Tag: light years

Almost Christmas eve

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What happens if we see a supernova on Christmas eve? It could happen, the star Betelguse in the constellation Orion is a Red Giant and fluctuates in brightness as if it is flinging off layers of matter. The variability and it’s massive size means astronomers think it might be due to explode in 1000 to 1,000,000 years.

But Betelguse is 642 light years away from us, so it might already have exploded. We wouldn’t know until the light reaches us. Then for a glorious couple of weeks the light would outshine the brightest stars and possibly be visible in daylight.

Supernovas fade after a few weeks, the star stuff is all burnt up or exploding out in a cooling cloud that will eventually stabilise into a nebulous cloud. Examples include the Crab Nebula.

Meanwhile back on Earth because of the date of its imagined eruption, I wonder what the reaction of the population would be? Secular or religious, it would be interesting.

What’s out there?

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There’s something called the Drake equation that hypothesises whether there is other intelligent life out in the universe. I don’t know it and can’t quote it, but I looked it up (see above). The fact that the scientists have even found amino acids in space (the building blocks of life) means that there are possibilities of finding other beings.

The equation looks at how many possible inhabitable planets are out there, whether life could evolve, and whether intelligent life might come about. Then you have to think about time. If an intelligent life form was to exist somewhere else they might send out signals, but it could take millions or billions of years to travel across space before we detected it, and by then they could be long gone. So it would only be possible to communicate if they were closer, tens of years away? But then a conversation with someone even twenty light years away (the distance of a possible habitable planet) would be very boring. One question every forty years, one reply eafter another forty years. And space travel would only be possible at a small percentage of the speed of light, according to the laws of physics. So we might be able to talk but not visit.

It might be great to get a signal, but even if there are other civilisations it doesn’t mean we will ever find out.