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Is Betelgeuse preparing to EXPLODE? New analysis reveals super-giant star darkens and has entered the helium-burning phase – the supernova’s first stage – but none of us will be alive to see it
- Betelgeuse is a star of the fading constellation Orion
- New study finds it goes through the initial phase of burning helium in the core
- This is when helium fuses with carbon and ultimately leads to the star exploding.
- Experts involved in study say Betelgeuse will explode in 100,000 years
Scientists have been keeping their eyes on the star Betelgeuse since last year, after reports showed the red supergiant was waning – but a new study finds it still has more than 100,000 years to go before the event.
An international team of scientists suggests the star is at the start of the helium-burning phase in the nucleus, when a star burns helium to carbon, which is one of the last stages before the supernova .
Researchers involved in the analysis also found that smaller variations in Betelgeuse’s brightness were fueled by stellar pulses, as well as the star’s location being closer to Earth than previously thought.
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An international team of scientists suggests the star is at the start of the helium-burning phase in the nucleus, when a star burns helium to carbon, which is one of the last stages before the supernova .
The team is led by Dr Meridith Joyce of the Australian National University (ANU), who used evolutionary, hydrodynamic and seismic modeling to analyze the variation in Betelgeuse brightness.
This allowed researchers to discover that the star is currently burning helium in its nucleus.
This happens when a star’s core reaches around 100 million degrees, causing three helium nuclei to collide and merge to form a carbon nucleus.
The team is led by Dr Meridith Joyce of the Australian National University (ANU), who used evolutionary, hydrodynamic and seismic modeling to analyze the variation in brightness of Betelgeuse.
Sometime after this event, the nucleus collapses, causing an explosion that results in a nebula – regions of dust and gas in interstellar space.
As a result of this in-depth investigation, the team also found that the stellar pulses driven by the so-called kappa mechanism cause the star to lighten or fade continuously with two periods of 185 (+/- 13.5). days and about 400 days.
But the sharp drop in brightness at the start of 2020 is unprecedented and is likely due to a cloud of dust in front of Betelgeuse, as shown in the image.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope found that the gradation was likely due to a traumatic explosion that ejected hot material into space – covering the view of Earth on Betelgeuse.
Data showed that a dust cloud formed when super hot plasma ejected from the star, which cooled and formed a dust cloud that blocked light from Betelgeuse’s surface. .
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope discovered that the 2020 gradation was likely due to a traumatic explosion that ejected hot material into space – covering the view of Earth on Betelgeuse
Betelgeuse’s size has been a mystery to the scientific community, but the latest study determined that she had a radio 750 times the sun.
This information also allowed researchers to determine that the star is only 530 light years from Earth, instead of 700 light years as previously believed.
Their results imply that Betelgeuse is not at all close to exploding, and that it is too far from Earth for the eventual explosion to have a significant impact here, although it is still a very big problem when a supernova is triggered.
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