General / Off-Topic Is Betelgeuse going to blow up?

There's suddenly lots of reports about it.
First a gravity wave passed from ? either the star itself or... not?
This was passed off as nothing important.


Then the star faded, decreasing to 1/12th brightness.


If she goes supernova it would be the most spectacular astronomical event, even bigger than Shoemaker Levy 9, or the return of Halley's, or the Great Conjunction.
As a child, reading Classic Comics versions of actual books, I came across an account of the comet on the back page of an H. G. Wells story, years before the return, and memorised the date. Waited for a decade till 86 to see it.

Most of us lived through some some pretty grand events. This would be icing on a terrific cake.
 
It would indeed be both spectacular and sad. The wheel of life turns for everybody and every thing. And a supernova will seed neighbouring solar systems (and of course itself, should it ever collapse back into a new star) with a potential life.
So yay for that, of course.
 
I hope it does. When what is now the crab nebula went bingo in 11something (citation needed) it was visible in the daytime to the unaided eye.

Edit - 1054 they reckon. Recorded by the Chinese & Arabic observers, can't find the reference to it being daytime visible BUT Betelgeuse is about 1,000 ly closer to us so probably would be.
 
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Betelgeuse, incredible !

Since childhood I hear this name.

Extraordinary event ! If that happens, especially during my lifetime.
 
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Look. If ya'll really wanna see Betelgeuse blow up, then ya'll just gotta say it three times: Betelgeuse! Betelgeuse! Betelgeuse!

C'mon! Everyone together now! ;)
 
Sure, it's likely to go up soon, but "soon" in stellar lifecycle terms is still approaching a hundred thousand years.
Pseudoscience blogs which misunderstand the actual data tend to push the idea that it might be imminent every two years or so on a rolling cycle for the last couple of decades.
 
Sure, it's likely to go up soon, but "soon" in stellar lifecycle terms is still approaching a hundred thousand years.
Pseudoscience blogs which misunderstand the actual data tend to push the idea that it might be imminent every two years or so on a rolling cycle for the last couple of decades.
To be fair, it could be anywhere between now and hundreds of thousands of years. While we have plenty of accurate mathematical models describing how stars work. How they die, and what their post-sequence life is it doesn't mean we can predict what and when it will happen. Plenty of stars don't quite meet those models, or simply look like freak cases making astronomers rethink their models once in a while. Apparently Betelguese has been acting a little bit "out of the ordinary". Which, well... Nobody knows what that actually means. We can't look into the star's core.
 
Brighter than (or bright as) our moon, not bigger. It's still far enough that even the most gargantuan of cosmic explosions would be nothing more than a pinprick of light. A hugely, excessive, ridiculously bright pinprick of light.
No, it would actually be about the size of the moon in the night sky.
 
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