Amy wrote:

Speaking of red and seeing as you seem
to like the scary sky stuff...

Many think that Betelgeuse could go
supernova in the 1000 years. If so, you
may need industrial quantities of
sun-block cream.

Here's a 2012 take for Unc.

http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/betel.htm

Here's a slightly more sober evaluation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse


Yeah, that sounds scary!
I don't want to be around for that.

I'll keep looking up tho.


What do you think "his sign in the sky" will be?

SuZanne

So then here's what Uncle Al projects:

The Maya obsessively observed the heavens and processed data through proficient
mathematics. Their Long Count calendar is accurate to one day in 374,000 years.
The Great Cycle is 13 baktuns (144,000-day periods). Reality started on 4 Ahau
8 Cumku 3114 BC. Gregorian years hold 365.2422 days with no year Zero. The tank
goes dry on 21 December 2012. Five centuries after cultural extirpation by
Spanish conquistadors and priests, Maya astronomy tables are good within 33
seconds for modern eclipses. Did they know something?

Arabs are noted ancient astronomers. They saw in Winter skies a luminous orange
star of varying brightness in constellation Orion - Betelgeuse (Greek for
"armpit"). Marking The Hunter's right shoulder, the six-year variable M2 star
drifts 310 light-years distant. Alpha-Orionis holds 20 solar masses. In Sol's
place, its visible surface would touch Mars' orbit. It nears supernova Type II
death. Perhaps 18 solar masses of its matter will erupt at 10% lightspeed,
pursuing a sustained roar of 511, 847 and 1240 KeV gamma rays (the visible 10%
of radiation when they interact with matter) outshining the rest of the Milky
Way. Five minutes before Gabriel hoists his trumpet, a wall of neutrinos (the
invisible 90% of the radiation) arrives to foment mischief. Betelgeuse is
severely ailing as viewed in our timeline. The Maya might suggest it popped at
the turn of the 18th Century. Are modern doomsayers' revelations confounded by
Relativity?

Only heat provides pressure thwarting a star's gravitational collapse.
Betelgeuse's core long ago consumed its hydrogen. As heavier elements fuse to
obtain smaller energy yields, core temperature rises to hundreds of millions of
degrees kelvin and a massive star inflates into a red giant. Betelgeuse's
historic six year luminosity pulsation ceased last year. When stars' core
composition touches iron, nickel and cobalt, three things happen.

First, these are among the most tightly bound nuclei. No energy is to be had by
further fusion. Second, the insane temperature exacerbated by compression
(diesel engine of the Gods) causes photo-disintegration. Gamma photons spallate
nuclei, violently absorbing energy. Third, the core collapses. Protons and
electrons squeeze together into neutrons, exuding a neutrino for each union, as
the core implodes at near lightspeed to either bounce shock at a neutron star
(1.4 solar masses maximum) or pop the access hatch to infinity as a black hole.
The visible star goes wild five minutes later as news reaches the surface.

A neutrino risks 50% chance of absorption by traversing a light- year of lead.
323 billion solar neutrinos pierce our every square inch each second. The
Homestake gold mine in South Dakota hosts 400,000 liters of perchloroethylene
whose chlorine-37 atoms (24.23%, with chlorine-35) absorb high energy neutrinos
4600 feet underground to create one atom of radioactive argon-37 (half-life of
35 days, 565 KeV gamma emitter by electron capture) every second day or so.
Tanks are purged and counted monthly to assay solar neutrino yield. The
neutrino blast from supernova 1987a, 100,000 light-years away in the Lesser
Magellanic cloud, sent the real time Japanese Kamioka Cerenkov neutrino
detector into spasms. Betelgeuse is 330 times closer, and will be more intense
by the inverse square of the distance ratio - 109,000 times!

Chlorine-37 in the oceans' salt, our blood, and the whole planet will become
radioactive just before our skies brighten. The radiation will do our genes no
good. Heat from radioactive decay will stimulate volcanism and tectonics on a
biblical scale. Meanwhile, our atmosphere will be blown away.

A solar mass of cobalt-56 is within the maelstrom, half-life of 77.3 days
(exactly fitting supernova light decay curves) emitting 847 and 1240 KeV gamma
rays plus 1460 KeV positrons (antimatter). A positron annuls an electron,
emitting two gamma photons of 511 KeV annihilation radiation (or doesn't, and
arrives here to do it). Co-56 decay powers the persistent supernova fireball
outshining an entire galaxy. Note 1 KeV = 1000 electron volts. The ionization
energies of molecular nitrogen and oxygen are 15.58 and 12.07 eV respectively.
Our 50 mile depth of air will superheat and fluorescently whisk into space. A
sustained electromagnetic pulse will wither anything and everything electrical
or electronic. The gamma blast will be exciting for a few Co-56 half-lives.
Call it a year.

The matter wave from Betelgeuse's demise engulfs our solar system a few
thousand years later, playing havoc with the sun's magnetic field and plying
other antics as it explodes past at absurd speeds. Elements heavier than iron
form within the supernova shockwave before the outside universe gets its wakeup
call. We will accrete iridium and other rarities as compensation.

Were we to warp a superluminal probe fewer than a decade of light-years toward
right ascension 05hrs 55min 10.3sec and declination 07° 24' 25", would it
detect a big, bright orange star yet beaming or the insanely energetic debris
of a deity's monstrous flashbulb? Yahweh has a desperate fetish about blood,
salt, and fire. Take Christmas 2012 early, and have a nice day.

So, I guess it all BOILS DOWN TO...

The End
Tangents are infinite in all of nature in
all universes constantly and at random.
* D OUOSVAVV M *
*PUBLIUS ENIGMA*
Oh Joy!
The Psychedelic Pope
Patron Saint of the Internet

http://www.apple2.org.za/gswv/me/