• Question: How soon do you predict that Beetlegeuse will die? Will it become a supernova, a white dwarf or anything similar?

    Asked by to Nick on 16 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Nick Wright

      Nick Wright answered on 16 Mar 2014:

      Good question! Betelgeuse is a really big star and weights at least 10 times more than our Sun. Stars as big as this explode as a supernova at the end of their lives. Because Betelgeuse is so massive it has a much shorter life than the typical star (like our Sun) and so it won’t be very long before it explodes as a supernova – probably less than a million years! That may sound like a long time to you or me but its quite a short period of time for astronomers.

      After Betelgeuse explodes as a supernova it will leave behind a dense core of material which will probably form a neutron star. Neutron stars form when matter gets really really dense, denser than a white dwarf, but not as dense as a black hole. Neutron stars spin really quickly and often send out pulses of light (they are sometimes called ‘pulsars’), which we might be able to see.

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