Orion may be the first sign that many friends know, because its status in the winter night sky is much more obvious than that of the Big Dipper, and you can see its existence when you look up!
And the Betelgeuse on the shoulder of Orion must have left the most impressive impression on everyone, this star that emits orange-yellow dazzling light has reached the moment of imminent completion, the future is greeted by the most brilliant explosion in the universe, and the strange lighting event in 2019-2020 once made astronomers feel very confused, but now a paper in Nature has unveiled the mystery that has existed for a long time!
Betelgeuse: A dying star
Betelgeuse is a star with a mass of about 18-19 times that of the Sun, which is different from what everyone thinks, for a celestial body like a star, the greater the mass, the faster it burns, because its energy comes from the high temperature and high pressure core produced by gravitational collapse, and the larger the mass will make the core temperature higher, so the faster its hydrogen fusion speed, and the high enough temperature will make the element from helium after hydrogen to iron!
But from the beginning of helium fusion, the star will leave the main sequence and gradually become a red giant! This is because helium burns more intensely than hydrogen, although it is hotter, so the shell gradually expands to form red giants and even supergiants, and stars like Betelgeuse are currently 1180 times the diameter of the Sun and their volume is about 1.6 billion times that of the Sun!
However, the size and brightness of Betelgeuse will change, which Herschel discovered hundreds of years ago, which means that it is already very unstable, and supernova explosions may occur at any time in the future!
The reason why there will be a supernova explosion is because the mass of the star is predestined, only stars with a mass of 8-10 times or more are "qualified" to have a supernova explosion, as mentioned above, the four cores of Betelgeuse will fuse into iron, and then it will suddenly stop, and then the shell will collapse under the strong gravitational action, triggering a nuclear collapse supernova explosion, whose energy is much stronger than the energy released by the sun throughout its lifetime!
The supernova explosion is one of the most intense energy releases in the universe!
Betelgeuse's Eerie Moment of Lighting: How exactly?
Just when scientists are worried about when Betelgeuse will erupt, between 2019 and 2020, Betelgeuse has undergone a strange light change, which is the darkest moment of Betelgeuse's brightness for hundreds of years. Scientists don't know this problem, because supernova models are extremely complex, and most of the models set by scientists will not explode, but there are supernovae everywhere in the universe!
Therefore, the brightness change of Betelgeuse has aroused a lot of attention from scientists, and has also touched the hearts of countless astronomical enthusiasts, after all, everyone intends to watch a "close-up" supernova explosion in their lifetime, and after March 2020, Betelgeuse gradually returned to normal brightness, disappointing fans who sat waiting for the supernova explosion!
What exactly causes the light change?
At the end of 2019, the team of Montargès at the Paris Observatory in France and the University of Leuven in Belgium pointed ESO's VLT (Very Large Array Telescope in Northern Chile) at Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion, obtaining extremely fine images, compared with Those who returned to normal brightness earlier and later (this lesson variable star period varies, generally up to several years) and believed that this was due to surface cooling after the large amount of material ejected by the star was cooled.
Emily Cannon of the University of Leuven said that "dust discharged from late-stage stars, such as the massive ejections of stellar material that we have just witnessed, could become the cornerstone of terrestrial planets and life." ”
When will Betelgeuse explode in the future? Scientists give time!
Although scientists explain the reason for the change of the light of Betelgeuse, its supernova explosion risk still exists, and it may become higher and higher with the increase of time, so it is still possible for you to see a supernova explosion "close" in your lifetime, but friends who know astronomy know that this so-called imminent outbreak and outbreak at any time refers to the outbreak of Betelgeuse at any time in the next million to ten million years!
Because the astronomical sense of the time, is not based on the human life cycle! But the question is, maybe Betelgeuse has already erupted, it is about 600 light-years away from Earth, maybe tomorrow the supernova burst of light will arrive?
But scientists still have to pour cold water on everyone, and Dr. Meridith Joyce of the Australian National University (ANU) led a team to study the strange light changes of Betelgeuse in great depth, and he believes that Although There have been sharp changes in brightness between 209 and 2020, It may still be in the early stages of helium combustion in red giants, before the supernova explosion!
The future of Orion?
After half a day, Betelgeuse is actually still in the early stages of the red superstar, and it will become bigger in the future? Now that it is already 1.5 billion times bigger, how big is the future? This is a great point to watch!