Space
The Star Betelgeuse Went a Little Dim in 2019. Astronomers Think They Know Why
The star Betelgeuse visibly dimmed in 2019. Now, a new analysis reveals why: Betelgeuse blew out and is still recovering.
The red supergiant star, which is about 530 light-years from Earth, is among the brightest in the night sky. The star forms the shoulder of the constellation Orion (The Hunter).
It’s also geriatric: Betelgeuse is nearing the end of its stellar life and will eventually explode in a supernova visible from Earth, though it might take another 100,000 years, according to 2021 research.
In late 2019, Betelgeuse’s light started to dim. By February 2020, it had lost two-thirds of its normal luminosity as seen from Earth.
Scientists studying the bizarre dimming concluded that the star itself was not imminently going supernova but that a giant dust cloud had obscured some of the star’s light.
Now, scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have revealed that this dust cloud was the result of an enormous ejection from the star’s surface: A plume more than 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) across may have risen from inside the star, producing the equivalent of a starquake, a shock that blew out a chunk of the star’s surface 400 million times larger than those usually seen in the sun‘s coronal mass ejections, the team reported in a paper published to the preprint database arXiv and accepted by The Astrophysical Journal for publication.
“Betelgeuse continues doing some very unusual things right now; the interior is sort of bouncing,” study author Andrea Dupree, associate director of the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a statement.
This is uncharted territory in star science, Dupree said.
“We’ve never before seen a huge mass ejection of the surface of a star,” she said. “We are left with something going on that we don’t completely understand. It’s a totally new phenomenon that we can observe directly and resolve surface details with Hubble. We’re watching stellar evolution in real time.”
The new research also incorporated information from a variety of other stellar observatories, such as the STELLA Robotic Observatory in Spain’s Canary Islands, and NASA’s Earth-orbiting STEREO-A spacecraft.
By piecing together different types of data, Dupree and her team were able to put together a narrative of the blowout and its aftermath.
The eruption blew off a chunk of the star’s lower atmosphere, the photosphere, leaving behind a cool spot that was further occluded by the dust cloud from the blowout.
Above: In the first two panels, as seen in ultraviolet light with the Hubble Space Telescope, a bright, hot blob of plasma is ejected from the emergence of a huge convection cell on the star’s surface. In panel three, the outflowing, expelled gas rapidly expands outward. It cools to form an enormous cloud of obscuring dust grains. The final panel reveals the huge dust cloud blocking the light (as seen from Earth) from a quarter of the star’s surface.
The chunk of photosphere was several times the mass of Earth’s moon, according to NASA’s statement.
This cool spot and dust cloud explain why Betelgeuse’s light dimmed. The star is still feeling the reverberations, the researchers found.
Before the eruption, Betelgeuse had a pulsating pattern, dimming and brightening on a 400-day cycle. That cycle is now gone, at least temporarily.
It’s possible that the convection cells inside the star are still sloshing around, disrupting this pattern, the researchers found.
The star’s outer atmosphere may be back to normal, but its surface may still be jiggling like Jell-O, according to NASA’s Hubblesite.
The eruption isn’t evidence that Betelgeuse will go supernova anytime soon, the researchers said, but it does show how old stars lose mass.
If Betelgeuse does finally die in a stellar explosion, the light will be visible in the daytime from Earth, but the star is too far away to have any other impacts on our planet.
Related content:
Red supergiants ‘dance’ because they have too much gas
15 unforgettable images of stars
This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.
Renowned ufologist and virtual archaeologist Scott Waring is back in
the spotlight with his latest discovery: mysterious structures on the
surface of the Moon.
In photographs of the Moon obtained by the American space agency NASA, he discovered something that raises many questions.
Waring’s
discovery became the subject of discussion among lovers of the
mysteries of space. The ufologist said that the photograph was published
by NASA just a few days ago, and immediately after that he began a
detailed analysis of it.
According to Waring, the photograph shows
structures that could not have formed naturally. These unusual objects
could have been built by extraterrestrial civilizations, the researcher
believes.
However,
the most surprising thing is that, according to Waring, NASA is not
even trying to hide this information. Skeptics argue that if evidence of
alien intervention was actually found on the Moon, the agency would try
to hide such facts.
However, Waring believes that the agency is
deliberately disclosing this information to generate public interest and
attention to aliens.
The researcher also calls on NASA to provide
more details about the origin of these mysterious structures and
conduct more research.
When we think of UFO crashes, the first thing that comes to mind is
the famous Roswell incident of 1947, when a mysterious object crashed on
a ranch in New Mexico, sparking decades of speculation and controversy.
But
what if Roswell was not the first, nor the only, UFO crash on Earth?
What if there was an earlier and more obscure case that involved a
fascist dictator, a secret department, and a possible cover-up by the US
military?
That is the intriguing story of the 1933 UFO crash in
Italy, which has recently resurfaced thanks to new allegations and
evidence from researchers and former intelligence officials.
According to these sources, a bell-shaped flying saucer crashed near Magenta, a town west of Milan, on June 13, 1933.
The
craft was reportedly recovered by the Italian authorities and taken to a
nearby airfield, where it was examined by a team of experts led by none
other than Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of radio.
The documents include two June 1933 telegrams in Italian demanding ‘absolute silence’ over an ‘alleged landing on national soil of unknown aircraft’. Credit: dailymail.co.uk
Little is
known about the first “UFO” case in Italy: the fascist regime
immediately secreted the story. It was Roberto Pinotti, founder and
secretary of the National UFO Center, who tried to dissolve the mist of
mystery that surrounds the case.
At the “Ufology” conference,
which was held near Lake Maggiore, in Arona, he explained that “the
remains of the UFO, which in the drawings is described as a cylindrical
aircraft, with a bottleneck at the end, with portholes on the side, from
which white and red lights came out, were taken to the Siai-Marchetti
warehouses in Vergiate, where they remained for 12 years.
The
bodies of the pilots, preserved in formalin, were studied for a long
time. It is known that they were 1.80 tall, had light hair, and
oriental-looking blue eyes.
Another document, dated June 13, threatens the ‘immediate arrest’ and ‘maximum penalties’ for any journalists reporting news of an ‘aircraft of unknown nature and origin’. Credit: dailymail.co.uk
It
is therefore understandable why Mussolini thought they were German
pilots, despite the authoritative contrary opinion of Marconi himself.
The
hypothesis advanced by Pinotti could also redefine the history of the
pre-war period: “The Duce believed, perhaps, that it would be
appropriate to ally himself with a military power like that of Nazi
Germany, capable of producing an aircraft never seen before, rather than
having her as an enemy.”
The craft itself was said to be made of
an unknown metal that was resistant to heat and corrosion, and had a
complex propulsion system and electromagnetic fields.
The Italian
dictator Benito Mussolini, who was fascinated by the phenomenon, ordered
the creation of a secret department called “Gabinetto RS/33” (or RS/33
Cabinet) to study the saucer and its technology. The department was
headed by Marconi and included scientists, engineers, and military
officers. Their goal was to reverse-engineer the alien craft and use it
for military purposes.
However,
their plans were thwarted by the end of World War II, when Italy was
invaded by the Allied forces. According to some accounts, the American
troops seized the saucer and its remains and shipped them to the US,
where they became part of a covert program that collected and studied
multiple “non-human” flying saucers.
This program was allegedly
overseen by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), a highly secretive
intelligence agency that operates spy satellites.
The existence
of this program was recently revealed by David Grusch, a former NRO
officer who claims to have firsthand knowledge of it. Grusch says that
he has seen documents and photos that prove that the US government has
obtained several alien crafts over the years, including the one from
Italy in 1933. He also says that he has spoken to other former
intelligence officers who were part of the program and confirmed his
story.
The 1933 UFO crash in Italy may be one of the oldest and
most forgotten cases in UAP history, but it may also be one of the most
important ones. It may hold clues to the origin and purpose of these
mysterious visitors, as well as their impact on human history and
technology.
-
Ghosts1 year agoZozo: The Ouija Board Demon
-
Space12 months agoScientists claim to have found the answer what existed before the Universe
-
Archaeology7 months ago
New discoveries at Ekʼ Balam during conservation works
-
Ghosts1 year agoOld Coot of Mount Greylock
-
Ghosts1 year agoJumbee: Demons of the Caribbean