Do you think Betelgeuse is going bang soon?

[Katana1000S]

What do you think? We all know this star is ready to go bang ... super Novea style.

But will it happen in our lifetime? I doubt it.

A Star like Betelguese takes it good old time, and while we measure days, weeks and years, this star scoffs at us, it will go bang when its quite ready, maybe our own species will be long extinct when this great star expires.

But in the grand scheme of things, its ready to explode.

[ATAG_Dutch]

It may already have done so, but on the other hand;

http://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/betelgeuse-will-explode-someday

[von Pilsner]

Sometime in the next million years....

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/Star-sizes.jpg/800px-Star-sizes.jpg

[Katana1000S]

It may already have done so, but on the other hand;

http://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/betelgeuse-will-explode-someday

This is very true .... bbbbb Bye Betelgeuse

[Bewolf]

Actually I'd hate to see it go.
Orion, one of the oldest human known constellations, would be no more.

[bongodriver]

It doesn't matter, raaaid will have achieved enlightenment and save us all anyway.

[5./JG27.Farber]

It doesn't matter, raaaid will have achieved enlightenment and save us all anyway.

+1 but only if he wins the battle against the time travelling aliens first! ;)

[Katana1000S]

Actually I'd hate to see it go.
Orion, one of the oldest human known constellations, would be no more.

But parts of it and maybe all of it are no more at all either, we are just seeing it as it was millions of light years ago :)

I'm not picking on you, I know what you mean I love Astronomy and its hard to imagine the night sky without Orion.

I was reading somewhere else today that we only get a Supernova in our region of our galaxy about once every 100 years or so, Betelguese even if it had went bang a while back and its light reaches us tomorrow is still far away enough for its gamma rays to not kill us, we'd just enjoy the brightness .. some say as bright as a full moon on a cloudless clear night and some say bright enough to not need street lights at night ... somewhere in the middle maybe ... but imagine that, just imagine that!

Oh well, I've seen some good once in a lifetime Comets, my dad woke me up to see Man landing on the Moon when I was a kid, witnessed the Shuttle era from start to finish ... I'd hoped to have seen a Space Elevator in my lifetime (I'm still only 52) but that seems increasingly unlikely and I expect to live a normal life expectancy ... But I really feel all our experiments so far were just like testing the water, we really need to build economically viable ways to send hardware out of Earth's immediate gravity to enable a stepping stone to go further.

For sure, for our species to survive we need to eventually get out of this Solar System and populate another stars planetary system and ultimately go to other Galaxy's as well.

Can it be done? I doubt it ... I think our species will expire long before populating most of the solar system at best.

I wonder if any species ( and I don't think we are alone in the Universe or even Multiverse ) has managed it, so far there is no proof we have been visited by ET :)

Oh I wonder.

[M2morris]

I want to add something nearly OT but still maybe within the limits. I was reading about betelgeuse when I came across an article about Voyager -1 leaving the solar system. They believe it is nearing the heliosphere, I was wondering about this photo that was part of the article. It shows the heliosphere being blown-back.
What is blowing it back? The center of our galaxy? the universe? What.
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b206/planegeek/voyager-nasa-solar-system-heliosheath.jpg

[Oldschool61]

I wonder if any species ( and I don't think we are alone in the Universe or even Multiverse ) has managed it, so far there is no proof we have been visited by ET :)

Oh I wonder.

If we dont get off the oil tit soon we will not survive as a species.

Good video about where we are headed!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdILmgJGuvw

[Redroach]

I want to add something nearly OT but still maybe within the limits. I was reading about betelgeuse when I came across an article about Voyager -1 leaving the solar system. They believe it is nearing the heliosphere, I was wondering about this photo that was part of the article. It shows the heliosphere being blown-back.
What is blowing it back? The center of our galaxy? the universe? What.

differential movement between our solar system and the rest of the galaxy. You know, Inertial systems, everything is relative to something, etc.

But now, the big question: Who took that photo? I sense a vast conspiracy!

[M2morris]

differential movement between our solar system and the rest of the galaxy. You know, Inertial systems, everything is relative to something, etc.

But now, the big question: Who took that photo? I sense a vast conspiracy!

Okay, I'll buy that inertia explaination. Thank you.
And yes, It must be a big damm conspiracy going on for sure. They musta used a wide-angle special purpose clandestine spy lens on that one.

[arthursmedley]

Any of you guys use this;

http://www.stellarium.org/

Really nice bit of freeware.

[Katana1000S]

If we dont get off the oil tit soon we will not survive as a species.

Good video about where we are headed!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdILmgJGuvw


Good vid, I like Michio's thoughts, he's a very wise man who can put into words what I can just about imagine.

We really need a United Earth population before we can really progress ... and wean ourselves off fossil fuels too, solar has to be the answer, its so simple its been staring us in the face since we evolved, we just need to learn how to harness the Suns energy better.

In other news CERN will be announcing something important on the 4th of July, possibly to do with the Higgs Bosun, there are many hints towards something to do with this, but cynics will no doubt claim they are just trying to justify their budget :-x

Stay tuned!