2023-06-22 14:21:11
The expiration date of Betelgeuse, a dying massive star 642 light-years from Earth, is a hot topic in astronomy because of the star’s extraordinary size and life cycle stage. Can the government change social networks? | Interview with Gizmodo Betelgeuse has a mass between 10 and 20 times that of our sun, and a radius of regarding 900 times. It burns quickly, and soon it will die (in the cosmic sense). When stars die, they expel most of their matter into the universe in a gorgeous explosion called a supernova. If the conditions are right, the supernova leaves a quiet stellar nebula behind. Our Sun will go through this process in regarding 5 billion years, but Betelgeuse is much closer to its end. And while stars in the distant universe go supernova all the time, Betelgeuse is in our galaxy, essentially on our doorstep in cosmological terms. Earlier this month, a team of researchers published a paper to the arXiv preprint server. In the paper, the team hypothesized that Betelgeuse was already in the “advanced stage of central carbon combustion,” and was therefore a strong candidate for an impending supernova in our galaxy. “According to this figure, the core will collapse within a few decades following the carbon is depleted,” the researchers wrote. On social networks, some believe this means a supernova will happen in the next century or even decades. But burning carbon is such a slow process, though, that Betelgeuse…that we have the right to write as many times as we want without supernatural repercussions—at this point. In an email to Gizmodo, Hideyuki Saio, an astronomer at Tohoku University and lead author of the preprint, told Gizmodo that the team expects the supernova to occur “in less than a few hundred years.” To some extent, the hype around Saio’s revised timeline falls victim to people who don’t read his team’s conclusions carefully on paper. But even so, scientists unaffiliated with the research say the team’s model doesn’t explain the star’s position. “It is impossible for us to see what is happening inside our own sun, let alone a star hundreds of light years away,” said Emily Hunt, an astronomer at the University of Heidelberg, who was not connected to the latest article. In a phone call with Gizmodo. “Just because a model explains feedback doesn’t mean it’s correct.” Hunt added: “It’s a shame to see so many people take this document and take it as gospel, when in fact it’s just an interpretation of the scenes.” Betelgeuse is very young – regarding 10 million years old – but it will die much faster than the Sun. During its evolution, Betelgeuse may have changed color in the night sky, which explains why ancient descriptions of the star characterize the red ball of gas as more yellow. In recent years, Betelgeuse has been experiencing unusual activity, prompting discussions regarding when the fateful supernova might occur. In 2019, the star had a surface mass ejection, ejecting regarding 400 billion times more mass from its surface than one of our sun’s coronal ejections (CMEs), according to NASA. The giant star has noticeably faded. The period is known as the Great Dimming. Astronomers now believe that the dimming is caused by stellar burping of dust from the star, partially obscuring Betelgeuse’s view. Miguel Montargues, an astronomer at the Sorbonne and co-author of Article 2021 in Nature describes Betelgeuse’s dust, said in an email to Gizmodo. “However, if Betelgeuse did indeed exchange material with a companion hidden within or near the star itself, or with a dead companion, we might encounter the evolution of a star that is not unique with many uncertain parameters, leaving open debate regarding its evolution. The team’s model requires a larger solar radius (regarding 1,300 solar radii) than is observed (regarding 800 to 900 solar radii), Montargus said, and if Betelgeuse had shrunk as much as the team claimed, astronomers would see material given by the star. “I should point out that with our current knowledge, assuming a non-interacting star scenario which we have no reason to rule out, Betelgeuse should burn up a helium core and should explode in at least tens of thousands of years,” Montargis added. Unfortunately, the combustion phase of Betelgeuse—that is, the element the star is currently using as fuel—is not clear from the observations. As stars progress through their life cycle, they burn off different fuels (such as hydrogen and helium), and carbon combustion occurs as the star dies. “One of the difficulties with this problem is that carbon-burning Betelgeuse can look exactly as it does now — which is why there is this controversy,” Meredith Joyce, an astronomer at the Observatory, Konkoly in Hungary, said in an email to Gizmodo. “If it were easy to tell whether a star was burning helium or carbon just by observing, we might stop arguing!” Together with two co-authors Joyce published a comment refuting the Saio team’s paper in the American Astronomical Society’s Research Notes. Joyce’s team hypothesized that the Saio team used an incorrect radius for Betelgeuse in their claims, and the way they modeled the star ultimately led to an inaccurate (i.e. too early) timeline for Betelgeuse’s finale. “Our team argues that the time spent for the Betelgeuse supernova is on the order of 100,000 years, a number that comes (mostly) from the helium-burning state,” Joyce added. “It wouldn’t be scientific to be more specific than that; There are a lot of unknowns in stellar modeling. All agree that more specific measurements of the distance of Betelgeuse will be useful in determining a star’s true luminosity and, therefore, its place in its life cycle. Everyone wants to see a star die, which is probably why people get so excited regarding the terms “a few decades” in Saio et al. paper. When research reveals that Betelgeuse is going supernova sooner than predicted in previous articles—and secular timescales are very close in stellar terms—it is sure to create more buzz than research claiming that Betelgeuse still has a long way to go. But if you want to see a supernova, you’d better look no further than our local giant. Montargis said the stars eta Carinae and VY Canis Majoris (which the Minnesota Institute of Astrophysics calls “Betelgeuse on steroids”) are the best bets for the next supernova in our galaxy. Or you can always wait for space telescopes like Webb or Hubble to imagine the next supernova, somewhere in the more distant universe. Other telescopes, such as the upcoming opening of the Rubin Observatory in Chile, will aim to image the night sky continuously, hoping to capture fleeting events like the start of a supernova as they occur. More: How do we know when the sun will die?
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