Hm. All that media noise you’ve been hearing about the star Betelgeuse going supernova — possibly right on schedule for the infamous year of 2012? Not so much.
Supernova, yes. Some time in the next million years or so. Schedule, no. Nor will a supernova produce anything like “the twin suns of Tatooine.”
But then, you knew that, didn’t you?
Scary, though, how many people (including the well-paid media mavens at the Huffington Post) uncritically buy that brand of nonsense.
Try telling them it already has blown-the light just hasn’t gotten here yet. I work with a 2012/end-o-th’-world/conspiracy theory type guy. Annoying usually,but entertaining at times.
Some people think it has already blown up but we couldn’t tell because light(the fastest part) takes so long to traverse the long distance between stars. However many light years away Betelgeuse is will be how long we’ll see.
Jim B. and Scott — truth. We just won’t know until the signs reach us, right? But yeah, try explaining that to some folks.
OMG, those end-of-the-world types. They’re always around. When I was a kid in my first “real” job, there was a prediction going about that California — where I lived — was going to fall into the sea the next year. (There have been so many of those …) One of my co-workers quit her job to move out of state because of it. You might say “good riddance,” but I’ll never forget her explaining to me (as if I were a blithering idiot and she the well-informed scientific miss) that since California was “on the continental shelf” (and here she made a motion with her hand to indicate something like a bookshelf) it could easily “just break off and fall into the ocean (hand motion of that bookshelf tumbling) because there’s nothing underneath it to hold it up.”
I worry more about zombies than I do Betelgeuse.
Betelgeuse is in the last stages of its life. IIRC its spectrum indicates carbon, neon and oxygen are fusing which means it may have another million years or a few minutes. None of the current models can predict when the final stage of fusing silicon to nickel and iron will occur at the core. Even when it happens the axis is pointed in the wrong direction to be a danger to life on Earth.
It will a spectacular event. I hope I live to see it.
Yeah, but seriously, what are you going to do about it if it were true? Run away?
Mega sigh
Like someone telling me all about the Mayan calendar and predictions. I asked her if they were so smart, why aren’t they all in congress?
Ok, I’ll quit…
Some years ago at a local SF convention, one “parlor game” of sort involved the host asking individuals at random for verbs/nouns/etc,and using them to fill in a mystery form..one form was for “End of the World”..In this case, it involved Earth being in the shadow of a vast interstellar cloud of pickled eggs. The skeery part was it wasn’t all that much different from some end-o-th’world prophecies I’ve heard..
I still firmly believe the Mayan Calendar stopped at 2012 for one of two, or both, reasons. 1. They ran out of rock to chip it on. 2. That was as far as they got before the spanish, inca’s, aztecs, etc (take you pick) killed them.
neverless, we are living in strange days…
Oh for the love of Mike…..aren’t there enough REAL things to worry about?
All these new-agey types are gonna have egg all over their Gaia loving faces when January 1, 2013 rolls around.
Like most of these sorts of things, there is some truth to it. Betelgeuse will definitely explode bigtime. But 600 light years is a very very very long way away.
Probably time to resurrect the old ‘Jupiter is sending distress signals’ to us. Always a staple of the tabloids, Jupiter *is* unusually active in the radio spectrum….and the explanation is almost as strange as distress signals.
Too bad we have debunked the ‘face on Mars’ that one was good for the occasional flare up of chicken littles.
You are right, tho…..scary how many people believe this sort of tripe.
-UnReconstructed
bumperwack — Have there ever been any other kind of days in the history of the world?
UnReconstructed — I hear ya. Earlier this week, the news is suddenly full of absolutely ancient news about astrological signs, of all things. Now Betelgeuse.
parabarbarian — I’d love to see it, too. At the same time, I’d worry about any civilizations or sentient beings that might actually be within danger range. The universe is so magnificently uncaring and such a vast source of disaster.
Matt — I expect you’re right. Anyway, you’re entertaining. And just as likely to be right as anybody else on that topic. :-)f
I’ve also heard something about modern people simply misunderstanding (that the Mayan calendar doesn’t end in 2012 at all; just some particular time cycle does). But no matter how you look at it, I can’t figure why anybody would think the Mayans knew a damn thing about the eventual fate of the universe. What’s with this notion that people from old, dead civilizations — you know, people who didn’t have whatever it took to endure — were so much wiser than the rest of us?
I dunno… Sauron should have had saruman just issue pretty little green “orc-notes” and there would have been no need for any rings……………………
People insist on believing strange things.
Earlier today somebody tried to tell me that mayonaise will never spoil, because the ph is outside the range at which bacteria can survive.
(If that were true, it would burn your skin off)
She also claimed that a sliced onion would vacuum up all the viruses in a room, rendering the people in that room safe from all flu germs, but making the onion slice so germ-ridden as to be pure poison.
Sometimes there’s nothing to do for it but to sit back and laugh at the human race :p
I think Matt nailed it: the makers of that particular stone calendar ran out of room. Or funding.
I like to point out that my friends gave me a beautiful calendar of Samurai art. It ran out on 12/31/2010. The world did not.
I dunno if it’s just my age, or the fact that I’ve been lucky enough to accomplish all I planned to in my lifetime, but any natural disaster doesn’t worry me because there isn’t much that can be done to stop it….Only to hope it happens fast….
It’s the human being disasters that scares the bajuniors out of me….and the amount of pain and discomfort they manage to inflict during the process……