Recent content by Unix Ronin

My understanding is it is extremely unlikely Betengeuse will last that long. It's a gigantic star (the ninth largest known), burning through its fuel at a prodigious rate, and is believed to be significantly less than ten million years old. At this point in its stellar evolution, its chances...

Well, it still technically COULD. But there's now at least reasonably reliable refutation (alliteration über alles!) of the original, dubious and unverified, report on which all the speculation was based...

On the basis of current understanging, there is no known danger to Earth of a GRB from Betelgeuse. We aren't anywhere near to close enough to being in line with Betelgeuse's poles.

I've been looking a little at this myself lately. The original source, unfortunately, is not verifiable. However, it's basically not inconsistent with existing observations of Betelgeuse, which indicate that after a long period of fluctuation in size with a period on the order of several...