lightyears away.

sudo apt-get install stellarium

By the way, Betelgeuse is the upper-left star in the Orion constellation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(constellation)). which is currently high in the sky at night (and very easy to recognise).

Another star that can go supernova anytime between now and a million years is Eta Carinae (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eta_Carinae), a big monster of a star (somewhere between 100 and 150 times as massive as the sun!) that has had some strange eruptions in the past (for example in 1843 - for details, see the Wikipedia article). If it goes supernova, it will be very spectacular - it will be the brightest thing in the sky, so bright that it will even be visible during daytime! Fortunately it most likely won't be really dangerous for life on Earth. I'd love to witness such a unique event.

[wmcbrine]

Time to sing the Betelgeuse Death Anthem!

Seriously though, there's not a damn thing about going nova in that article. Bow shocks are normal and always present everywhere.

[Grant A.]

It would be quite pretty, but luckily it doesn't point towards us enough to give us a lethal gamma ray burst.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse#Betelgeuse.27s_fate

I didn't know that Betelgeuse was only that young, it's my favorite star in Orion (Mainly because it's the only one whose name I can remember)

I hope Polaris doesn't explode anytime soon. :(

[Sealbhach]

When was the last big one? I think it must be SN 1006 in the year 1006.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1006

It was 1/4 the brightness of the moon.


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[Grant A.]

Would gamma ray bursts from any star other than the sun really be harmful to the Earth? I mean, we are protected by quite a few things, such as the Sun and Earth's magnetic fields, and we are in the middle of the Oort Cloud, which gives tons of things for gamma rays to run into before ever reaching us.

[Sealbhach]

Would gamma ray bursts from any star other than the sun really be harmful to the Earth? I mean, we are protected by quite a few things, such as the Sun and Earth's magnetic fields, and we are in the middle of the Oort Cloud, which gives tons of things for gamma rays to run into before ever reaching us.

Yes, anything in this galaxy could potentially toast us. Doesn't seem likely though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray_burst#Mass_extinction_events

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20060321001259data_trunc_sys.shtml


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[ajcham]

… … … Stellarium (http://www.stellarium.org/) (an excellent free and open source astronomy program, and it's in the Ubuntu repository) … … …

Thanks for that - the program is, as you say, truly excellent, and I'm very pleased to have been introduced to it. It's fair to say that it didn't blow my mind in the way Celestia (http://www.shatters.net/celestia/)* did when I first saw it, but to me Stellarium actually appears to be of more practical benefit.

*Also in the repos.

[pp.]

The Titanic also had a bow wave which is morphologically related to the bow shock, and look how it fared.

[Grant A.]

The Titanic also had a bow wave which is morphologically related to the bow shock, and look how it fared.

The Sun has a bow shock...

[wmcbrine]

Would gamma ray bursts from any star other than the sun really be harmful to the Earth?Very much so. Even something a few thousand light years away could be dangerous.

To give you some perspective, in 2008 we detected a gamma ray burst 7.5 billion light years away. That's halfway across the observable Universe, and halfway back to the dawn of time. And although that made for a safe distance, it was visible from Earth with the naked eye. That's mind blowing. You wouldn't want to be in the same galaxy as that thing, let me tell you.

[jespdj]

In a supernova, most of the gamma rays come out of the two poles of the exploding star, in two narrow beams. Unless one of those beams is directly pointed at us, we shouldn't have to fear anything.

Fortunately, Betelgeuse nor Eta Carinae are pointing towards us with their gamma ray guns.

What could happen if we do get such a beam on Earth is that the ozone layer will be completely destroyed in a few minutes, which leaves us exposed to the harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun, which would fry us all.

Some scientists think that some of the mass extinction events, for example the Ordovician-Silurian extinction events (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordovician-Silurian_extinction_events) (between 450 and 440 million years ago) might have been caused by something like this.

[Grant A.]

Some scientists think that some of the mass extinction events, for example the Ordovician-Silurian extinction events (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordovician-Silurian_extinction_events) (between 450 and 440 million years ago) might have been caused by something like this.

That couldn't explain why most of the organisms living in the oceans died though, since the water acts like a giant blanket from UV as well. It would only explain why life on land died out.

[MikeTheC]

The Titanic also had a bow wave which is morphologically related to the bow shock, and look how it fared.
LOL... That'd have to be one massive spaceberg, tho... ;)

[pp.]

LOL... That'd have to be one massive spaceberg, tho... ;)

That's what they said, tho

[arashiko28]

That couldn't explain why most of the organisms living in the oceans died though, since the water acts like a giant blanket from UV as well. It would only explain why life on land died out.

The ocean is only a part of the whole puzzle. It still needs interacting with the conditions such as weather to keep being a suitable place for life. If the ozone layer where whiped out, the ice on the poles will melt, the creatures of the surface will be long gone before the lands get immersed under water, but then the water will heat to it's boiling point and no creature will survive. Even though there are some marvelous creatures that live in the interchange spaces of magma and the water, they still need to make it's metabolically exchange and here is where it comes something I have seen in my own house; I have a fish tank and have had some accidents with power blackouts, the "ornamental" air bubble pump goes off, for the first few hours the fishes are fine. After a 3 to 4 hours they start to get stressed and jump to move the water (that's what the weather does for the ocean) and after 7 to 8 hours they start to die for lack of oxygen.

It happened once and I lost 4 adult goldfishes. It happened again in 2008 but this time I was home, I took the hose out of the pump and tried to replace it, that time, after a 13 hours blackout, I lost 1 koi.

So that's my theory of why the organisms in the ocean died...:)