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Dying star Betelgeuse won't explode in 2012 (Discovery News)
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[link to news.discovery.com]
DON'T PANIC! Betelgeuse Won't Explode in 2012
Betelgeuse is a dying star. It's reached the end of the line and currently in the terminal throes of shedding vast bubbles of gas into space. Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star and it's so massive that it will detonate as a supernova.
With all this drama happening 640 light-years away in the constellation of Orion, there's little wonder that this tumultuous star is easy headline bait.
Betelgeuse is a celebrity amongst stars and no stranger to astronomers' zoom lenses. And like any celebrity, news can break at any time, for any reason, and today I received a surge of messages via Twitter and email pointing me to a big Betelgeuse scoop that can be summarized as: The star is gonna blow! Soon! Possibly around 2012!
Naturally, I checked out the source of this breaking story to find... well, not much.
On reading a few sentences from the Australian News.com.au article, one would think the journalist had found the story of the decade. NEWS FLASH: An exploding Betelgeuse is one of the most over-used sensationalist stellar events to appear in the tabloid press in recent years. There's no scoop here, move along.
Not Like Tatooine, Actually.
The article kicks off by equating Betelgeuse's impending explosion with the "twin suns" on Tatooine, the world where Star Wars' Luke Skywaker lived. In Star Wars: A New Hope, Luke watches the setting binary stars of Tatoo. When Betelgeuse goes supernova, will it really shine as bright as our sun, perhaps giving us that famous double-sun scene from Star Wars?
That's a nice thought, but 640 light-years is still quite a distance, and although when it does blow astronomers think we'll be able to see the explosion for some weeks during the day -- still a very impressive and historic event -- that's a far cry from thinking a sun-supernova combo could resemble any binary star system.
But the biggest issue to come out of this article is the ominous and completely erroneous mention of... wait for it... 2012.
"The infamous red super-giant star in Orion’s nebula -- Betelgeuse -- is predicted to go gangbusters and the impending super-nova may reach Earth before 2012, and when it does, all of our wildest Star Wars dreams will come true," the article says
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