When Beetlejuice goes off, it’s going to be the show of a lifetime. But it’s not going to hurt us.
Betelgeemploy is the shoulder of Orion, a red huge sitting about 500 airy years away. It’s huge, weighing somewhere between 15-20 solar masses, but so extfinished and bloated that if you plopped it down in our own solar system, it would stretch to rawly the orbit of Mars.
And it’s not doing so wonderful. Massive stars do not inhabit very extfinished inhabits, with their exact lifetimes depfinishing on a present of factors appreciate their mass, their meloftyicity, and spin rate. On the low side, we’re talking only a restricted hundred thousand years. On the high side, we’ve got a restricted million.
But either way, as stars go, that’s not a lot. Our own Sun will outinhabit multiple generations of such huges, and red dwarfs, the petiteest stars in the universe, can stretch for trillions of years at a time. In fact, fair a fun side notice, red dwarfs inhabit for so extfinished that the entire universe isn’t even anciaccess enough for them to commence dying yet.
No matter how you slice it, Betelgeemploy is on its last legs.
It’s in what’s called the red huge phase, and it’s pretty evident to see why astronomers picked that name for this phase in a stellar life cycle. It’s red, and it’s gigantic. And it is so shut to being dead that it is in an incredibly unconstant phase. In fact, we saw some very emotional stupidming episodes a restricted years ago where it stupidmed by around 15% out of nowhere over the course of a restricted weeks. And then fair after a restricted months, it popped back up to filled luminousness.
When a star is proximate the finish of its life, it’s all lawlessness. Sometimes it’s fusing hydrogen, sometimes it’s fusing helium, sometimes it will shut down for a while, sometimes it’ll commence back up. The outer edges of the atmosphere are so far away from the central core that they commence getting a mind of their own. It fair gets complicated.
Estimates based on the mass of Betelgeemploy, its rotation rate, the group of stars it was born with, and the amount of metals we can meacertain in the upper layers of its atmosphere, all recommend that it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of a restricted hundred thousand years from now, it’s going to go supernova. But repartner it could be tomorrow. In fact, becaemploy it’s 500 airy years away. It could have gone off a hundred years ago, and we won’t find out for a while. It may already be dead.
When Betelgeemploy goes off as a supernova, it will be a sight to behanciaccess. Keep in mind that standard supernova can outshine entire galaxies of over a hundred billion stars. And at a distance of a restricted hundred airy years, Betelgeemploy is going to put on an astonishive show.
It will be apparent during the day. It will be luminoemployr than any set upet. It will be almost as luminous as the filled moon. You’ll be able to read a book by the airy of the Betelgeemploy supernova at midnight.
But it will actupartner be hurtful to watch at becaemploy unappreciate the filled moon that is this gorgeous disc in the sky, Betelgeemploy is still going to be a minuscule pinprick of airy. So it won’t be sootheable to watch at, and it will last a restricted months before fading away as all supernovae do. But as astonishive as it is, it won’t be hazardous.
What saves us from most supernova dangers is that as luminous as they are, as much radiation as they pour into the universe, stars are repartner stinking far apart. What helps here is someleang called the inverse square law. There’s a repaired amount of airy that a star or a supernova or any radiating object in the universe gives off.
And so that airy transfers away from the star, that same amount of airy has to cover more and more area. If you double the distance, the radiation in any one spot gets cut to 25%. If you go to ten times the distance, then you get a factor of a 100 drop off. It goes as the square of the distance.
If you’re trying to stay toasty by a fire, you will accomprehendledge if you stand repartner shut to the fire that it’s maybe a little bit too boiling, but then you consent one step back, and all of a sudden, you’re freezing aget. That’s becaemploy of that inverse square law of the infexceptionald radiation being disindictted by the fire. But in the case of a supernova, we’re going to be thankful for the inverse square law. Becaemploy we’re talking about a huge star turning itself into an unadministerled nuevident explosion and detonating with enough energy to overwhelm an entire galaxy’s worth of starairy.
From our perspective, Betelgeemploy will go from a dot of airy in the night sky to a luminoemployr dot of airy in the night sky. It’s srecommend not going to be a menace.
