Will betelgeuse, the bright red giant star, blow up in your lifetime
The bright red star Betelgeuse, called ‘Thiruvathirai’ or ‘Ardra’ in Indian astronomy, is easily spotted in the constellation Orion.
By examining its pulsation – the periodic contraction and expansion of the star – researchers from Japan and Switzerland recently reported that the star is in its late carbon-burning stage.
In massive stars like Betelgeuse, the carbon-burning stage lasts only up to a few hundreds of years, after which the star ‘dies’ and collapses into a supernova within a few months.
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