Starship Asterisk*

I spoke to my Father this week and he was very excited. He went on to tell me about the impending super nova we are all going to see this year 2011. his Words was, You will see it in the day time, it will be as bright as the sun. Then I went and asked him which star it was ? And he told me it was in the constellation of Orion. And then I came out with the name Betelgeuse , And he said yes that's the one, just "left" above the belt.

My question, (Which I did ask), How the hell can he know this ?

His answer will follow. After a few posts.

Can somebody enlighten me ?

tc

The Code wrote:My question, (Which I did ask), How the hell can he know this ?

He can't! Nobody can! Anybody who tells you different is confused or listening to idiots.

bystander wrote:

The Code wrote:My question, (Which I did ask), How the hell can he know this ?

He can't! Nobody can! Anybody who tells you different is confused or listening to idiots.

I'm of the same mind as you bystander.

but my snag is , when my dad says something is going to happen, it usually does. my dad is a very clever man. I will never be a patch on him.

tc

And then i found this :

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... t-day.html

tc

Sam wrote:http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badas ... -and-2012/

Betelgeuse may explode tomorrow night, or it may not go kerblooie until the year 100,000 A.D. We don’t know. But given that huge range, the odds of it blowing up next year are pretty slim.
...
At 600+ light years, a supernova would be pretty bright, but hardly bright enough to be a second Sun, as both article say. Sorry, no Tatooine-like sunsets for us. It wouldn’t even be as bright as the full Moon, really, but certainly far brighter than Venus. Enough to cast a shadow, which would actually be pretty cool.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badas ... t-to-blow/

The Code wrote:And then i found this :

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... t-day.html

Yeah, that was the badly written article that started the whole bad science rumor mill.

It could happen as soon as this year. But as they also point out (and which people tend to ignore) it is expected to supernova sometime in the next million years. What that means is that the actual likelihood of a supernova this year is on the order of one in a million.

It would be an amazing thing to see, but I'm not holding my breath...

Well that's a new distance on me :

“Beetlejuice”; it’s no longer round. This is a huge star, and when it goes, it will be at least as bright as that 1054 supernova…except that this one is 520 light years away, not 6,300 [...]

430 ly 680 ly and now 520 ly away. which is it ?

tc

Chris Peterson wrote:It would be an amazing thing to see, but I'm not holding my breath...

Tell me about it !!! I wish there was some way around the light barrier. I here they are doing great work with quantum computers now, that would be a method, if we had the means to get one far enough out. But like you said Chris " I'm not holding my breath" here's Hoping in my life time.

tc

The Code wrote:... 430 ly 680 ly and now 520 ly away. which is it ?

From the Wikipedia page about Betelgeuse (which contains a lot of very interesting information about the well-studied α Orionis)...

However, with distance estimates in the last century that have ranged anywhere from 180 to 1,300 light years from Earth, calculating its diameter, luminosity and mass have proven difficult. Betelgeuse is currently thought to lie around 640 light years away, yielding a mean absolute magnitude of about −6.05.

That page also says this...

Because Betelgeuse is between 497 and 789 [643 ± 146] lightyears away from Earth, Betelgeuse may have already become a supernova centuries ago; if so, the light is still in transit.

You might also want to read this page, which says, in part...

Supernova Betelgeuse is in fact beyond scope of our interest due to negligible probability of explosion during next 100 years. Conditional probability is a different thing. IF it is about to explode in 2012, we should know it few weeks before.

Rob

rstevenson wrote:You might also want to read this page, which says, in part...

Supernova Betelgeuse is in fact beyond scope of our interest due to negligible probability of explosion during next 100 years. Conditional probability is a different thing. IF it is about to explode in 2012, we should know it few weeks before.

Rob

Thanks Rob , interesting info.

tc