Earth has long had its faithful sun emitting rays and occasionally wreaking havoc with its massive electromagnetic bursts. But what if we were to look out in the sky on a clear day and see not one sun, but two? And what if this second sun filled the sky with light independent of the first and making night a thing of the past? Such a scenario is more plausible than you might think according to scientists who have just made a startling discovery and say it could happen as early as 2012.
The discovery was made recently when scientists witnessed changes in the Betelgeuse star system. Recent measurements have shown that the star has lost a great deal of its fuel and will be losing even more very soon. What could this mean? When the star loses the last of its fuel, it will explode in a fiery conflagration larger than anything ever witnessed by human eyes even scanning the sky. And after a period, the effects will be so great that the Earth will be showered with light bright enough to be considered a second sun. There will simply be no night for a period.
Such explosions are not unheard of. In the middle ages several incidents led to people thinking the sun had risen early in the night sky, though many of these are still largely unexplained. And even the ones with a proper explanation have historically mysterious and extreme events associated with them. One such incident occurred shortly before the Tunguska incident, leading some to speculate it could have been caused by a massive meteorite. But even this only lasted a few hours over a small village in Britain. If the sun were to have an illuminating companion for several weeks, we might forget what night looks like on our planet for several weeks.
But would it be the end of the world? The same scientists who are making the prediction have assured the world that it would not be. It would just be a highly irregular and rare event. And it would certainly cause a great deal of apprehension even if in the early hours it didn’t cause any major changes to the Earth as we know it aside from the light.
But if the light from Betelgeuse were to reach Earth now, it would mean that the supernova actually happened several hundred years ago, as light can travel extremely fast but not instantaneously. And if the second sun in this case was associated with the prediction made for December 21st, 2012, then it’s not the end of the world as we know it. At least not as far as we know.
It will be the end of several research projects intending to study the void of space without neutrinos. These tiny particles radiate through our own bodies and the Earth itself with no ill effects and have since Earth since the dawn of the human race. The particles are so infinitesimally small they could be considered invisible if not for highly sensitive detecting equipment.
Will there be two suns in the sky in 2012? While it’s still a matter considered unlikely by many, the possibility and subsequent observation of Betelgeuse is certainly enough to raise many eyebrows.