Bill's Topics

Betelgeuse (pronounced Beetle-juice) is a red-giant start located in the constellation Orion.  The star is approximately 640 light years from earth (nn miles, 640 light years is 3754,000,000,000,000 miles away from our sun, and us) and is an absolutely huge star!

A red-giant star is a star near the end of its life.  Our sun will become a red giant in about five billion years as it struggles to burn the last ounces of its nuclear fuel, which, is what makes the sun (or any star) shine in the first place.

Some in the 'doomsday' business say that Betelgeuse could go super-nova and destroy the earth when it explodes.  First of all, if a star is going to go super-nova, there is nothing, and I mean NOTHING, we could do about it.  But, if Betelgeuse does go super-nova, it won't affect the earth other than giving us a pretty good night time, and perhaps even day time show.

For those of you who do not know what a super nova is, a super nova is an exploding star which is caused by the weight of the star being greater than the nuclear power the star is generating.  Scientific research is still working on trying to figure out just why a star explodes in this way, but it is evident by observation that these types of explosions occur regularly in our universe.

When a star is heavier than the power that holds it up, it's nuclear energy generation, the star will collapse since there just isn't anything holding up its weight.  It's much like a watchman's tower made of toothpicks that you might be standing on.  At some point these tooth-picks just won't be strong enough to hold your weight and you will go crashing down to your doom.  In the case of a super nova, imagine a trampoline at the bottom of this poorly constructed tooth-pick tower.  Once the tower breaks, and you go falling to your death, instead of hitting the ground, you will fall onto the trampoline and bounce back up.  This is what happens when a large enough star collapses and turns into a super nova.  The forces that the weight of the star encounters during it's collapse down cause it to 'bounce back' resulting in a tremendous explosion.

Will Betelgeuse kill us all if it 'implodes' into a super-nova?  No, it will not.  Why?  The distance to Betelgeuse is so great that we will only get a small fraction of the energy that it will produce when it does explode.  Current scientific estimates are that a star needs to be fifty to one hundred light years distant from us to cause any real problems on earth.  Since Betelgeuse is six to thirteen times farther away than that, the earth will be just fine.

So, again, you can get a good night's sleep tonight.