The pages on this site are arbitrary since people can set how many posts they want to see per page. Thus, a worthless metric. This is why the posts have numbers and are conveniently linked so you can copy and paste.
Betelgeuse could beon the verge of going nova
- Thread starter Marc
- Start date
If you were talking directly to someone in a post other than the most recent one, you should use the quote feature.
I agree with your wife. Don't be surprised when people stop answering your questions.
I agree with you both. It's good to look things up on your own, but it's also good to ask others questions.
That's called *gasp* a discussion! (Skipper, you can call me "Little Buddy" again)
For example, http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=136224 in this thread in MISC, dude has some strange things to say about time. The thread got kind of silly, and I came to it late, but I did the best I could do with an on-the-spot answer to some of his... questions/ideas.
I must admit, reading THIS thread (the Betelgeuse thread) has made me sigh a couple times. But a few people know more now. Like the kid who got a totally fucked up lesson from his teacher about the propagation of light. He knows a bit more now, and if he's curious he now knows that he can go out there and learn even more.
My long reply in the MISC "time" thread was a similar effort. I imagine many of the usual Science posters around here will disagree with some of the things I said, or have better explanations/examples, or something else entirely. If so, go chime in. That one could get fun.
Anyway, Iguanodon knows I love him, but in this era of do-it-yourself/find-it-yourself information-at-your-fingertips, we shouldn't lose the time honored tradition of learning:
Ask smart people.
Interestingly, it sounds like a passage from the book Berserker Man by Fred Saberhagen. An observer sees an object moving toward him by making a rapid series of FTL jumps. But whenever the object is in real space, that image gets to him sooner than the image of the previous time it was in real space, because the object beat the previous image there by moving FTL. Essentially, the observer sees the most recent image, then the one before that, then the one before that, etc. He sees the object moving backward instead of forward. Strange concept.
Demonstrated very effectively in TNG at one point, IIRC, with the "Picard Maneuver.'
And no, not the one with the shirt.
Orion Nebula II: The Legend Of Betelgeuse's Uranium
And of course, the always required Orion 2: Electric Boogaloo.
That was masterful!
Knowing my luck it would take place with my state under thick cloud cover, with a few liners out to see the only folks witnessing it out to sea. By the time the Continental US rotates into view, it dims to only Venus+ brightness and gets a 10 second blurb in the news...
I would LOVE to witness a supernova with my naked eyes in my lifetime... I mean, how special would that be? To be able to say you witnessed the death of an actual star, "as it happened" (to our perspective here). That would be so cool.
I wonder if I shouldn't have called America the "enlarged beating heart of Western civilization" in another thread now. I was being facetious. 
Anyway, I just wanted to pop in very late to the thread to say 1)supernova, cool, and 2)point out that the sun (Sol) will never go supernova, or explode, or form a black hole, or anything like that. It's not how stars its size work. It'll become a red giant and ultimately a white dwarf + planetary nebula.
Anyway, I just wanted to pop in very late to the thread to say 1)supernova, cool, and 2)point out that the sun (Sol) will never go supernova, or explode, or form a black hole, or anything like that. It's not how stars its size work. It'll become a red giant and ultimately a white dwarf + planetary nebula.
As long as if was far enough away, I would as well.
Bah. If I have to die, I want to go out in a blaze of glory--a cosmic blaze would be fine, too.
It appeared to be a misconception shared by a few.
Well, it would be visible in broad daylight for weeks if not months. Once it happened, you'd have to move into a cave if you wanted to miss it.
I'm not sure if we would see a sudden FLASH!, I rather think it would be a fast build up to peak brightness followed by a slow decline.
SN 185: -8, 8200ly
SN 1006: -7.5, 7200ly
Notice, 8200ly... 7200ly ... and those were around -8
Full moon shines at about -12.7, the sun is -26.
How far away is Betelgeuse?
600 ly.
It gonna be bright! Guesses I've seen say -15 to -18.
NO SLEEP FOR YOU!
Yeah, I figured that much. I guess I'm mostly curious about just how fast that "fast build up" would be to its peak brightness. A few minutes? A few days?
Just watched "The Lives of Stars" ep of Cosmos again and Sagan's descriptions was that it would be a sudden flash. The final stellar collapse is blazing fast. So if he's right, you do get your instant bang! Better keep an eye on BG. Don't wanna miss it.
