Well, if it’s not sitting under a lamp, the only other logical explanation I can come up with for the spot of reflected light is this:
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His nipple explodes with delight!
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If you’ve ever had “nun’s nipples” (aka Cassatini Siciliane, aka Minni d’ Virgini), you can appreciate the delight and the exploding.
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Yeah. On winter mornings, Orion is visible on my pre-dawn dog walks. When I see Betelgeuse I always think “blow up, you goddamn slacker.”
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Yes I believe a sequel is on the way.
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Yes we can!
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Looks like we now know the source of the variability.
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I don’t think we know. It could have exploded 600 years ago. We could be looking at it five minutes from now.
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Those stupid things don’t work. I’ve gone through three of them already.
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Well, due to relativity, as far as we are concerned things happen at Betelgeuse when we see them. So if it goes supernova tonight, it’s entirely accurate to say that the star exploded tonight; the event just took six centuries to propagate over here.
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Reality and the future operate at light speed, don’t they?
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I believe a star has to be somewhere in the 15-20 solar mass range to form a black hole, and α Ori is a little under 12 - but I am not an astrophysicist.
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This star is featured in Calculating God by Robert Sawyer (an excellent book which I will go reread now).
Spoilers - [spoiler]Unknown aliens b̶l̶o̶w̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶u̶p̶ cause it to go supernova on purpose in Calculating God to sterilize life in their stellar neighborhood to keep the neighbors from disturbing their underground computers running virtual reality. This supernova would kill all life on earth until a deus ex machina literally occurs (see book title).
However, the Wikipedia article on Betelgeuse says in reality the X-rays, gamma rays and ultraviolet readiton would be to weak to actually affect Earth. [/spoiler]
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OH! Spoiler! Bobby is deputy in the new series!
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Good point. I take off my glasses cyborg augments and everything is a disk.
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