Betelgeuse's mysterious 'Great Dimming' may have been triggered by a wandering black hole

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Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at SUNY Stony Brook and the Flatiron Institute in New York City. Paul received his PhD in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2011, and spent three years at the Paris Institute of Astrophysics, followed by a research fellowship in Trieste, Italy, His research focuses on many diverse topics, from the emptiest regions of the universe to the earliest moments of the Big Bang to the hunt for the first stars. As an 'Agent to the Stars,' Paul has passionately engaged the public in science outreach for several years. He is the host of the popular 'Ask a Spaceman!' podcast, author of 'Your Place in the Universe' and 'How to Die in Space' and he frequently appears on TV — including on The Weather Channel, for which he serves as Official Space Specialist.

. It's immense because it stopped fusing hydrogen in its core long ago and switched to fusing helium. Surrounding that core is a shell of burning hydrogen. With the intensity of fusion reactions in and around the core, the energies push the outer layers of the atmosphere outward, forcing the star to expand.Red supergiants like Betelgeuse are among the largest stars in the universe by volume. They are also incredibly bright.

So naturally, astronomers were very surprised in late 2019, when Betelgeuse began to dim for no apparent reason. The dimming continued throughout early 2020, and at its lowest point, the absolute brightness of Betelgeuse dropped by about 60%. Just as randomly, the dimming halted in February 2020 and the star began to brighten again, and it has now reached its normal levels of intensity.

Astronomers have records of Betelgeuse going back half a century, and in those records, they could find no precedent for the 2019 event. So whatever caused the"Great Dimming," as it came to be called, must have been truly extraordinary.Whatever caused the dimming also must have come from a situation outside the star itself, rather than being due to some fundamental change in Betelgeuse's internal operations.

Astronomers have proposed many possibilities, including stellar outbursts or giants clumps of orbiting dust. One possibility is that the shape of Betelgeuse's outer atmosphere changed, causing a shift in brightness. The brightness of a star's atmosphere depends crucially on how far that outermost layer is from the nuclear core in the center. That's because stars aren't solid bodies but rather giant balls of gas.

Astronomers can see the effects of this when stars rotate too quickly. When they do, the rotational force bulges out their equators relative to their poles. That makes the equator of the star sit farther away from the core, which reduces the temperatures and, in turn, the brightness. This kind of"gravity darkening" makes some stars appear brighter at their poles than around their middles.

 

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😳 black holes can wander?

But a standard black hole event horizon would be tiny compared to the massive star Betelgeuse, so why would it cause such a large shadow?

those darn wandering black holes.

Betelgeuse has very shiny objects on it's surface, and as it rotates, their luminosity, (from our perspective) fluctuates.

what if the wandering black hole attracted his light?

Is that the one that has gone supernova? Or about to?

if you clean telescope lens may it look brighter

Or Maybe God Didn't Pay The Power Bill!

Possibly....

Alien superstructure.

Black hole has very great gravitation then if any think be explor his gravitation

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