# Betelgeuse losing brightness **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 27, 2019, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/betelgeuse-losing-brightness/845478 "2019-12-27T23:34:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2020, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/betelgeuse-losing-brightness/845478/101 "2020-01-09T01:24:45Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > If I get some kind of chance neutrino interaction, might it turn me into some sort of mutant super-hero? No, but it gives you a good excuse to call in for a day off. “Sorry boss, I was hit by a neutrino and my DNA is unraveling, so I have to miss work.” ---
**Author:** ![K364](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k364/32/5_2.png) [@K364](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/K364)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/betelgeuse-losing-brightness/845478/102 "2020-02-04T14:08:25Z")
Seen on twitter - Betelgeuse: I install one dimmer switch in my dining room and the whole galaxy loses its shit. ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/betelgeuse-losing-brightness/845478/103 "2020-02-04T14:20:44Z")
I read that it can take “a few million years” for the process to complete and the star to explode. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/betelgeuse-losing-brightness/845478/104 "2020-02-04T14:37:34Z")
That’s one guess. But nobody really knows. ---
**Author:** ![dogbutler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dogbutler/32/428_2.png) [@dogbutler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dogbutler)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/betelgeuse-losing-brightness/845478/105 "2020-02-04T16:27:00Z")
> [@danhanegan](#): > > Just how dangerous to us would Betelgeuse going supernova be? Would it cause health or climate effects dangerous to us or infrastructure we depend on? Would the delivered thermal energy contribute to global warming? Would the radiation cause massive deaths from radiation poisoning, a more moderate effect in increased cancer rates or birth defects, problems with livestock, mutated supergerms, a zombie apocalypse? Would it crash the Internet or screw up my TV reception? And how long a delay would there be between when the visible light that lets us see the event arrives and the following storm of radiation arrives? Well, for the locals, it’s definitely going to be worse than The Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster of Gal./Sid./Year 03758. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/betelgeuse-losing-brightness/845478/106 "2020-02-04T16:36:18Z")
> [@dogbutler](#): > > Well, for the locals, it’s definitely going to be worse than The Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster of Gal./Sid./Year 03758. I’d say you found the prefect response to this topic. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/betelgeuse-losing-brightness/845478/107 "2020-02-04T17:45:34Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > That’s one guess. But nobody really knows. Sure, but are there no spectroscopic techniques to detect, say, the proportion of carbon fusion? ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/betelgeuse-losing-brightness/845478/108 "2020-02-04T20:05:57Z")
I’m certainly rooting for an explosion as soon as possible! It would add some excitement to my overly tame life. OTOH, might there be a slight chance that boring conspiracy theories and annoying new fake religions will flood the Internets when Betelgeuse really does blow up? ---
**Author:** ![Pork\_Rind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pork_rind/32/111_2.png) [@Pork\_Rind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pork_Rind)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/betelgeuse-losing-brightness/845478/109 "2020-02-04T20:27:07Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > I’m certainly rooting for an explosion as soon as possible! It would add some excitement to my overly tame life. Yeah! She’s gotta pop sometime; why not do it for my benefit? I don’t feel like I’ve gotten to witness any great astronomical oddities and I am at the point where I am very aware that I am not getting any younger. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/betelgeuse-losing-brightness/845478/110 "2020-02-04T21:01:58Z")
> [@](#): > > Sure, but are there no spectroscopic techniques to detect, say, the proportion of carbon fusion? That’s all happening deep in the core. We can only do spectroscopy on the parts we can see, i.e., the surface. In principle there’d be a way to tell from the spectrum of the neutrinos, but neutrinos are so hard to detect in general, and Betelgeuse is so far away, that we’re not going to detect any neutrinos from it (at least, not any that we can identify as being from it, and certainly not enough to get a useful energy spectrum) until it does blow. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stafford_cripps/32/7167_2.png) [@The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stafford_Cripps)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2020, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/betelgeuse-losing-brightness/845478/111 "2020-02-06T20:25:27Z")
> [@Pork\_Rind](#): > > Yeah! She’s gotta pop sometime; why not do it for my benefit? I don’t feel like I’ve gotten to witness any great astronomical oddities and I am at the point where I am very aware that I am not getting any younger. Throughout the whole of the 70s, we were told how great Halley’s comet would be in '86… ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2020, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/betelgeuse-losing-brightness/845478/112 "2020-02-06T21:09:04Z")
> [@The\_Stafford\_Cripps](#): > > Throughout the whole of the 70s, we were told how great Halley’s comet would be in '86… Okay, Halley was a bit of a dud. But [Hale-Bopp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Hale%E2%80%93Bopp) in 1997 was pretty cool! So maybe the lesson is that Betelgeuse won’t go supernova in our lifetimes, but some other star in our galaxy that we weren’t paying as much attention to will. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![gkster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gkster/32/14107_2.png) [@gkster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gkster)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2020, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/betelgeuse-losing-brightness/845478/113 "2020-02-06T21:27:29Z")
> [@The\_Stafford\_Cripps](#): > > Throughout the whole of the 70s, we were told how great Halley’s comet would be in '86… Some of us are old enough to remember the disappointment of comet Kohoutek in 1973: > **[3 Comets That Fizzled](https://www.universetoday.com/100234/3-comets-that-fizzled/)** > > Take a dirty snowball in space and hurl it towards the Sun. I dare you… and then make a prediction as to how that will look. This is the problem comet scientists face when talking about how bright a comet will appear from Earth. They’re imaging a... ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2020, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/betelgeuse-losing-brightness/845478/114 "2020-02-06T23:11:07Z")
Honestly, I suspect that Hale-Bopp was about as good as Haley 1910, and that the stories of Haley 1910 were a combination of hyperbole and skies being darker back then. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2020, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/betelgeuse-losing-brightness/845478/115 "2020-02-06T23:14:30Z")
I saw two comets that year (1997), and both were much better than Halley. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2020, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/betelgeuse-losing-brightness/845478/116 "2020-02-07T01:28:03Z")
Wasn’t Hyakutake the year before? ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2020, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/betelgeuse-losing-brightness/845478/117 "2020-02-07T01:54:07Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Honestly, I suspect that Hale-Bopp was about as good as Haley 1910 Yeah, Hale-Bopp was the comet of a lifetime. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2020, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/betelgeuse-losing-brightness/845478/118 "2020-02-07T12:57:37Z")
[Comet West](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_West) was the big one for me. 1975 and yet didn’t get a fraction of the publicity of Halley or Kohoutek. Absolutely beautiful large, classic comet appearance in the dawn hours. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2020, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/betelgeuse-losing-brightness/845478/119 "2020-02-07T13:47:06Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Wasn’t Hyakutake the year before? Yeah- I intended to say ‘within the period of a year’ rather than limiting it to 1997, but it didn’t come out right. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2020, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/betelgeuse-losing-brightness/845478/120 "2020-02-14T21:01:39Z")
[New information and image](https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02/new-image-shows-betelgeuse-isnt-dimming-evenly/?amp=1). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/betelgeuse-losing-brightness/845478.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/betelgeuse-losing-brightness/845478.md?page=7)