Is Betelgeuse about to blow? | Hacker News Reader

Is Betelgeuse about to blow?

blogs.discovermagazine.com

30 pointsrpledge15 comments

A better headline would be, "Is Betelguese about to blow, 500 years ago?"

In the reference frame of the light we see, it left there a tiny fraction of a second ago. (In fact I believe that most of the delay is due to time spent traversing the atmosphere.)

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

Or better yet "Betelguese might blow in the near future" http://unixronin.livejournal.com/763082.html

I thought about submitting that post earlier today, but, well, sourcing doesn't get much sketchier than that.

My best hope was that some science journalist would actually contact observers at Mauna Kea, as a gut check, but Dr. Plait's dénouement is probably good enough for me.

A man from Mauna Kea says this is false.

http://i.imgur.com/tAJpy.png

Sad. I like thunderstorms, but stars blowing up could be even cooler.

Funny, but there could be people living there ... billions or trillions !

Well the article doesn't really dismiss the idea as false, rather that it's unlikely.

Because its not false. Its just unlikely. I think he got it spot on.

You expected him to say "It's not going to explode this year." then look like an idiot when it does? When someone doesn't know something, I expect them to say "I don't know," rather than try to pick up as many ad impressions as possible by saying something outrageous.

Disclaimer: I'm a huge fan of Dr. Plait, the author of this blog.

Science is so boring.

If it does blow soon, and it turns out to be as bright as the sun, which is possible according to the article, might this have some impact on climate?

It's a good idea to read the entire article, not just the forum posting it's mocking. Towards the bottom:

At that distance, it’ll get bright, about as bright as the full Moon. That’s pretty bright! It’ll hurt your eyes to look at it, but that’s about it. The original post says it may get as bright as the Sun, but that’s totally wrong. It won’t even get 1/100,000th that bright. Still bright, but it’s not going to cook us. Even if it were going to explode soon. Which it almost certainly isn’t.

This visualization shows how bright it may become: http://mesic.hvezdarna.cz/2009/06/az-exploduje-betelgeuse.ht...

On the one hand it looks pretty cool, on the other such bright star would make the other stars invisible.

jrockway, how do you distinguish careless reading of the article from reading the comments? I did read the article! Are you being careless with inferences, or intentionally attributing bad behavior on me with no evidence?

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