In the constellations there are stars that begin to fade for some reason to end up shining again.
This is precisely what happened to the star Betelgeuse, whose intensity at night in Orion began to fade from the end of 2019, causing alarm.
There were those who raised the hypothesis of its extinction and that it had begun the process of disappearance. Some media, whose link is still available, published without remorse that it would explode in a supernova, endangering the Earth.
It did not pose a danger to the Earth
The start of dimming put astronomers in check, as they scrambled to find out why a red supergiant star, which lives in the constellation Orion, had begun to dim.
Speculation, so much to the taste of our time, generated the theory that it could even explode. Since that will happen at some point, the truth is that the Earth should not be damaged. Our planet is about 530 million light-years away, far enough away.
A team of scientists, from a Chilean armed telescope base VTL (Very Large Telescope), affirmed that the cause of this “blackout” that was not such was a gigantic cloud of dust that came between Batelgeuse and us.
Red supergiant stars tend to shed material from their surface, which condenses around them as dust. Those grains, as they cool and dissipate, absorb some of the light that is headed toward Earth.
The scientific community believes that the star will eventually die but not to be alarmed, since experts believe that its death will occur within about 100,000 years.
What is a supernova?
Supernova is a not so original name for a club or a pub, a band or a song, or perhaps a publication.
It is a stellar explosion that can manifest itself in a very remarkable way in space, even with the naked eye, in places on the celestial sphere where nothing in particular had been previously detected.
Massive stars burn huge amounts of nuclear fuel in their cores. This produces tons of energy, causing its center to get very hot. Heat creates pressure.
When a massive star runs out of fuel, it cools down, and the pressure drops. Gravity wins out and the star falls apart, leaving behind a very dense core and an expanding cloud of hot gas called a nebula.