Is Betelgeuse ready to EXPLODE? According to a new analysis, the supergiant star darkens and has entered the helium combustion phase, the first stage of the supernova, but none of us will be alive to see it.
- Betelgeuse is a darkening star in the constellation Orion
- A new study finds that it is in the initial phase of helium burning
- That’s when helium fuses with carbon and eventually leads to the star’s explosion
- Experts involved in the study say Betelgeuse will explode in 100,000 years
Scientists have been keeping their eyes on the star Betelgeuse since last year, after reports show the red supergiant darkened, but a new study found that more than 100,000 years are still to go before the event. .
An international team of scientists suggests that the star is in the initial phase of helium burning, when a star burns helium in carbon, which is one of the final steps before the supernova.
The researchers involved in the analysis also found that smaller brightness variations of Betelgeuse have been driven by stellar pulsations, along with the location of the closest star to Earth than previously thought.
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An international team of scientists suggests that the star is in the initial phase of helium burning, when a star burns helium in carbon, which is one of the final steps before the supernova
The team is led by Dr Meridith Joyce of the National University of Australia (ANU), who used evolutionary, hydrodynamic and seismic models to analyze Betelgeuse’s brightness variation.
This allowed researchers to discover that the star burned helium in its core.
This happens when the core of a star reaches about 100 million degrees, causing three helium nuclei to collide and fuse to form a carbon nucleus.
The team is led by Dra. Meridith Joyce of the National University of Australia (ANU), who used evolutionary, hydrodynamic and seismic models to analyze Betelgeuse brightness variation.
Some time after this event, the nucleus collapses and causes an explosion that causes a nebula: regions of dust and gas in interstellar space.
Due to this thorough research, the team also found that stellar pulsations driven by the so-called kappa mechanism cause the star to illuminate or fade continuously with two periods of 185 (+/- 13 , 5) days and about 400 days.
But the big drop in brightness in early 2020 is unprecedented and is likely due to a cloud of dust in front of Betelgeuse, as seen in the image.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope found that the darkening was probably due to a traumatic explosion that ejected hot material into space, covering Betelgeuse’s terrestrial vision.
The data had shown that a cloud of dust formed when the superhot plasma came out of the star, which cooled and formed a cloud of dust that blocked light from the surface of Betelgeuse.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope discovered that the 2020 blackout is likely due to a traumatic explosion that ejected hot material into space, covering Betelgeuse’s terrestrial vision.
The size of Betelgeuse has been a mystery to the scientific community, but the latest study determined that it has a radius 750 times that of the sun.
This information also allowed the researchers to determine that the star is only 530 light-years from Earth, rather than 700 light-years, as previously thought.
Their results imply that Betelgeuse is not at all about to explode and that it is too far from Earth for the eventual explosion to have a significant impact here, although it is still a big deal when a supernova goes out.