Blogs / Bad Astronomy

In the live chat tonight, I was asked when Betelgeuse will explode. The answer is, we don’t know.
But that made me think about other stars that will blow, almost certainly before Betelgeuse does. I recorded my answer.

The stars I mention are Sher 25 and Eta Carinae. For the record, I said that I thought Sher 25 was 6000 light years away; it’s actually 6000 parsecs, or 20,000 light years away. I had the number right, but the unit wrong.
You can read all you want about Supernova 1987A on my Bitesize Pages, too.

The live chat is happening RIGHT NOW! The chat’s over now. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

Here is the embedded stream. But if you go to UStream.tv you can join the chat room.

My friend, the ex-rock star and particle physicist Brian Cox, is featured in The TimesOnline today in a bit they have called A Life in the Day. He talks about his typical day as a guy trying to figure out why things have mass.

Brian will be in the States in April as part of a conference I’m helping organize called The Conference on World Affairs. As time goes on I’ll have lots more info on it, but in the meantime you can check out the guest list online. Other attendees you may recognize: James Randi, Alex Filippenko, and Andy Ihnatko. If you are within 500 kilometers of Boulder from April 7 - 11 this year, you should come. CWA is awesome.