My own comments duly approved and posted on the original site are reproduced here for my readers (in creative commons category).
236. Jay ~ Says:
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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.
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Actually, we humans are not the most perceptive creatures in the universe. Many of us can’t even seriously conceive a distance of 10 miles and have never jogged 10 miles…So to conceive light years, astronomical units, or even microscopic dimensions in the sub-atomic range such as angstrom units, is not possible, for most human brains. Our ego makes us feel that we know a lot about the universe! From microcosm to macrocosm! Human sensors, are not among the most perfect in the Universe and the scope for significant errors in measurement is of a highly appreciable order. So, communicating to fellow human beings, the properties of Betelguese which is bigger than the orbital diameter of Jupiter (around the sun) and that to estimated to be located some 600 light years away from our solar system, is at its very best a great joke/adventure. Meanwhile, “Wish all ye brave souls and spirits, Happy Speculations and Accurate Conjecturing!” A good and healthy way to spend your time. I like these calculations (Newtonian, though) which are indeed quite brave (@4):
[Plus, also, what the Aussies and Kiwis say @134! Ha! ha! ha!
Great sense of humor. The main article is so good and stimulating that today, nearly eight months from when it was written on June 1st, 2010 3:43 PM Tags: Betelgeuse, doomsday, supernova
by Phil Plait in Astronomy, I am writing this 236th comment on India's 62nd Republic Day, Jan 26 2011(IST)! Comments will come in yet for some significant period of time. Great of you Phil! After saluting my national flag today, you are the first person I salute with admiration and genuine pride! My contact: lay_the_smack.down@yahoo.com]
Yes, the comment, the brave calculation based on “Newton’s celestial mechanics”, by Jeff Adkins, is reproduced below:
@4. Jeff Adkins Says:
June 1st, 2010 at 4:14 pm
Let’s suppose just for the sake of rough argument that when Betelguese goes it will be 100 billion times brighter than the sun. That’s not an unusual brightness for a supernova; they can often rival an entire galaxy.
On the other hand, Betelguese is a lot farther away. At the speed of light, the sun is 8 minutes away. At the speed of light, Betelguese is 600 light years away. I estimate that is is therefore approximately 2.4 trillion times farther than the sun (600 years converted to minutes, divided by 8). And the intensity of light falls off as the square of the distance. So while it is intrinsically 100 billion times brighter than the sun, it is at the same time going to be 5.6 x 10 ^18 times dimmer because it is farther. The net effect is that Betelguese will wind up far, far dimmer than the sun as seen from earth. Something like 56 million times dimmer when both factors are taken into account.
Now, that’s a bright thing in a night sky. But it isn’t going to rival the sun in brightness.
Today, early morning, while discussing, microscopic dimensions, @236 above, I quite forgot to write that even an Angstrom Unit, while being good enough for measuring atomic dimensions, is yet not considered “a small enough unit” for sub-atomic measurements, particularly in particle physics when we come down to pi mesons and other infinitesimally small particles like quarks et al. Can we really perceive the miniscule dimensions of these both in time (life interval) and space? AMU is another example used at microcosm level ostensibly known to humans. Now, for brevity, I wanted to sum it up by saying that both the macrocosm and microcosm cannot ever be clearly perceived by our mighty (but, puny human brains when weighed in the backdrop of the Universe) which is completely open-ended on both sides: Macrocosm and Microcosm! The electron, while being so miniscule proves its powers and might in electrical applications or when one gets an electric shock, or when lightning bolts strike and lightning is yet not fully comprehended by the world’s greatest scientists! How powerful and powerless are we! One sentence about Betelguese…If it goes off today earthlings have to wait approx 600 years to observe anything appreciable, and if, Betelguese has already blown off, say, some 500 years ago, earthlings have yet 100 years to begin noticing its after-effects; even gravitational field changes travel at the velocity of e.m. waves, and not faster!
Over to Phil Plait…