Earth to have 2 suns by 2012
- Thread starter DCFan
- Start date
Quick, someone get Leonard Nimoy, a spaceship and some red matter!
U.S. Government Double Sun Radiation Protection Kit:
Duct tape.
Desk to hide under
Duct tape.
Desk to hide under
Sorry to piss in your Cheerios (
), but when Betelgeuse will go supernova (and it could be tomorrow just as in a million year: that's the blink of an eye for a star) it is predicted to have the luminosity of the the crescent moon (apparent magnitude around −12). Still pretty wicked, tho.
The odds of it happening in 2012 are incredibly slim, the light from the nova could reach us any time between now and the next 100,000 or more years, and it would not be anywhere near as bright as a second sun. It would be brighter than Venus but not as bright as the full Moon, though it would cast a shadow.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/01/21/betelgeuse-and-2012/
[edit] Beaten by the lizard.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/01/21/betelgeuse-and-2012/
[edit] Beaten by the lizard.
So an apparent mag of -12 would make it theoretically visible in daylight hours, then? (say, if the sun was reasonably low in the sky, as is the case with Venus)
I propose we invade the place as soon as possible, seeing as the uranium produced from such a supernova means that, by the time we get there, any surviving Betelgeusians will most assuredly have developed Weapons of Mass Destruction capable of reaching our own territories within 4,500 years. 
I sense a great disturbance in the Board, as if millions of Tachy duals suddenly cried out in vindication, and were suddenly silenced.
Don't Panic. It's just the first step in constructing the hyperspace bypass.
Wasn't there a super nova in the 13 or 14 hundreds that was bright enough to see in the day time?
I also remember vaguely hearing that a super nova in some what close to our system could wipe out life on the planet?? may I heard it wrong.
I also remember vaguely hearing that a super nova in some what close to our system could wipe out life on the planet?? may I heard it wrong.
The Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe was noted for his careful observations of the night sky from his observatory on the island of Hven. In 1572 he noted the appearance of a new star, also in the constellation Cassiopeia. Later called SN 1572, this supernova was associated with a remnant during the 1960s.
A common belief in Europe during this period was the Aristotelian idea that the world beyond the Moon and planets was immutable. So observers argued that the phenomenon was something in the Earth's atmosphere. However Tycho noted that the object remained stationary from night to night—never changing its parallax—so it must lie far away. He published his observations in the small book De nova et nullius aevi memoria prius visa stella (Latin for "concerning the new (...) star") in 1573. It is from the title of this book that the modern word nova for cataclysmic variable stars is derived.
The most recent supernova to be seen in the Milky Way galaxy was SN 1604, which was observed October 9, 1604. Several people noted the sudden appearance of this star, but it was Johannes Kepler who became noted for his systematic study of the object. He published his observations in the work De Stella nova in pede Serpentarii.
Galileo, like Tycho before him, tried in vain to measure the parallax of this new star, and then argued against the Aristotelian view of an immutable heavens. The remnant of this supernova was identified in 1941 at the Mount Wilson Observatory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_supernova_observation
We're sort of looking down the barrel of Wolf-Rayet 104. When it goes nova (which will likely be tens or hundreds of thousands of years or more from now) the resulting gamma ray burst might endanger Earth. We're not sure if we're directly on its axis though, and it has to be a pretty perfect shot in order not to miss.I also remember vaguely hearing that a super nova in some what close to our system could wipe out life on the planet?? may I heard it wrong.
http://www.space.com/5081-real-death-star-strike-earth.html
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ah we screwed that up by not finding the moon monolith in 2001/
Locutus of Bored;4678224 We're sort of looking down the barrel of Wolf-Rayet 104. When it goes nova (which will likely be tens or hundreds of thousands of years or more from now) the resulting gamma ray burst [I said:
you would have to have a wicked sensor system to really do ftl travel.
considering all we see from earth in some cases is the distant past.
This is unlikely to happen in our lifetimes, let alone next year; shame, though, because it would be a fantastic sight to see. And the first thing I thought of was "Lucy" from 2061. 
So he can fail again?
Man...Orion's about to lose his right shoulder. At least Kirk will still have that girl in the belt.