US, WASHINGTON (ORDO NEWS) — A model of the situation that will happen over the next 100,000 years. The life of the red supergiant Betelgeuse is inexorably nearing its end. Researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara have shown what will happen to the star during and after the explosion.
“We wanted to know what the explosion of a similar star looks like at different phases of the pulsation. Earlier models are simpler because they do not include time-dependent pulsation effects,” said Jared Goldberg, lead author of the study.
When fuel runs out in the core of a massive star, the star collapses under its own gravity and turns into a supernova. Researchers have calculated that this is likely to happen to Betelgeuse over the next 100,000 years – a relatively short period of time for astronomical processes.
This explosion will create a flash that can briefly eclipse the entire galaxy.
Supernova explosions differ depending on the mass of a dying star, radius and energy. Ripples in the stars make it difficult to model the explosion, because the various layers of the celestial body can expand or contract relative to each other.
Light from compact layers of a star is weaker, while light from expanding layers is brighter.
When simulating Betelgeuse, the researchers found that the whole star pulsates in unison. This means that when a star explodes, it will behave as if it were a static star with a given radius.
Thus, supernova models for stars like Betelgeuse look similar to models that do not take pulsation into account.
Betelgeuse is located in the constellation Orion and is located at a distance of approximately 700 light-years from Earth. Last year, the most noticeable drop in the brightness of this star was recorded. Some scholars have attributed this to a possible imminent explosion of Betelgeuse.
However, in the future, the star ceased to fade and returned to its previous brightness.
After Betelgeuse turns into a supernova, the star will become the third brightest object in the earth’s sky after the Sun and the full Moon.
According to some estimates, Betelgeuse may even surpass the moon in luminosity. About three years after the explosion, its brightness will decline to its current levels, and after six years Betelgeuse will disappear.
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