betelgeuse is/was collapsing

okay you weirdos time to learn you some fukken astronomy from your good friend professor sir dixon dongs


for those of you who give literally zero thought to what's going on outside the atmosphere, here is the goddamned lowdown: betelgeuse is/was a star in the orion constellation, it makes/made up a shoulder of the figure and it is/was on the left if you are looking at it from earth

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note the gay little pink arrow and the red glowy thing, that is/was betelgeuse

betelgeuse is/was a red supergiant around 640 light years away from us (it is/was the 9th brightest star in our skies) and its pretty young but its dying off because massive and supermassive stars burn bright and fast and only last a few million years before wrecking shit and exploding like a hamster in a microwave, the difference between a mid-size star like our sun and a supergiant is like the difference between lighting a candle and letting it burn, and lighting a candle and dumping six gallons of gasoline on it, that shit ain't gonna last nowhere near as long and it will go out in a blaze of glory (god bless america) but this has already happened about 640 years ago because that's how fukken long it takes light from betelgeuse to get to us

so whats going to happen within probably the next few weeks to the next few months is betelgeuse (betelgeuse betelgeuse lol i love that movie) is going to (already has) try to fuse the heavier elements in its core so it can/could keep burning but it's going to(already has) ultimately fail (much like my career) and collapse in on itself as gravity begins/began to violate itself anally and breaks space and time itself and turns/turned into a goddamned black hole

while the star is(was) exploding it will be about as bright as the sun so good fucking luck sleeping if you have a window near your bed and don't have blackout curtains

post your geeky space shit tinfoil hat heresies here fagbutts, dongs craves your science failure

WHAT IT DIED NO NO NO TELL ME IT'S A JOKE DO NOT WANT DO NOT WANT


... wait, seriously, it died, like, 'last week'? How do you know? Feck.


2010 CLAIMED YET ANOTHER CELEBRITY

it died like 640 goddamned years ago moron LERN 2 REED MAI POSTS

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Yes, I've read that. What I mean is that we had the news just recently... how? (as you seem to imply it won't be visible until next month or so)

Looks like 1370 claimed yet another celebrity, then.

current betelgeuse status: pulsating like a zit on a teenage emo's face

I've always hoped that I'd get to see a supernova!

Humanity witnessed a supernova once. I can only hope it takes place in the next few weeks or even in my lifetime. I can only speculate how beautiful and/or dangerous it will be.

Also, betelgeuse betelgeuse betelgeuse

Khajidu wrote:

Yes, I've read that. What I mean is that we had the news just recently... how? (as you seem to imply it won't be visible until next month or so)

Looks like 1370 claimed yet another celebrity, then.

because right now it's completely changed its shape and is throbbing (like my dick)

it was reported in 09 that it was shrinking which is a sign that its probably run out of hydrogen helium oxygen and carbon and is trying to fuse iron which just dont work son no matter how hard you compress it

trying to fuse iron takes more energy than youd get from the reaction

so now it cant support its own mass and is collapsing in on itself because gravity is batshit like that and then BANG there will be a goddamned nebula with a black hole in the middle because it collapsed in on itself so dang hard it ripped a hole in time and space

btw if your wondering just how big the boom will be here is a handy dandy chart

I fucking love your writeup Dongs

I blame corporate America and the Elders of Zion.

SirDixonDongs wrote:

here is a handy dandy chart

Holy shit. I'm trying to put it all into perspective and I can't. I guess that's the point.

Psy-4 wrote:

Humanity witnessed a supernova once. I can only hope it takes place in the next few weeks or even in my lifetime. I can only speculate how beautiful and/or dangerous it will be.

Also, betelgeuse betelgeuse betelgeuse

well congrats because the absolute latest itll be is 2012

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TEH MAYANS WERE RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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I knew it would be something like that, that it was beginning to show...

Well, it's not like it's going to kill all extraterrestrial life all around. XD


edit: Dude, those stars are huge.

Khajidu wrote:

edit: Dude, those stars are huge.

much like my dick

Cyberwulf wrote:

I fucking love you Dongs

i love you too just a little bit

Well. That's depressing. I really like Orion. Now he's all...busted.

maybe you shouldn't be into dudes with destructive tendencies~~~~

AW fuck. Betelgeuse was my favorite fucking star AND IT HAS BEEN DEAD ALL THIS TIME.

I feel a fool.



BTW, I tried to explain the whole "the stars we see are lights from starts only just now getting to us after long-ass journies so a whole bunch could be dead right now and we would not know" to some chick once. She put up a huge fight about it and how I was full of bullshit. I really hated that girl. I was like, "it takes light a year to travel a light-year," and she was all, like, "no it doesn't you are fuckin' dumb," and I was all, like, "urge to kill rising."

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

AW fuck. Betelgeuse was my favorite fucking star AND IT HAS BEEN DEAD ALL THIS TIME.

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Not a lot of people realize that the universe is co-directed by Mikky Bay and M. Night Shyamalan.

Just this once, Psy, I love you.

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

BTW, I tried to explain the whole "the stars we see are lights from starts only just now getting to us after long-ass journies so a whole bunch could be dead right now and we would not know" to some chick once. She put up a huge fight about it and how I was full of bullshit. I really hated that girl. I was like, "it takes light a year to travel a light-year," and she was all, like, "no it doesn't you are fuckin' dumb," and I was all, like, "urge to kill rising."

easy way to explain this: you know when you hear a airplane overhead and when you look up its way ahead of where it sounds like it is because sound is slower than light

light basically works the same way

if she doesnt get it after that then you may as well take her out back and put her out of her misery

These guys, while they're not an observatory or anything, seem to feel that Betelgeuse reaching an apparent magnitude of -26 (which is the apparent magnitude of the Sun, meaning that the supernova will be as bright as the sun, even at night) is a fairly unlikely occurrence. And Wikipedia says that this star is far more likely to become a neutron star (if we get a really big kaboom) or a white dwarf (if the kaboom is smaller--relatively speaking). In both cases, if I'm understand what I've read properly, we might get to hang on to Betelgeuse, but in a different form (I think/hope).

On the plus side, apparently everybody seems to be thinking that we're either out of the path of any possible gamma rays or too far away for them to hurt us.

Hey, if the sun went out, it would take us eight minutes to realise.

Which doesn't make any sense I know but fuck, them's the breaks.

Seriously, there's gonna be a supernova? We're gonna be seeing it exploding at night? Since when was this God Awful? This is fucking monu-fucking-mental.

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Well Ford, looks like it's now your turn to be homeless.