Hi everyone, Alex here, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who joined Patreon. Your membership is what allows me to keep Astrum what it is, and not what the algorithm looks for. bit.ly/4anEb5u
the second you mentioned doplar shift, i was thinking 'wow, the spin!'. very cool. you didn't explain the overall spectrum , established, of star spinning speeds from low-high for small cores of stars ( neutron/magnetar/pulsar) speeds, to large starts... thing is, also, you well know, stars are like onions, with layers. the bigger and more 'fluffy' the star the more there is an asymmetry of speeds between layers, or at least, the more possible there is big differences. so the core of our sun probably spins much faster than the outside, is my understanding. and this also creates turbulence inside the sun as well. so it's complex. for a star 600 light years closer ( pretty damn close ) , but of such size, my guestimate is there is NOT going to be a resolution to this 'debate' after the analysis is done. we won't know. but if the speed at which it now rotates is too fast, than it's probably obvious nonsense and will be discounted as it already is. my underesanding is that if things too massive spin too quickly, they shed or break apart as the roche limit is functionally 'inside' the thing , as internal mass becomes 'broken apart' and becomes 'external mass'. so a single body can break into 2 functionally separate gravitational bodies. this, however is extremely unlikely without some outside force ( a star exploding usually ....) , so odds are if this spin limit is well defined. there are no new physics going on here. either the star spun up to a very high speed, but not 'break apart' speed, and we've overestimate the speed, or ---our physics are wrong, or our data is wrong. unlikely the physics is wrong. seriously though. this video was great. Also for reference, the earth rotates about itself at .45 km/s --1100 or so mph for the horizon to move at the equator, moon spins at about 100x lower speed at its equator. and the sun? 1.9km/s spin is a fun thing to compare, but then there is also the complexity of reality of onion layers. venus spins UBER slowly and in retrograde , but it's winds are super-velocity and winds are mass, tenuous, but still mass. so great assymetries can exist, particularly so at the final outer boundary. astrum. you're one of the absolute all time best space-astronomy channels. i have watched them all. thank you . thank you and thank you
I hope I live long enough to see the effects of the explosion. I'm 70 years old. I have been watching and waiting for the event, but it just seems to be beyond my view. In my lifetime, I have witnessed comets, the collision of the comet fragment into the surface of Jupiter, the landing on the moon, (most memorable to be sure). The crowning glory to this would be seeing the phoenix of Betelguese.
Don't worry. I'm also excited. I'm 27, but aware that it might not even happen in my lifetime. I have a feeling you and I will somehow get to experience it anyway!
I've heard for a while that Betelgeuse is a non-spherical shape, but had a lot of trouble visualizing how that could possibly look. The simulations and comparisons of Betelgeuse to a giant drop of boiling water finally made it click for me! Thanks for the informative video!
you don’t need a degree to try to make sense of the world. it’s okay to theorize, even without an astrophysics education. being said, these are theories not facts. but most scientific discoveries were theories or accidents trying to answer theories. so if everyone just thought about the universe maybe we would gain some new perspectives that we’ve never heard before.
@@noahgoodwin392You are so right! I believe every human has something to input in the overall quest for understanding. I personally have done a lot of research into redshift and feel like it’s every misunderstood. Look into plasma/electric theories and some of these “breaking the laws of physics” problems begin to have more plausable non-breaking explainations!
@@silentedict4256 Whenever I need a heavy dose of existential angst I think about super massive black holes.... sure , jupiter's orbit is impressive for a star....but the schwarzschild radius of the largest known black hole extends out past neptune...~1300 AU ..... that's 40x the distance between the sun and neptune..... even typing this right now has me aghast at how absurdly massive that is....
I will bet that its surface is a chaotic turbulent mess. It is obviously not breaking any laws of physics, but challenging our limited understanding of them. I do get a little bemused when people say Betelgeuse is about to go supernova. It could well have done 300 years ago, meaning it's another 350 years before we find out.
Everybody knows it likely already went supernova. It’s just inconvenient to say in conversation “oh sweet, this star will soon send light our way indicating it already went supernova.” Accuracy yields to brevity if everyone still understands the message.
Betelgeuse is like blobs of thin gas/plasma on the outside. Due to its size and relatively low gravity you probably won't see anything significant. In Space Engine there are simulations, from incredible distances those stars resemble giant cauliflowers. The inner sphere is probably oblate, but angular momentum is not as fast as on the outside,
How exactly would a star rotating at 5 km/sec be breaking the laws of physics? A study by the Royal Observatory of Belgium concluded that most stars cooler than F7 generally rotate at no faster than 50 km/sec, while hotter stars -- A-class (white), B-class (bluish-white), and O-class (blue) -- are often rotating faster than 100 km/sec. Hell, Jupiter's rotational velocity is 12.6 km/sec, more than twice as fast as Betelgeuse's observed rotational speed. Looking at blue supergiants, the rotational velocity is even higher. Rigel's is 25±3 km/sec, even though it has an estimated 21±3 solar masses compared to Betelgeuse's 14-19 solar masses. Nothing being stated about Betelgeuse in this video is that extraordinary compared to other stars -- save that it might, possibly, go supernova in the next 100,000 years or so.
It doesn't violate physics, obviously it can't if it's really happening. It's just that it would have had to be spinning like a neutron star speed earlier (which can become whole fractions of light speed) in it's life and then expanded into this massive super giant. Which who knows, maybe that's exactly what happened or something similar, maybe it used to be one and swallowed up another star that's still swirling around it.
Something just sounds wrong. 5 km/s on the surface sounds fairly ordinary, considering the diameter is so much more huge than the one of the sun. I don't have all the physical hindsight behind it, but it seems intuitively unremarkable.
If Betelgeuse is a bubbling star, then two images taken some time apart should look completely different. If it is a rotating star, then they should look the same.
Define 'some time apart'. The 'bubbles' referred to in this video are upwards of a hundred million miles long. It could take a decade for them to form and dissipate. In that same decade, the speed of rotation for a star that isn't 'bubbling' could increase or decrease. I doubt this is a simple matter of taking two measurements so much as it is a systematic review of thousands of measurements over hundreds or thousands of days.
Rotation - yes if you time it right Bubbling - not if the bubbles come and go in the same places and there's resolution issues to consider with the imagine method
Even as a child, and I am two days older than dirt, I was obsessed with Betelgeuse, Venus, Sirius, Mars, and other bright objects. I always wanted to visit those bright places. Anyway, thanks for all you do in keeping us intelligent. I will also add, your voice is so soothing... I could listen to you read the entire internet.
I love pointing the planets out to my daughter on the walk over to her mother's. She always asks me if she'll go to Jupiter and be an alien one day. I tell her there's nothing stopping her. Glad videos like these exist so I always having something cool to teach her
I really enjoyed this explanation of the surface dynamics and rotation of Betelgeuse, thanks Alex. It just shows how unstable the outer layers of a red supergiant are in comparison to a "settled" outer layer of our own main sequence yellow dwarf star.
5:33 I finally understand angular momentum, I had to play back at quarter speed to ensure I fully grasped the camel, I mean concept, fully grasped the concept.
If it's spinning that fast, it'll become a millisecond pulsar when it collapses, or it's also a possibility that because it's spinning so fast, it could also become a magnetar, one of the scariest, coolest things in the universe besides a black hole.
5:26 - I don't think that is how angular momentum works. If a rotating object expands, the surface velocity should remain relatively constant while the rate of rotation decreases. Expanding stars probably have a few other factors to add in, like internal particle friction and fluid currents, that may decrease the surface velocity to some extent, but not by the factor of expansion.
So, what if it's just a mix of the two explanations? What if the star's still spinning fast enough to get that detectable gradient, but its boiling surface is the reason why it looks like it's spinning so fast and why its gradient is still a bit less than perfectly smooth?
Maybe its core is sinking inwards and the mass is like the ballerina pulling her arms in. Maybe it’s getting faster. Maybe all supernova do before they blow. And so, they get faster and denser in the middle, but the equator bulges out….you get all those bubbles and changes in brightness. This thing is about to blow maybe huh?
i love this channel SOOOO MUCH but PLEASE as someone that has trouble processing auditory words/speech, please sync captions to the speech. 😭😭 i have to replay things over and over to make sure the captions lined up with what i heard AND with what i understood so i can fully understand the topics at hand.
So, even with that, wouldn't it be easy to rule it one way or the other by collecting a large enough of a sample size of images to determine how much of the Doppler shift is speed and how much is bubbling gasses? Also, by comparing all of the images in the same orientation. If the shifts tend to follow a fairly consistent pattern, say red left, blue right, that should clarify things quite a lot.
Nice details. One additional detail I would have appreciated would have been a quick explanation of how we calculated its mass. And could its interior be a different level of massiveness than we would expect?
I wonder if such a high rotational speed would impact the lifespan of such a star by adding another outwards force to compete against gravitational collapse alongside the stars own internal fusion pressures. At a mass that big with that much rotational speed, the apparent centrifugal forces would be monstrous
The rotation of Betelgeuse isn't that impressive at 20 years. Since Betelgeuse is about as big in diameter as Jupiter's orbit, we can compare the two. Jupiter obits at nearly twice as fast at 12 years.
My take is that it is still in the process of eating its companion. The two central cores spinning around each other. But both suns gases are largely wrapped around both stars and are behaving like ingredients in a cosmic food mixer constantly being swirled around at a huge rate by the"paddles" of binary core mutually rotating about each other.
Thank you for posting Alex. As always, a very interesting and well presented video. Two things spring to mind here. If the bubbles of gas are receiving light from the star then re-radiating it then the light received by them will be spectroscopically shifted blue or red depending upon whether the bubble is falling toward the star or receding. Any light re-radiated will also be shifted conversely and the net result will be zero shift. If the gas bubbles are radiating light of their own then of course the explanation is valid. Another possibility is that the star may have a planetary disc in a stable orbit and its peripheral speed might achieve a very high velocity. If that is the case the reflected light from the star from it would be shifted blue and red as seen by the astronomers.
@Astrum - Alex… What I find even MORE amazing, is this bubbling effect! The sheer size of the star having a bubbling effect implies that the speed of these “bubbles” would be extreme (seeing that you stated the size of Betelgeuse is 1000 times that of our sun)!!! We’re probably talking about bubbles that are the size of the distance between Mars to Jupiter. Can they calculate the speed at which the gases are traveling in these bubbles?? Your thoughts?
A star that big with a surface that turbulent is pretty intense. Expanses of space the size of Earth’s orbit being consumed and collapsing multiple times per minute.
Considering we can't go a week without some sort of physics-breaking observation, yet nothing ever changes, I won't be holding my breath on this one, either.
We can test whether the color gradient is caused by rotation by checking if the feature persists over idfferent observations. If it does, then it's likely that it's rotation. Otherwise it's definitely not.
10:00 OR the answer could be that we learn more about turbulent flow than we realized. What if turbulent flow can manifest in a uniform way? Where there are still patches that contain more or less energy so that it could be mistaken for rotation? Or, perhaps energy flows in a rotational way and some other factor causes it to manifest as seemingly more turbulent?
Not a scientist, but just a fan. Wondering if the large amount of activity can cause gravitational differences within the boiling masses that if happen just right, could trigger am in-lesion supernova catalyst type event? This star certainly not your stereotypical version of a generic object. Very cool.
I’m struggling to wrap my mind around how something can be so huge that even though it’s surface is rotating so quickly it still takes 20 years to complete a rotation!
I won’t even lie.. the siren thing.. I didn’t even know.. I watch this channel and I feel so dumb at times.. but I LOVE the feeling of my mind getting absolutely bent up each video. Thank you.🙏
@@MillerVanDotTVModels aren’t about being “right” or “true”, they are about being as accurate as possible. Nobody thinks any theory we have is 100% accurate and “true”.
One thing the universe has taught me repeatedly is that more than one thing can be true at the same time. It could be spinning extremely fast AND boiling these massive bubbles at the same time.
You need 2 versions of your videos. One for people with no science/space knowledge and one for enthusiasts. I just can't wait for this long for the point.
A enormous rotating mass like Betelgeuse might be dragging space-time along with its rotation. This way, light from the side turning away from us is doppler-shifted even more
I'm impressed, intrigued, and kind of disgusted all at once by how much we think we're able to figure out by looking at something so far away that the image quality is like a half-loaded pic from a 90's era website. Anyway, human curiosity and wonder wins so here's my take. Not an astronomer or astrophysicist, just an enthusiast, but what if it didn't completely finish eating the stuff it possibly cannibalized to get this big? Couldn't a massive enough object orbiting really close disturb the surface, potentially causing bubbles and/or the appearance of faster rotation due to it being nearly indistinguishable from Betelgeuse itself and spinning much faster because of how close it's orbiting? Could there be an object inside the corona? Or maybe eating something massive 'caused a long-lasting effect on the "surface?" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don’t know how long it takes for those bubbles to exist, but you would expect the same color gradient over time on a smooth star, and a constantly changing one on betelgeuse.. so it’s probably a matter of time to see how these exposures develop.
Curiously, I have been observing for a while--with my naked eyes--a bright red object in the night sky that I initially assumed to be Betelgeuse. But I was rather confused by what appears to be a vivid, glowing blue ring at the top of the object, since I had never known anything about the Betelgeuse having blue in its overall coloration. Now, however, as a result of seeing this very well done and informative video, I have learned much more about the star than I might have ever expected to learn about it.
Ocham’s Shaving Cream says that whatever the most boring explanation is, is probably the correct one. That’s why we never seem to find aliens. If it’s either the star spinning at ridiculous speed or just a measurement error, it will probably be the latter.
My hunch (and thats all it is), tell me the two star cores have not yet merged, hence the irregular chaotic surface. Once the cores merge expect fireworks. Also wouldn’t such a fast rotation throw off stellar material? Alternatively, this object could be two smaller stars orbiting inside the corona of what was once a regular red giant. That would be a truly exotic beast.
With such high velocities in the atmosphere of Betelgeuse there must be tremendous sonic booms. How might this effect the physical characteristics of the star?
Betelgeuse is actually a trinary system I'm decay hidden by the outgassing of the the stars as they fall into each other's atmosphere. That is why the surface is so chaotic and it spins so fast. In a few years, we will witness a nova that will make a hyoernova look like the cooling wick of an extinguished candle
I wonder why you don't mention that Betelgeuse was the first star ever to be expanded from a "dot" on the plate/screen/sensors /eyepiece -- and that alone was a spectacular feat. I think it was around 2005, but maybe it was Hubble in the late 90'es. There are others?
Why not a combination of both? If it is spinning faster because of cannibalism or something, while also erupting gas bubbles at ludicrous speeds, could that make the Doppler shift appear more stable than it is?
If Betelgeuse really is about to go supernova, it would be amazing to witness. But it could also cause some problems for Earth, such as increased radiation. I hope astronomers will continue to monitor Betelgeuse closely.
Zeus: Hey Eris, remember that day you sneezed real hard? Eris: What, like, eons ago? Yeah, I guess. Why? Zeus: Some humans noticed the star you were near is spinning way too fast. Eris: Whoopsie~
Well if it was rotating, we’d already know in which direction it would be rotating. Because for some strange reason, everything that we’ve seen in the universe that is rotating, all rotates in an anti-clockwise or to the right. Can you explain why this is?
If betelgeuse is really rotating at that rate and is as volatile as predicted, then perhaps the gravitational mass of those plumes as they expand outwards powers the enhanced rotational speed. Much like powering yourself on a swing with your legs
Considering we thought Pluto was smaller than it actually is, which New Horizons discovered. I am completely convinced we have something wrong given the sheer distance.
Red giants were once described by physicists as a red hot vacuum. That is to say that the majority of the envelope that we see with our eyes is very tenuous in nature. The image shown of the observed doppler shifts (7:22) didn't place the most heavily blue shifted region cleanly on the limb of the star, but more toward the inner portion of the image. The atmospheres of these monstrosities are very turbulent and they also physically pulsate in size and luminosity, making these doppler measurements kind of difficult to interpret. These observations don't necessarily represent the actual rotational value of the innermost regions, and the inner core, where the nuclear fireworks that actually drive everything is occurring, is much smaller than the atmosphere that we see visually. The observed outermost layers are almost like a spherical smokestack with alot of mass loss being ongoing. One must take care not to read too much into these observations. There is much to unwrap here.
@stargazer5784 Being only a chemistry graduate (1965 at that), I have always thought of Betelgeuse as a puffy circumstellar aurora, excited by stellar coronal mass ejections. This would be consistent with its spectrum being described as ‘complex’, rather than ‘thermal’. It would also invite re-evaluation of the spin dynamics of the system, with the probability of the ‘core’ being quite different from the ‘cortex’.¬¬¬ It might also be interesting to know whether the puffiness is only in our direction, that is, could it represent a stellar bow shock?
I think the team that measured the doppler shift needs more data to establish the true rotation period. I also think that the team that proposed the "boiling surface" is mistaken.
Hi Alex, could you perhaps make a video on where objects in space get their spin from and what causes some things to spin in the opposite direction to most other things.
This is exactly the kind of thinking that is needed in Cosmology, to take a step back, look at the whole situation including yourself and your tools and methodology, before making grandiose announcements about the state of the universe.
I get a buzz every time we find out what we know about physics isn't quite true, so I'd love it to actually be rotating that fast. If I was to put money on it though, I'd probably say the critics are right
Has there been any theories about how a star that large could have a rotation speed that fast? Like is it even possible under the most ridiculous, oddball, 1 in a quadrillion circumstance?
So it's basically a fiery ocean. It sounds like it's behaving like watery waves responding to the pull of La Luna. However, there is no such object currently observed / moon acting as neighbor close enough for a heavenly body relationship gravitational pull of Betelgeuse- right? So what would cause the fiery surface of the star to undulate and flow and cross between red and blue types waves we all saw the animation of, the one about different kinds of heat, I think. It must be caused from the star's internal core and what materials its made of, plus the subsequent layers going out towards the surface like an onion. My guess is some sort of Non-Newtonian Element/Metal. Either by the heat of each ocean materials mixing and sloshing back to their respective sides / or amount of atoms comprising the "water" of the fiery plasma ocean, of whatever differing element that clearly both have enough stability to mix amongst the differently other fiery "ocean" and return back to their comfy spot on the star in which they are produced more strongly. Like Stitch/Experiment 626 and Reuben/Experiment 625 and their amiable natures and differing special interests. And alternative, but which I think is less likely, gaseous molecules operating under that same circumstance description- either by heat, or by how many atoms their elements got. Personally, I think it's more solid-y leaning than air/molecule. Ponder the thought and hypothesis. An alternate hypothesis from my husband; What if Betelgeuse's core is off-center from the star itself? This may cause the strange behavior of the star. Essentially, what if the the core, rather than just spinning as is normal, is orbiting itself? He believes this can be caused by a change in density from one half of the core, to the other. So the core is more or less orbiting itself, while the rest of the star orbits that in turn
If it weren’t a gradient, then the randomness of the bubbling effect would often result in the start looking like it were spinning the wrong, way…right? Why would it always have an appearance of spinning in the same direction if it were turbulent? The first time the blue ended up on the other side of the start, they would throw out the gradient hypothesis, no?
No, i don't think it's spinning this fast, i think what's happening is that it's feeding, and the thing it's feeding off is creating a stream of plasma on one side of the side, and because of the plasma the light is redshifted as it passes through the plasma in the process called plasma redshift. It's the same phenomomina that the pioneer 6 spacescraft experienced when going around the sun, and the same behaviour that we get from quasars when the quasar beam points at us, the light going through that beam is massively redshifted, so the quasar looks like it's moving away at improbable velocities.
Considering the orientation of the axis of rotation is completely unknown and the unknown behaviour of the of the outer atmosphere of of a star like Betelgeuse, I don't think you can say with any certainty at what speed Betelgeuse is rotating at all.
There's also the possibility that both are correct. If this star did cannibalize its binary brother (or sister?) then it could have that massively fast spin. Of course, we also know that the star is about to go supernova. We don't exactly have a great deal of (visual) info regarding stars going supernova and what they would actually look like in the prepping stages. I would think that much like everything else in physics, certain characteristics would be perfectly expected, like 'bubbling' occurring at weakest points in an explosive as it begins to detonate. So, the surface might be an absolute nightmare of bubbling, ejections, and so much more... but ALSO be spinning at 5 km/s.
You need to adjust your verb tenses. Whatever we're seeing from Betelgeuse happened 650 years ago. Betelgeuse WAS rotating at a certain rotational velocity.
This analysis is a lot like the CMB anisotropy, just on a disk instead of sphere…a dipole moment means coherent motion, and higher order moments are something else. But if the separation between modes is at best 10%….that’s not a measurement. What’s the timescale of convection currents over there?
Spinning, snd bubbling? Its pretty scary to think about that huge thing bubbling like the simulation shows, wow. Im sitting on my porch enjoying the storm and this absolutely nothing compared to a supernova explosion.
Hi everyone, Alex here, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who joined Patreon. Your membership is what allows me to keep Astrum what it is, and not what the algorithm looks for. bit.ly/4anEb5u
I am pretty much a pinned comment
Thanks again xxx
love u astrum
the second you mentioned doplar shift, i was thinking 'wow, the spin!'. very cool.
you didn't explain the overall spectrum , established, of star spinning speeds from low-high for small cores of stars ( neutron/magnetar/pulsar) speeds, to large starts...
thing is, also, you well know, stars are like onions, with layers. the bigger and more 'fluffy' the star the more there is an asymmetry of speeds between layers, or at least, the more possible there is big differences. so the core of our sun probably spins much faster than the outside, is my understanding. and this also creates turbulence inside the sun as well. so it's complex. for a star 600 light years closer ( pretty damn close ) , but of such size, my guestimate is there is NOT going to be a resolution to this 'debate' after the analysis is done.
we won't know.
but if the speed at which it now rotates is too fast, than it's probably obvious nonsense and will be discounted as it already is.
my underesanding is that if things too massive spin too quickly, they shed or break apart as the roche limit is functionally 'inside' the thing , as internal mass becomes 'broken apart' and becomes 'external mass'. so a single body can break into 2 functionally separate gravitational bodies. this, however is extremely unlikely without some outside force ( a star exploding usually ....) , so odds are if this spin limit is well defined. there are no new physics going on here. either the star spun up to a very high speed, but not 'break apart' speed, and we've overestimate the speed, or ---our physics are wrong, or our data is wrong.
unlikely the physics is wrong.
seriously though.
this video was great.
Also for reference, the earth rotates about itself at .45 km/s --1100 or so mph for the horizon to move at the equator, moon spins at about 100x lower speed at its equator.
and the sun? 1.9km/s
spin is a fun thing to compare, but then there is also the complexity of reality of onion layers.
venus spins UBER slowly and in retrograde , but it's winds are super-velocity and winds are mass, tenuous, but still mass. so great assymetries can exist, particularly so at the final outer boundary.
astrum.
you're one of the absolute all time best space-astronomy channels. i have watched them all.
thank you . thank you and thank you
there are systems with more than just 2 stars as well, perhaps it cannibalized multiple stars XD
I hope I live long enough to see the effects of the explosion. I'm 70 years old. I have been watching and waiting for the event, but it just seems to be beyond my view. In my lifetime, I have witnessed comets, the collision of the comet fragment into the surface of Jupiter, the landing on the moon, (most memorable to be sure). The crowning glory to this would be seeing the phoenix of Betelguese.
if it did explode, it happened about 700 years ago, so you're just a few centuries too late.
Me too....cheers.
Just keep hanging on. It may well have done its thing long enough ago for you to see it. Seventy isn’t that old.
Interesting... 🤔
Don't worry. I'm also excited. I'm 27, but aware that it might not even happen in my lifetime.
I have a feeling you and I will somehow get to experience it anyway!
I've heard for a while that Betelgeuse is a non-spherical shape, but had a lot of trouble visualizing how that could possibly look. The simulations and comparisons of Betelgeuse to a giant drop of boiling water finally made it click for me! Thanks for the informative video!
Because Betelgeuse is so large, its surface gravity is extremely weak, so extreme turbulence is to be expected.
youre right, physics SHOULDNT allow it. together we can stop it!
😂
Lmao, the laws of physics are just a concept, not a full on fact of everything and physics is changing all the time
Physics should vote blue
count me in!! we can't allow this...
We should make a petition
My opinion on this topic is that I'm completely unqualified to have one. I look forward to this mystery being eventually solved.
Yeah, best answer I've read so far.
you don’t need a degree to try to make sense of the world. it’s okay to theorize, even without an astrophysics education. being said, these are theories not facts. but most scientific discoveries were theories or accidents trying to answer theories. so if everyone just thought about the universe maybe we would gain some new perspectives that we’ve never heard before.
Wait, you can DO that??
@@noahgoodwin392You are so right! I believe every human has something to input in the overall quest for understanding. I personally have done a lot of research into redshift and feel like it’s every misunderstood. Look into plasma/electric theories and some of these “breaking the laws of physics” problems begin to have more plausable non-breaking explainations!
@@Herb. thank you for the rec! i will definitely check that out
That visual of Betelgeuse's surface violently boiling is a whole new level of cosmic horror I never thought I could experience
Indeed. Especially considering it's so large it would expand near Jupiter's orbit. Imagine those giant "bubbles" the size of planetary orbits....
When was that part in the video?? I didn't see anything scary.
Horrifying in a cool way tho right? 😂 😮
Almost gives me the same feeling that monster waves in the North Atlantic do.
@@silentedict4256 Whenever I need a heavy dose of existential angst I think about super massive black holes.... sure , jupiter's orbit is impressive for a star....but the schwarzschild radius of the largest known black hole extends out past neptune...~1300 AU ..... that's 40x the distance between the sun and neptune..... even typing this right now has me aghast at how absurdly massive that is....
4:20 france jumpscare
I will bet that its surface is a chaotic turbulent mess. It is obviously not breaking any laws of physics, but challenging our limited understanding of them.
I do get a little bemused when people say Betelgeuse is about to go supernova. It could well have done 300 years ago, meaning it's another 350 years before we find out.
Everybody knows it likely already went supernova. It’s just inconvenient to say in conversation “oh sweet, this star will soon send light our way indicating it already went supernova.” Accuracy yields to brevity if everyone still understands the message.
@@NoNo-xh7ru likely? really? it probably wont happen for hundreds of thousands if not millions of years.
@@lepperkin wheres your phd little bro
the oblateness of such a fast rotating star should look hilarious if viewed closer
bro imagine going to betelgeuse ans when you get there it's a fucking plate lmao
@@KingdomOfSaulo flatsunners would be stoked
Betelgeuse is like blobs of thin gas/plasma on the outside. Due to its size and relatively low gravity you probably won't see anything significant. In Space Engine there are simulations, from incredible distances those stars resemble giant cauliflowers. The inner sphere is probably oblate, but angular momentum is not as fast as on the outside,
@@E.T.S. yeah i mean if it were spinning as fast as falsely assumed and was normal otherwise
@@KingdomOfSaulo ah yes, Mesklin.
You all have such smart comments and here I am thinking about how much the model of Betelgeuse at 0:50 looks like an omelet
Methinks we should consult Ford Prefect about this, since it's his home system.
He doesn't like to speak of the great collapsing hrung disaster.
Jist don't panic amd remember to bring your towel.
He’d knock back a Pangalactic Gargleblaster and toast the star’s demise.
From a safe distance.
@@mikekolokowsky - At the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, no doubt.
He would just say, “don’t panic!” And to keep your towel handy.
How exactly would a star rotating at 5 km/sec be breaking the laws of physics? A study by the Royal Observatory of Belgium concluded that most stars cooler than F7 generally rotate at no faster than 50 km/sec, while hotter stars -- A-class (white), B-class (bluish-white), and O-class (blue) -- are often rotating faster than 100 km/sec. Hell, Jupiter's rotational velocity is 12.6 km/sec, more than twice as fast as Betelgeuse's observed rotational speed.
Looking at blue supergiants, the rotational velocity is even higher. Rigel's is 25±3 km/sec, even though it has an estimated 21±3 solar masses compared to Betelgeuse's 14-19 solar masses. Nothing being stated about Betelgeuse in this video is that extraordinary compared to other stars -- save that it might, possibly, go supernova in the next 100,000 years or so.
This channel is trash. Maybe you just figured that out, too. Glad to have you along. He does a lot better at faking it than most channels do.
It doesn't violate physics, obviously it can't if it's really happening. It's just that it would have had to be spinning like a neutron star speed earlier (which can become whole fractions of light speed) in it's life and then expanded into this massive super giant. Which who knows, maybe that's exactly what happened or something similar, maybe it used to be one and swallowed up another star that's still swirling around it.
Something just sounds wrong.
5 km/s on the surface sounds fairly ordinary, considering the diameter is so much more huge than the one of the sun.
I don't have all the physical hindsight behind it, but it seems intuitively unremarkable.
Just 100,000 years ?! That's ok, I'll wait. I hope it does in just half that time, so I don't need to wait that much...
If Betelgeuse is a bubbling star, then two images taken some time apart should look completely different. If it is a rotating star, then they should look the same.
Exactly my thoughts, this "mistake" would only happen if they only took 1 measurement, which is never the case
That makes some initial sense but these guys haven't been thinking about it for an hour like you have and will without a doubt thought of this.
Define 'some time apart'. The 'bubbles' referred to in this video are upwards of a hundred million miles long. It could take a decade for them to form and dissipate. In that same decade, the speed of rotation for a star that isn't 'bubbling' could increase or decrease. I doubt this is a simple matter of taking two measurements so much as it is a systematic review of thousands of measurements over hundreds or thousands of days.
Rotation - yes if you time it right
Bubbling - not if the bubbles come and go in the same places and there's resolution issues to consider with the imagine method
Ever met a bubbling star? Ever seen two images of said star? 'get an autograph?...
Even as a child, and I am two days older than dirt, I was obsessed with Betelgeuse, Venus, Sirius, Mars, and other bright objects. I always wanted to visit those bright places. Anyway, thanks for all you do in keeping us intelligent. I will also add, your voice is so soothing... I could listen to you read the entire internet.
I love pointing the planets out to my daughter on the walk over to her mother's. She always asks me if she'll go to Jupiter and be an alien one day. I tell her there's nothing stopping her. Glad videos like these exist so I always having something cool to teach her
If physics says something shouldn’t exist despite its existence, then the physics is wrong and needs to be fundamentally reformed.
I really enjoyed this explanation of the surface dynamics and rotation of Betelgeuse, thanks Alex. It just shows how unstable the outer layers of a red supergiant are in comparison to a "settled" outer layer of our own main sequence yellow dwarf star.
5:33 I finally understand angular momentum, I had to play back at quarter speed to ensure I fully grasped the camel, I mean concept, fully grasped the concept.
If it's spinning that fast, it'll become a millisecond pulsar when it collapses, or it's also a possibility that because it's spinning so fast, it could also become a magnetar, one of the scariest, coolest things in the universe besides a black hole.
5:26 - I don't think that is how angular momentum works. If a rotating object expands, the surface velocity should remain relatively constant while the rate of rotation decreases. Expanding stars probably have a few other factors to add in, like internal particle friction and fluid currents, that may decrease the surface velocity to some extent, but not by the factor of expansion.
It's only about 1/45 the sun's density, though. Hardly the same class of object
So, what if it's just a mix of the two explanations? What if the star's still spinning fast enough to get that detectable gradient, but its boiling surface is the reason why it looks like it's spinning so fast and why its gradient is still a bit less than perfectly smooth?
Maybe its core is sinking inwards and the mass is like the ballerina pulling her arms in. Maybe it’s getting faster. Maybe all supernova do before they blow.
And so, they get faster and denser in the middle, but the equator bulges out….you get all those bubbles and changes in brightness. This thing is about to blow maybe huh?
i love this channel SOOOO MUCH but PLEASE as someone that has trouble processing auditory words/speech, please sync captions to the speech. 😭😭 i have to replay things over and over to make sure the captions lined up with what i heard AND with what i understood so i can fully understand the topics at hand.
Really interesting video! Keep shining Betelgeuse!
So, even with that, wouldn't it be easy to rule it one way or the other by collecting a large enough of a sample size of images to determine how much of the Doppler shift is speed and how much is bubbling gasses? Also, by comparing all of the images in the same orientation. If the shifts tend to follow a fairly consistent pattern, say red left, blue right, that should clarify things quite a lot.
Nice details. One additional detail I would have appreciated would have been a quick explanation of how we calculated its mass. And could its interior be a different level of massiveness than we would expect?
Ofc it's not a star...it's a Michael Keaton breakthrough character!
So Michael Keaton is the star?
@@mike7652 No, he's Beetlejuice/Betelgeuse.
@@aarongreenfield9038 but he is a Star though
@@highviewbarbell Yes, the main star of beetlejuice
At least it's not Kevin Costner.
The last thing our galaxy needs is another baseball field.
.
I wonder if such a high rotational speed would impact the lifespan of such a star by adding another outwards force to compete against gravitational collapse alongside the stars own internal fusion pressures. At a mass that big with that much rotational speed, the apparent centrifugal forces would be monstrous
The rotation of Betelgeuse isn't that impressive at 20 years. Since Betelgeuse is about as big in diameter as Jupiter's orbit, we can compare the two. Jupiter obits at nearly twice as fast at 12 years.
My take is that it is still in the process of eating its companion. The two central cores spinning around each other. But both suns gases are largely wrapped around both stars and are behaving like ingredients in a cosmic food mixer constantly being swirled around at a huge rate by the"paddles" of binary core mutually rotating about each other.
This video is freaking awesome! THank you so much, love this channel!
I really want to live long enough to see Betelgeuse go nova.
Thank you for posting Alex. As always, a very interesting and well presented video. Two things spring to mind here. If the bubbles of gas are receiving light from the star then re-radiating it then the light received by them will be spectroscopically shifted blue or red depending upon whether the bubble is falling toward the star or receding. Any light re-radiated will also be shifted conversely and the net result will be zero shift. If the gas bubbles are radiating light of their own then of course the explanation is valid.
Another possibility is that the star may have a planetary disc in a stable orbit and its peripheral speed might achieve a very high velocity. If that is the case the reflected light from the star from it would be shifted blue and red as seen by the astronomers.
@Astrum - Alex… What I find even MORE amazing, is this bubbling effect! The sheer size of the star having a bubbling effect implies that the speed of these “bubbles” would be extreme (seeing that you stated the size of Betelgeuse is 1000 times that of our sun)!!! We’re probably talking about bubbles that are the size of the distance between Mars to Jupiter. Can they calculate the speed at which the gases are traveling in these bubbles?? Your thoughts?
A star that big with a surface that turbulent is pretty intense. Expanses of space the size of Earth’s orbit being consumed and collapsing multiple times per minute.
Considering we can't go a week without some sort of physics-breaking observation, yet nothing ever changes, I won't be holding my breath on this one, either.
clearly our physics isn't complete or correct.
Odd how people in the comments, people who produce nothing, criticize someone who does…
We can test whether the color gradient is caused by rotation by checking if the feature persists over idfferent observations. If it does, then it's likely that it's rotation. Otherwise it's definitely not.
Can you link the data you used to make this episode? Measurements of the speed of the star? And the "limits" of the spin speeds?
Optical illusion. Simplest answer makes the most sense. Looking forward to what they find at the end of this.
The American healthcare system would charge so much for a ride in a light speed ambulance.
10:00 OR the answer could be that we learn more about turbulent flow than we realized. What if turbulent flow can manifest in a uniform way? Where there are still patches that contain more or less energy so that it could be mistaken for rotation? Or, perhaps energy flows in a rotational way and some other factor causes it to manifest as seemingly more turbulent?
Not a scientist, but just a fan. Wondering if the large amount of activity can cause gravitational differences within the boiling masses that if happen just right, could trigger am in-lesion supernova catalyst type event? This star certainly not your stereotypical version of a generic object. Very cool.
I’m struggling to wrap my mind around how something can be so huge that even though it’s surface is rotating so quickly it still takes 20 years to complete a rotation!
I won’t even lie.. the siren thing.. I didn’t even know.. I watch this channel and I feel so dumb at times.. but I LOVE the feeling of my mind getting absolutely bent up each video. Thank you.🙏
Next time you're out and a siren goes past, take notice. It's a cool effect to hear in real life.
Living in the southern hemisphere, I have a good view of this star at night.
So if anything happens, I'll be sure to let you know.
This is a great science channel! Thank you for the content.
Clearly our physics is wrong.
Pure hubris to think that our model is right…
Electrical theory is based on an assumption that turned out to be wrong. Still works though lol
*incomplete
@@MillerVanDotTVModels aren’t about being “right” or “true”, they are about being as accurate as possible.
Nobody thinks any theory we have is 100% accurate and “true”.
@@superheavydeathmetal most people do not consider that.
One thing the universe has taught me repeatedly is that more than one thing can be true at the same time. It could be spinning extremely fast AND boiling these massive bubbles at the same time.
You need 2 versions of your videos. One for people with no science/space knowledge and one for enthusiasts. I just can't wait for this long for the point.
Ah, theoretical physics. The non-science science.
Should be easy to get into then. What are you waiting for?
A enormous rotating mass like Betelgeuse might be dragging space-time along with its rotation. This way, light from the side turning away from us is doppler-shifted even more
Not only the Universe is stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think
-Werner Heisenberg
I'm impressed, intrigued, and kind of disgusted all at once by how much we think we're able to figure out by looking at something so far away that the image quality is like a half-loaded pic from a 90's era website.
Anyway, human curiosity and wonder wins so here's my take. Not an astronomer or astrophysicist, just an enthusiast, but what if it didn't completely finish eating the stuff it possibly cannibalized to get this big? Couldn't a massive enough object orbiting really close disturb the surface, potentially causing bubbles and/or the appearance of faster rotation due to it being nearly indistinguishable from Betelgeuse itself and spinning much faster because of how close it's orbiting? Could there be an object inside the corona? Or maybe eating something massive 'caused a long-lasting effect on the "surface?"
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Seems like a perfect candidate for the Event Horizon Telescope to point to.
I don’t know how long it takes for those bubbles to exist, but you would expect the same color gradient over time on a smooth star, and a constantly changing one on betelgeuse.. so it’s probably a matter of time to see how these exposures develop.
Curiously, I have been observing for a while--with my naked eyes--a bright red object in the night sky that I initially assumed to be Betelgeuse. But I was rather confused by what appears to be a vivid, glowing blue ring at the top of the object, since I had never known anything about the Betelgeuse having blue in its overall coloration. Now, however, as a result of seeing this very well done and informative video, I have learned much more about the star than I might have ever expected to learn about it.
Ocham’s Shaving Cream says that whatever the most boring explanation is, is probably the correct one. That’s why we never seem to find aliens. If it’s either the star spinning at ridiculous speed or just a measurement error, it will probably be the latter.
My hunch (and thats all it is), tell me the two star cores have not yet merged, hence the irregular chaotic surface. Once the cores merge expect fireworks. Also wouldn’t such a fast rotation throw off stellar material? Alternatively, this object could be two smaller stars orbiting inside the corona of what was once a regular red giant. That would be a truly exotic beast.
If longer exposure images mean higher resolution, of course there's going to be a smooth gradient of it's surface
Weird star getting weirder. I'm here for it.
I'm drinking a glass of freshly squeezed Betelgeuse right now.
With such high velocities in the atmosphere of Betelgeuse there must be tremendous sonic booms. How might this effect the physical characteristics of the star?
Betelgeuse is actually a trinary system I'm decay hidden by the outgassing of the the stars as they fall into each other's atmosphere. That is why the surface is so chaotic and it spins so fast. In a few years, we will witness a nova that will make a hyoernova look like the cooling wick of an extinguished candle
That Doppler effect is so true!
Whenever I've got blue balls, I'm coming.
Afterwards they are red.
Science is fun
Shouldn't it be straightforward to verify the inconsistent rotation and angular momentum? Or do 5 random samples point to a consistent speed?
I wonder why you don't mention that Betelgeuse was the first star ever to be expanded from a "dot" on the plate/screen/sensors /eyepiece -- and that alone was a spectacular feat. I think it was around 2005, but maybe it was Hubble in the late 90'es. There are others?
Given that it is considered a nova candidate I suspect its probs a bit of both, it is spinning fast but also boiling due to instability.
Why not a combination of both?
If it is spinning faster because of cannibalism or something, while also erupting gas bubbles at ludicrous speeds, could that make the Doppler shift appear more stable than it is?
If Betelgeuse really is about to go supernova, it would be amazing to witness. But it could also cause some problems for Earth, such as increased radiation. I hope astronomers will continue to monitor Betelgeuse closely.
Maybe it is spinning fast enough ejecting its surface into space then pulling it back!?
Zeus: Hey Eris, remember that day you sneezed real hard?
Eris: What, like, eons ago? Yeah, I guess. Why?
Zeus: Some humans noticed the star you were near is spinning way too fast.
Eris: Whoopsie~
Well if it was rotating, we’d already know in which direction it would be rotating.
Because for some strange reason, everything that we’ve seen in the universe that is rotating, all rotates in an anti-clockwise or to the right.
Can you explain why this is?
You want to use the angular acceleration of the star, not tangential velocity. For example, Earth spins at roughly two pi radians per day.
There is Nothing Better than a BEATLE JUICE
after a long, hard day !!
If betelgeuse is really rotating at that rate and is as volatile as predicted, then perhaps the gravitational mass of those plumes as they expand outwards powers the enhanced rotational speed. Much like powering yourself on a swing with your legs
Considering we thought Pluto was smaller than it actually is, which New Horizons discovered. I am completely convinced we have something wrong given the sheer distance.
Red giants were once described by physicists as a red hot vacuum. That is to say that the majority of the envelope that we see with our eyes is very tenuous in nature. The image shown of the observed doppler shifts (7:22) didn't place the most heavily blue shifted region cleanly on the limb of the star, but more toward the inner portion of the image. The atmospheres of these monstrosities are very turbulent and they also physically pulsate in size and luminosity, making these doppler measurements kind of difficult to interpret. These observations don't necessarily represent the actual rotational value of the innermost regions, and the inner core, where the nuclear fireworks that actually drive everything is occurring, is much smaller than the atmosphere that we see visually. The observed outermost layers are almost like a spherical smokestack with alot of mass loss being ongoing. One must take care not to read too much into these observations. There is much to unwrap here.
@stargazer5784
Being only a chemistry graduate (1965 at that), I have always thought of Betelgeuse as a puffy circumstellar aurora, excited by stellar coronal mass ejections.
This would be consistent with its spectrum being described as ‘complex’, rather than ‘thermal’. It would also invite re-evaluation of the spin dynamics of the system, with the probability of the ‘core’ being quite different from the ‘cortex’.¬¬¬
It might also be interesting to know whether the puffiness is only in our direction, that is, could it represent a stellar bow shock?
I think the team that measured the doppler shift needs more data to establish the true rotation period. I also think that the team that proposed the "boiling surface" is mistaken.
Hi Alex, could you perhaps make a video on where objects in space get their spin from and what causes some things to spin in the opposite direction to most other things.
This is exactly the kind of thinking that is needed in Cosmology, to take a step back, look at the whole situation including yourself and your tools and methodology, before making grandiose announcements about the state of the universe.
That’s what peer-reviewed journals are for.
Divide half the velocity of gas giant by 2.77751 and you get the actual rotation speed of the molten silica crust underneath the
surface plasma storm.
I get a buzz every time we find out what we know about physics isn't quite true, so I'd love it to actually be rotating that fast. If I was to put money on it though, I'd probably say the critics are right
Has there been any theories about how a star that large could have a rotation speed that fast? Like is it even possible under the most ridiculous, oddball, 1 in a quadrillion circumstance?
So it's basically a fiery ocean. It sounds like it's behaving like watery waves responding to the pull of La Luna.
However, there is no such object currently observed / moon acting as neighbor close enough for a heavenly body relationship gravitational pull of Betelgeuse- right? So what would cause the fiery surface of the star to undulate and flow and cross between red and blue types waves we all saw the animation of, the one about different kinds of heat, I think.
It must be caused from the star's internal core and what materials its made of, plus the subsequent layers going out towards the surface like an onion. My guess is some sort of Non-Newtonian Element/Metal. Either by the heat of each ocean materials mixing and sloshing back to their respective sides / or amount of atoms comprising the "water" of the fiery plasma ocean, of whatever differing element that clearly both have enough stability to mix amongst the differently other fiery "ocean" and return back to their comfy spot on the star in which they are produced more strongly. Like Stitch/Experiment 626 and Reuben/Experiment 625 and their amiable natures and differing special interests.
And alternative, but which I think is less likely, gaseous molecules operating under that same circumstance description- either by heat, or by how many atoms their elements got. Personally, I think it's more solid-y leaning than air/molecule.
Ponder the thought and hypothesis.
An alternate hypothesis from my husband; What if Betelgeuse's core is off-center from the star itself? This may cause the strange behavior of the star. Essentially, what if the the core, rather than just spinning as is normal, is orbiting itself? He believes this can be caused by a change in density from one half of the core, to the other. So the core is more or less orbiting itself, while the rest of the star orbits that in turn
I'm glad Betelgeuse won't explode in my lifetime. It's like an old friend, and the night sky wouldn't be the same without it.
It's rotating quickly and bubbling a lot; it has stellar indigestion from consuming its little brother.
If it weren’t a gradient, then the randomness of the bubbling effect would often result in the start looking like it were spinning the wrong, way…right? Why would it always have an appearance of spinning in the same direction if it were turbulent? The first time the blue ended up on the other side of the start, they would throw out the gradient hypothesis, no?
No, i don't think it's spinning this fast, i think what's happening is that it's feeding, and the thing it's feeding off is creating a stream of plasma on one side of the side, and because of the plasma the light is redshifted as it passes through the plasma in the process called plasma redshift. It's the same phenomomina that the pioneer 6 spacescraft experienced when going around the sun, and the same behaviour that we get from quasars when the quasar beam points at us, the light going through that beam is massively redshifted, so the quasar looks like it's moving away at improbable velocities.
It's spinning AND burrbling. I declare it now.
i hope technology will advance far enough to see betelgeuse in full quality before i die
Considering the orientation of the axis of rotation is completely unknown and the unknown behaviour of the of the outer atmosphere of of a star like Betelgeuse, I don't think you can say with any certainty at what speed Betelgeuse is rotating at all.
There's also the possibility that both are correct. If this star did cannibalize its binary brother (or sister?) then it could have that massively fast spin. Of course, we also know that the star is about to go supernova. We don't exactly have a great deal of (visual) info regarding stars going supernova and what they would actually look like in the prepping stages. I would think that much like everything else in physics, certain characteristics would be perfectly expected, like 'bubbling' occurring at weakest points in an explosive as it begins to detonate.
So, the surface might be an absolute nightmare of bubbling, ejections, and so much more... but ALSO be spinning at 5 km/s.
Am a bit curious how much that colorization of satellite difference might make on when they think Beetlejuice might (or may have gone) Supernova.
You need to adjust your verb tenses. Whatever we're seeing from Betelgeuse happened 650 years ago. Betelgeuse WAS rotating at a certain rotational velocity.
This analysis is a lot like the CMB anisotropy, just on a disk instead of sphere…a dipole moment means coherent motion, and higher order moments are something else. But if the separation between modes is at best 10%….that’s not a measurement. What’s the timescale of convection currents over there?
Spinning, snd bubbling?
Its pretty scary to think about that huge thing bubbling like the simulation shows, wow. Im sitting on my porch enjoying the storm and this absolutely nothing compared to a supernova explosion.
You've said Beetlejuice way more than 3 times . This means that he is going to appear at every Wal-Mart
1.2 Million: The amount of Earths that can fit inside our Sun
700 Million: The amount of Suns that can fit inside of Betelgeuse