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Is the constellation Orion's famous red supergiant due to go supernova sometime in the next few months? Mmmm, not likely, says Phil Plait, the scientist and skeptic who runs the Bad Astronomy website. And even if Betelgeuse does blow up, it won't pose a threat to Earth, he says.
Plait should know. He's the author of "Death From the Skies," a book that goes into supernovae and other bad things that the cosmos can dish out. The buzz started with a posting on the Life After the Oil Crash Forum, claiming that Betelgeuse's blast might "burn the crops" and "freak everybody out." Plait weighed in with the reasons why that won't be the case.
It is true that Betelgeuse appears to be shedding mass and looks as if it might explode sometime in the next 10,000 years or so. But it's hard to pinpoint exactly when the end will come - and at a distance of 600 light-years, the blast won't have a big effect on Earth, Plait says.
The doomsday talk is reminiscent of earlier scares over the Large Hadron Collider and 2012's approach. And the bottom line is the same: DON'T PANIC!
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What a lame aricle. No meat, no substance. Just written to titillate the masses. Shame....
. . . . or calm the already titillated idiot masses
Yep...just an attempt to draw in the Jerry Springer/Nancy Grace crowd for page clicks....
You're close to the mark, Underwhelmed. This article is just so that when you hear about the coming supernova ... or the coming collider catastrophe ... or the coming 2012 apocalypse ... you're armed with a little bit of perspective. I hope folks will check out Phil Plait's more thorough posting as well.
600 light year away means in real time the star doesnot exists now. the super nova would have created whole new sky there. wish we could see the night sky in real time through some wormhole .
You don't really believe it doesn't still exist. 600 light years means we see what it looked 600 years ago.
Yes, but we will see and feel the event at the same time, so the point is sort of moot. Also, you're assuming the star imploded already, which the article suggests is not the case.
It is true that Betelgeuse appears to be shedding mass and looks as if it might explode sometime in the next 10,000 years or so. But it's hard to pinpoint exactly when the end will come - and at a distance of 600 light-years, the blast won't have a big effect on Earth, Plait says.
Wow. So essentially, this was a no news item? Slow day around the office?
:-)
The light we see from this star left it light years ago. It may not even be in existence now.
dacincykid - "Light year" is a distance, not a period of time. The light we see now from Betelgeuse took 600 years to get here.
It is distance and time, simple truth by your statement "The light we see now from Betelgeuse took 600 years to get here". Light year is an easier way of saying six trilloin miles.
Unless we are traveling toward the star near the speed of light, we can ignore the conversation about events that may have already happened 600 light years away. The article used the measurement to point out that we are far enough to avoid harmful radiation.
"if it goes supernova" you flipping idiot reporters how many light years away is it ? if it was going super nova it did so before Earth was populated by idiot reporters! Go back to school or in your case "skool".
Some people really have a hard time dealing with the space-time continuum. Just because something is judged to be 600 light-years away, technically speaking, it's not quite true to say an event we see today happened "600 years ago." You're assuming that it's possible to make simultaneous time measurements here and there. When someone says a distant event has "already happened," it's a simplification of a question in special relativity that is actually rather complex.
Dacincykid ~ 10,000 years is 16x's larger than 600years. And I am no expert in relativity, but even by your reasoning, you are still wrong.
Sorry Alan.
But if something is 600 light years away, we are seeing what it was doing 600 years ago. And your silly attempt to sound intelligent and educated comes across as nothing but foolish.
The "time space continuum"
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Glue your rubber Spock ears on, and go back to watching Star Trek !
Uh Gary... No it doesn't. Simultaneity is a hell of a problem in Einsteinian Relativity. And I'm surprised you don't know the phrase "space-time continuum"... but read something called "Cosmic Log".
News Flash!
This just in ! There is a fish swimming in the Pacific Ocean. But it doesn't mean anything either.
Oh My God! We're all going to Die!!!.....Wait a minute.......we're all going to die anyway......never mind.
What???? Who is paying these freakos to "study" what "might" happen 10,000 years from now? What does this "crap" cost us taxpayers???? Who the hell cares about 10,000 years from now? GET REAL!!!!
Since Plait doesn't work for the government, this isn't costing the taxpayers anything...don't let that disturb your rant, though..
And speaking of which NASA's budget is only a small fraction of the Federal Budget, we are talking like 3 or 4 %. If you want to care about what cost's the tax payers it is entitlements, specifically Social Security and Medicare. We could balance the budget and be well on our way to paying down the national debt if we cut out those huge programs, but good luck telling that to your grandparents or your disabled relatives.
Just like the Tea Party, "TP: We need to cut the deficit and the national Debt" - "RSP: So lets get rid of Social Security and Medicare - "TP: Tell Obama to keep his 'Socialist Hands' off my medicare and SS" - "RSP: So you are telling a socialist to keep their hands off of your 'SOCIALIST' program? Epic Fail"
Leave your FOX News brainwashing lunacy and Obama bashing on the political blogosphere. Posting that crap for this article is just embarassing for you and makes other conservatives like myself cringe.
Who cares about 10,000 years from now? Someone that will be born 9, 922 years from now. Assuming of course, that the average life expectancy for a human being hovers around 78. See, I can be nerdy too!!! AND!!!!! I don't even OWN a pair of rubber Spock ears!
This is going to be the long term result of global warming .
global warming is an atmospherical/terrestrial phenomenon which our sun affects. our presence and planet destroying tendancies DO NOT affect our star. the long term worst case scenario of global warming is a barren, scorched planet (see: mars) with no atmosphere. and the sun would not even flinch.
Someone needs to create a sarcasm font...
NO! NO! NO! - I GOT IT - I GOT IT - I GOT IT - (As Leo Getts would say, ya know, Leo Getts from the Lethal Wepon 1, 2, 3,4, 5 etc. movies? anyways ... ) IT'S BUSHES FAULT!! (as our great ignorant president would keeps on saying) TEE HEE! TEE HEE! TEE HEE !
Anaximander (I mean Grasshopper), why soooooooooo serious, we're all just having a fun reality moment here. God knows we need one from time to time.
anaximander-1857058: While I agree that we need to curb polution and the release of carbon into the atmosphere, your outcome is completely wrong. The cause of Mars limited atmosphere and barren surface is due to the fact that Mars no longer has a magnetic field. Without the magnetic field the highly charged solar particles strip away Mars' atmosphere. The reason for a lack of a magnetic field is that there is little or no activity in Mars' core. What creates the magnetic field around the earth is superheated material -Magma- spinning around a solid iron core. Basically Mars died when the mantel of Mars cooled.
Global Warming would more likely affect global humidity, making the planet more arid and more susceptible to droughts, fires, more intense storms, Ocean Rise, and so on. Much of it is still theoretical, but there certainly are some things like sea rise that is measurable, and the loss of polar caps, and mountain glacers or massive forest fires that start earlier in the year and last later into the year. These are some immediate concerns as these make areas unlivable, and sets the stage for mass migrations of people, and the extinction of animal species.
The other thing is there is no single cause. Yes burning fossil fuels adds CO2, but what people forget is that we have already hacked down and burned 80% of the Worlds rain forests. People think that trees will just take care of the Carbon, problem is, we don't have very many trees left. It is estimated that the rainforest could be completely gone by 2030's, hundreds of species of animals will be eradicated as a result.
I find it comical that religious nuts believe their God is going to destroy the earth, but I think we are doing hell of job already.
Sign up as Alan Boyle's Facebook friend and write "Betelgeuse" 3 times on his wall and then Michael Keaton will come and make him lip-sync and dance to "Day-O"'
I hate to pile on, but I have to agree, this is a really lame article. Some actual scientific content would have been welcome.
Person must have been on a deadline
The scientific content is included through the Bad Astronomy blog link (the first link in the article). Why would you want to just regurgitate it here when you can link to it. This IS the Web, you know. Click the link and be enlightened.
Amen, Barber ... Maybe I should add a "pointer" tag to items like this, which are really meant to send folks to interesting stuff elsewhere. I will make it so.
Don't let this no content article fool you. There is a lot of things going on that don't even hit the mainstream news. Why out of all that pull this little tidbit out just to deny it? The article didn't quite mention that this star is rapidly changing in a way that points directly to super nova. Or that 600 light years away is really not all that far. Also that ancient prophecies specifically say the @!$%# will come from Orion which happens to be the constellation this star is in. And that doesn't even have to be from a prophetic source. More advanced civilizations could have easily seen the signs leading to a supernova countdown or perhaps 595 years ago watched the damn thing supernova and know when the light of this event finally hits this solar system. Plus don't forget the 2 sun visible at the same time prophecies.
Betelgeuse and "Don't Panic".
Someone's been reading his Douglas Adams collection again, hasn't he?
Interesting to speculate upon ,but the reality is that, with the star about 600 light years from Earth, even if it exploded tomorrow (Earth time), we would not see the change in light nor detect any of the other segments of the electromagnetic spectrum until 600 years from now... I would venture that this scenario is a moot point for us seven billion microscopic inhabitants of this insignificant mote of dust, rock and water in the middle of an obscure solar system in a backwater portion of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Keep Looking Up ....
Prometheus
Things that happen are going to happen and if its today or sixhunderd years from now ether way we"ll never see it
Not true. If the star blew up 599 years ago, we'll see it in 2011.
Glad for this bit of news...now we can get to work to prevent it from happening! =0) (Hope we're better with supernovas than with oil leaks!)
Yes i will take your word on it, no worries, my ancestor believed your ancestors the world is flat theory because your ancestor was a top notch scientist of his day, that whole the world is flat theory didn't do my ancestor any harm. I'm sure your total bs theory about what will happen to earth if a star blows up 600 light years away won't do me any harm either, I have an idea if a scientist speaks in any public forum and is wrong three times about what he has stated in "theory" the rest of us get to stone him.
Okay cognitive, but let's go ahead and expand that to the church. Well, I guess they're all dead. What about other people? Engineers? Dead. English teachers? Dead. Parents? Dead. Kids? Dead. Morons like yourselves? I don't think we have enough stones anymore. I guess we'll just have to chuck you into the sun.
At only 600 light years away, the gamma ray burst alone would be enough to sterilize the surface of the Earth... of course, we'll never have any advanced warning, so why worry?
Did you follow the links and read Phil's writeup? It clearly states that we are in no danger from gamma rays emitted by Betelgeuse.
Sterilize? Good thing I don't want any more kids.
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice!
...lol sorry, couldn't help myself.
It may be 600 light years away, but what if it blew 599 years ago, we should be seeing the effects this year, YIKES!
Worry on man, why won't you worry, busy yourselves with orion whilst pleaides will soon cluster over all!
:-) Hello ;-) Think about this now ! The light that We are seeing Now, is from The Past, it took all thase Light Years to get Here, if that is true, the crazy thing does not exist any more , How about that ;-)
"Light year" is a distance, not a period of time. The light from Betelgeuse took 600 years to get here.
1. "if that is true, the crazy thing does not exist anymore" - We don't know that. If it can take Betelgeuse 10,000 years to go supernova, and it takes the light 600 years to get here, it may be another 9,400 years before it blows.
2. The purpose of this story is to diffuse any craziness that may come from other cranks like Life After the Oil Crash. All those doomsayers who churn up the public concern about nonsense like Planet X and the moon landings being contrived by NASA get a free voice on the Web, but that doesn't mean they are right. Some people panicked during the radio broadcast of "The War of the Worlds" in 1938. It's better to get out the word now that this is all hooey than to wait until after people react.
Unless they are defusing the issue ahead of time in order to not panic people. Now I'm going to panic!
One of the best myth-busting things I ever heard - there are very few known cases of people panicking because of the War of the World broadcast. Maybe a dozen. However, the next morning... Orson Welles issued an apology for any panic caused... Which made his broadcast national news.
Cackle...
Doomsday has already occurred at the msnbc science department, since this article demonstrates no intelligent life remains. Beam me up, Scotty!
We can only hope the Democrats are in office......... 1) Never let a good crisis go to waste.......2) It' will be Bush's fault......
Al Gore, it's reported will be selling Beetlejuice Credits starting next week.
Why don't you go duck hunting with Dick Cheney.
How the hell do you make a jump from a star exploding to politics? Jesus, are really that damn shallow? Grow up.
I just HATE what's it's going to do to such a nice little constellation.