Astronomers Awaiting 1a Supernova

Aryabhata writes to tell us BBC News is reporting that astronomers have sighted a star on the brink of a "1a" supernova. This opportunity presents the first chance astronomers have ever had to view a supernova of this magnitude up close. From the article: "They are so rare that the last one known in our galaxy was seen in 1572 by the great Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, who first coined the term nova, for "new star", not realizing he was in fact witnessing the violent end of an unknown star. It has long been believed that type 1a supernovae are the death throes of a white dwarf star. But all modern ones have been so distant that it has not been possible to see what had been there beforehand."

100,000 years? Saw it coming.

[Anonymous Coward]

I took Computer Science as a Humanities subject in college. My girlfriend took it through science. The CS courses feature the same modules, but she was able to take Astrophysics, while I took English. We both consider outselves to have a scientific leaning, though I wouldn't consider myself a "scientist" and she would.

She read the /. blurb and was bouncing (literally!) with excitement, saying "they are reporting it now, so most likely it will be in ten, twenty years - within reasonable research time". I read it and my initial thought was that these reports are being made by science types. That means that this supernova will most likely occur in about 10,000 years, but that some scientist, in a lab somewhere, has just had the bright idea of pushing his research into the media spotlight, where it should (he hopes) be interesting enough to secure him a few more years worth of funding.

From the article: "How soon is not clear [but] ...astronomers will be studying the star closely, to watch its every step towards destruction, and hoping to understand the full details of one of the heaven's great mysteries". *sigh*

My girlfriend's lack of cynicism aside, this is one of my major problems with the science community. So much is driven by a desperate need to secure funding, that science "news", most of the time, is either hypothetical, theoretical, or so far in the future that it makes no difference to the present. In these cases, when a person finds out that no actual advance has been made, he feels both disappointed and betrayed.

I am fed up with reading...

"Newsflash: No physical reason humans cant live to be 300, once the technology arrives!" *

or

"Newsflash: the universe *might* be made up of string!" *

or

"Newsflash: in 100 billion years, this star will explode!" *

etc, when the invisible postscript to every story is:

* Now that I have your attention, please give me some more funding!

"Soon" ...

[kcbrown]

"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." -- the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Not only are the distances vast, the times are vast too. Stars live for billions of years. One year in the lifespan of a human is roughly comparable to perhaps 70 million years in the lifespan of a star.

So when someone says "soon" in reference to a prediction of when some stellar event is going to occur, it's likely you'll have to scale up the term by roughly the same amount. "Soon" to a human generally means within/around a day or so, so scaled up to stellar times, that would be within/around 200,000 years.

I expect that by the time this supernova happens, humans will either be unbelievably technologically advanced, or they'll be extinct.

Re:Don't hold your breath.

[Baddas]

...that we have observed. The key answer is, that we have observed.

The radius of observation of these kinds of things is substantially smaller than infinite. Especially when you consider that earlier periods had a lower capability of observation.

So, really, we're talking about a fairly finite range of space and time in which supernovas would have to occur for them to be human-observable.

Re:"Soon" ...

[topham]

Based on the current trends it will provide just enough power for one person to travel to the corner store.

Re:Actually

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

What do you mean "long ago"? If the light hasn't reached us yet then it's not in our past light cone [wikipedia.org] and therefore it's not in our past.

What do they teach in relativity class these days?

Re:Actually

[Short Circuit]

As Zocalo pointed out, the star is 1,950 light-years away. So the burst in February happened "only" 1,950 years from now. The actual supernova may have already taken place, or it may not take place for another 100,000 years.

Which was my point.

The problem at hand is perspective. Does "it happens at time X" refer to the supernova event taking place at the star, or does it refer to our observation of the event, which would have to take place 1,950 after the event took place at the star?

To put it more generally, does the event's occurance refer to the cause of the observation, or the observation itself?