Betelgeuse may be the next super nova in our night sky—or day!

By SJ Otto

I don’t usually write about regular science here, but there is a thin line between science and political science. Several years ago I was reading about giant stars—the type that are so large, if they were placed in the center of our solar system, these stars would swallow up everything between where our sun is now and the planet Jupiter. Those are really big stars. If they were close, maybe 10 to 15 light years from earth, they might look like a second sun, much smaller, but way brighter than just those tiny points of light we see today.

Scientists have said the star Betelgeuse (sometimes pronounced beetle juice) is old and may supernova in the next million years. It may be coming sooner than what they all thought, way less than one million years. Betelgeuse is suddenly dimming. It may be a sign, astronomers say, that the star is about to explode. Another possibility is the red super giant may just be going through a phase. If it explodes we will see a very bright star for possibly several days, followed by the stars sudden disappearance. Betelgeuse is 700 light years away. What ever happens, little of it will affect the earth, other than changing the night sky. Over the last 2,000 years, astronomers on earth have viewed that star as a fixed part of the night sky.

I find science, especially of the stars and outer space, to be fascinating. If there are any inelegant beings in that area, they may depend on that star for heat, much as we depend on the sun today. We can’t do anything about beings that live 700 light years away. We can take in such events and try to speculate on how that event is or is not affecting the people/ or intelligent beings who may or may not be living in that neighbor hood. If that star explodes, it will destroy any planets or worlds around it for at lest a few light years.

In four billion years our sun is supposed to expand into a red supergiant. It won’t blow up, but it will burn up the Earth. That seems like a long time off, but let’s not forgets that humanity will have to learn how to survive in the short term. We will need to develop a sustenance economy to replace the out-dated “growth economy” we rely on today.

Let’s hope science teaches us what we need to do. We can learn a lot from a supernova.