Two Suns? Twin Stars Could Be Visible From Earth By 2012

Earth could be getting a second sun, at least temporarily.

Dr. Brad Carter, Senior Lecturer of Physics at the University of Southern Queensland, outlined the scenario to news.com.au. Betelgeuse, one of the night sky's brightest stars, is losing mass, indicating it is collapsing. It could run out of fuel and go super-nova at any time.

When that happens, for at least a few weeks, we'd see a second sun, Carter says. There may also be no night during that timeframe.

The Star Wars-esque scenario could happen by 2012, Carter says... or it could take longer. The explosion could also cause a neutron star or result in the formation of a black hole 1300 light years from Earth, reports news.com.au.

But doomsday sayers should be careful about speculation on this one. If the star does go super-nova, Earth will be showered with harmless particles, according to Carter. "They will flood through the Earth and bizarrely enough, even though the supernova we see visually will light up the night sky, 99 per cent of the energy in the supernova is released in these particles that will come through our bodies and through the Earth with absolutely no harm whatsoever," he told news.com.au.

In fact, a neutrino shower could be beneficial to Earth. According to Carter this "star stuff" makes up the universe. "It literally makes things like gold, silver - all the heavy elements - even things like uranium....a star like Betelgeuse is instantly forming for us all sorts of heavy elements and atoms that our own Earth and our own bodies have from long past supernovi," said Carter.

UPDATE: To clarify, the news.com.au article does not say a neutrino shower could be beneficial to Earth, but implies a supernova could be beneficial, stating, "Far from being a sign of the apocalypse, according to Dr Carter the supernova will provide Earth with elements necessary for survival and continuity."

Mayans were right afterall.
The birds falling off the sky, fishes dying and now a sun going supernova...end is near..run for your life.

2012 doomsday never occured to me after reading this article

While on the other hand:
http://www.zeitgeistyreport.com/breaking-news/2011/01/24/is-the-betelgeuse-two-suns-supernova-story-a-cover-up-for-planet-x-collision/comment-page-1/

Is the Betelgeuse ‘two suns’ supernova story a cover-up for Planet X collision?

Ok, so there was this recent news blurb about the star Betelgeuse going supernova, and that it could result in an explosion so magnificent, that it would appear in our sky as bright as a second sun, causing perpetual daylight for a month as early as 2012. The article says it won’t have any ill-effects on us, still, I found it pretty creepy and was a bit weirded out that the time-table for it happening was the infamous ’2012′.

Apparently, I’m not the only one.

It seems, there’s been this long-time conspiracy theory that there’s a huge planet called Nibiru – or Planet X – looming outside our solar system approximately 7 billion miles away, and that it’s headed right at us. Well, believers of this theory are now saying that this whole ‘two suns’ deal is just a cover-up for the impending collision with Planet X. They say that the Government’s planted the Betelgeuse story, so that when Planet X approaches, everyone will just think it’s the Betelgeuse supernova.

I have to say, I was more than a bit unsettled when I read about this gloomy prospect. According to these theorists, only the rich will survive by scurrying underground in protective bunkers – which are now furiously being constructed somewhere out west – and the rest of us poor shnooks will be kissing our asses good-bye.

Yep…I was pretty freaked.

Of course, when I read more about it, I became slightly less panicky.

You see, there’s absolutely not one credible shred of proof that this is actually happening. In fact, the source of this incredible story is this whackadoodle named Nancy Lieder – a Wisconsin woman who claims that as a girl she was contacted by gray extraterrestrials called Zetas, who implanted a communications device in her brain.

Later on, an author named Zecharia Sitchin wrote a book about it called ‘End Of Days’ and now there’s a contingent out there that are totally sure we’re all about to die a horrific death come 2012.

The whole Nibiru tale reads like bad science fiction. Sicthin writes that aliens from Nbiru visited ancient Sumeria and created the human race by tampering with the genetic structure of primates in order to enslave us for the purposes of mining for gold. He claims that this all documented in Sumerian text.

Jeebus…makes Scientology sounds downright sane.

So what about this Betelguese supernova? Is it a cover-up or what? Well, it turns out that the original article which emanated from news.com.au, was a tad overstated. Scientists are now saying that most probably this won’t be happening in our lifetime, and when it does, it won’t appear as bright as the sun, more likely it will be about as visible as the moon. Moreover, the whole ’2012′ speculation was emphasized by the reporter and not the actual scientist interviewed.

Smells like someone trying to make a buck to me.

Just like Y2k and a million other doomsday scenarios, people like Sitchin and the author of the supernova article play on people’s innate pussy-fication to sell their bunk. As far as I’m concerned, that mentality is more indicative of the end of the days then any mythical planet hanging out in space, ready to unleash a can of whoop-ass on poor little earth.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/21/tech/main7269888.shtml

(Discover)  I swear, I need to trust my instincts. As soon as I saw the article on the news.com.au site desperately trying to link Betelgeuse going supernova with the nonsense about the Mayans and 2012, my gut reaction was to write about it.

But no, I figured a minute later, this story would blow over. So to speak.

I should’ve known: instead of going away, it gets picked up by that bastion of antiscience, The Huffington Post.

Grrrr.

The actual science in the original article is pretty good; they talked with scientist Brad Carter who discusses the scenario of Betelgeuse going supernova. The whole story is pretty interesting - I wrote about it in detail the last time there was nonsense about Betelgeuse blowing up - but in a nutshell Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star in Orion with about 20 times the mass of the Sun, and it’s very near the end of its life. When stars this massive die, they explode as supernovae. The distance to Betelgeuse is unclear (it has a very puffy outer atmosphere which makes distance determination somewhat dicey) but it’s something like a bit more than 600 light years, way, way too far away to hurt us.

It's the question of when that the two articles go off the rails. Betelgeuse may explode tomorrow night, or it may not go kerblooie until the year 100,000 A.D. We don’t know. But given that huge range, the odds of it blowing up next year are pretty slim. And clearly, the original article was really trying to tie in the 2012 date to this, even when it has nothing to do with anything. The tie-in was a rickety link to scuttlebutt on the web about it, but that’s about it.

What’s worse, the HuffPo article attributes the date to Dr. Carter himself, but in the original article he never says anything about it; the connection is all made by the article author. Given how popular HuffPo is, I imagine a lot of people will now think an actual scientist is saying Betelgeuse will blow up in 2012.

OK then, tell you what: I’m an actual scientist, and I would give the odds of Betelgeuse going supernova in 2012 at all - let alone close to December, the supposed doomsdate - as many thousands to one against. It’s not impossible, it’s just really really really really really really really unlikely.

Really.

I’m glad that both articles are clear that there is no danger from the star if and when it explodes. It’s simply too far away to do us any physical harm; a supernova would have to be within 25 light years or so before it would start to do measurable damage to Earth, and it would have to be much closer before that harm rose to the level of actual danger.

At 600+ light years, a supernova would be pretty bright, but hardly bright enough to be a second Sun, as both article say. Sorry, no Tatooine-like sunsets for us. It wouldn’t even be as bright as the full Moon, really, but certainly far brighter than Venus. Enough to cast a shadow, which would actually be pretty cool.

And even better would be the science! Oh my, a close supernova like that would be a huge boon to astronomy. The ones we see are all so far away that details are too small to detect, but one that close would be like having it under the microscope^*. We’d learn a huge amount. The funny thing is, it would be so bright astronomers would have a hard time using their best equipment, which would get swamped with all that light. I wonder how many amateur astronomers would suddenly find themselves able to do science the professionals couldn’t.

And of course, the best thing of all in having Betelgeuse explode is that it would bring billions of people outside and looking up. Betelgeuse is in a part of the sky that makes it visible everywhere on Earth but pretty much the South Pole. Far from being a harbinger of doomsday, it might actually be the single greatest benefit to astronomy that’s happened in hundreds of years.

Take that, Mayan apocalypse fearmongers!

Mine was suppose to be a satirical posting, I can see how gullible we all are. To those claiming 2012 to be apolaclypse, I want to pay them 5K each for my control over their proprty after 2012.