Betelgeuse, the bright star in Earth's night sky, has been of interest to astronomers for more than 200 years.
Betelgeuse is of great interest because it's a red supergiant. Located 640 to 720 light-years from Earth, it could go supernova at any time. It's also targeted because of the frequent changes in brightness that precede a supernova, even dimming by two-thirds in 2019. Changes of this magnitude have led the astronomy community to believe that it is already in the early stages of an eruption, or even that it has already occurred, but the information has not yet reached Earth.
Three years later, we haven't had that sudden burst of blue light in the night sky, and Betelgeuse is still alive and edging closer to the brink of a supernova explosion. But when astronomers looked at Betelgeuse again, they noticed something unusual about its seemingly unexploded body.
Because new images of Betelgeuse show that much of its photosphere has been lost at this point. Material from the original photosphere has now been thrown into space around Betelgeuse, and this phenomenon is responsible for two-thirds of its brightness drop in 2019. In other words, Betelgeuse has lost air.
According to calculation, the betelgeuse away photosphere material amount equivalent to 4 trillion times the sun a coronal mass ejection, can be said to be the lost quite a number of quality and volume, but the red supergiant huge but weak character also determines the betelgeuse internal substance will gradually fill the area, causing the betelgeuse density decreased as a whole 39bet-đua chó-game giải trí -đá gà-đá gà trực tuyến-đánh bài.
Although it's impossible for even the most powerful telescopes to see the surface of an exostar, astronomers can roughly simulate Betelgeuse's current state based on models of star evolution, especially red supergiants:
After a lot of photospheric material was thrown out in 2019, the remaining material doesn't fill the gap very quickly, so just as the sun gets spots because of the temperature difference, Betelgeuse is bound to get a giant dark spot on its surface, caused by the local drop in temperature caused by the loss of photospheric material.
This long on betelgeuse "wound" at low temperature, in the next few years will gradually shrink or even disappear, but has previously been spilled out of the photosphere material cools, may be betelgeuse gravity control, to become a large molecular cloud that circle betelgeuse, whenever it crosses to the betelgeuse and earth connection will cause the loss of betelgeuse brightness.
The Webb telescope may be able to target Betelgeuse for a longer period of time and find this dust cloud not too far away from Betelgeuse, which will further reduce the current state of Betelgeuse.
Of course, what people want to know more about Betelgeuse than its current unstable state is what will happen to Earth if it blows up?
Historically, human civilization is actually seen a supernova, such as 1054 A.D. recorded in the song dynasty astronomer of the crab nebula supernova explosion that led directly to the earth appeared a brighter than a full moon in the night sky of stars, people can even use it to light at night reading, this phenomenon lasted for a few months gradually disappear.
With the Crab Nebula currently 6,500 light years away and Betelgeuse at its closest distance of 640 light years, the impact of Betelgeuse's supernova on Earth would be more than just one more.
Given the energy released at the moment of a supernova explosion, the energetic radiation from Betelgeuse would travel hundreds of years to reach Earth, during which time some of the energy would surely be attenuated. The remaining energetic charged particles might interfere with Earth's ionosphere like solar wind, causing electromagnetic disturbances or blackouts on a global scale.
Worse, every electrical device on Earth would be destroyed in a storm of high-energy charged particles, and civilization would be set back 300 years, to the Industrial Revolution.
Is the most serious consequences, the high-energy radiation dose and strength than human imagination, can already affects from inorganic to organic matters, then all life on the earth will face very-high-energy radiation from betelgeuse, life on earth including the human civilization will disappear like bacteria under the sterilizing lamp, thoroughly and the universe to say goodbye.
The only consolation is that whatever the consequences of Betelgeuse's supernova explosion may be, it has nothing to do with civilization, because with light speed limiting our vision, we will never be able to actively predict Betelgeuse's explosion, and will have to wait for the inevitable outcome.