A little more than a millennium after the Crab Nebula burst on the eyes of humans, people will get to see a predicted nova when V Sagittae, V Sge, rivals Venus in the night sky. It will be 2083, so astronomers Bradley E. Schaefer, Juhan Frank, and Manos Chatzopoulos tell us.* Well, maybe not exactly 2083, but close. The three astronomers say they have a give-or-take value of + or – 16 years. If you’re around in 2083, plus or minus 16 years, look toward Sagitta. Don’t have the patience to keep looking for it over a potential 32 years? Don’t worry. The nightly news anchors, reporters, and astronomers will tell you.
Still, if the astronomers are correct, what they have calculated will surpass the remarkable ancient prediction of an eclipse by Thales in 585 BCE because eclipses are frequently repeated phenomena. Novae occur in different parts of the sky in what previously has been a largely unpredictable set of occurrences. When the Crab Nebula or SN 1987 filled the sky with previously unseen light, night watchers were caught by surprise. The three astronomers from LSU predict with the relative assurance of college football prognosticators who listed the university’s football team as one of the top ten to watch in the 2019 season. Considering the variables, maybe the prediction that V Sge will brighten the sky six decades from now is far more remarkable, especially since LSU almost seemed to be a shoe in to play for the National Championship this coming Monday night.
Of course, one might say, “But V Sge is 7,760 plus 750 or minus 460 light years away. What kind of prediction is a prediction about something that already happened. If it blew, it blew over seven thousand years ago. We’ll just be the recipients of photons and neutrinos that after a long journey will reach us in 2083.”
And that’s an interesting observation. Those LSU guys are predicting something that already happened, like saying LSU has already won the National Championship. Would that all our predictions could be about something that already happened, like answering the questions on a Jeopardy rerun.
I’m writing this before LSU plays Clemson for the title. But I’m going out on a limb, and telling you that LSU will definitely win because it was written in the stars for it to win. But if I’m wrong, then unlike waiting for the prediction about V Sge to occur sometime over a period of 32 years but finding that it doesn’t occur for an additional 500 years, my football prediction will come and go in a relative instant. My guess is that as the time for the nova nears, there will be cults of people waiting for the doom they believe it will usher in, just the way Heaven’s Gate’s people awaited the doom supposedly associated with a comet, the people who thought the Mayan calendar predicted dire events, and those who thought that Y2K would destroy civilization or mark the Second Coming.
Of course, if LSU loses, then there will be a number of fans and bettors who will believe they have, in fact, lived in a time of doom—that I can predict with surety.
*Lavalle, Mini. Binary star V Sagittae to explode as very bright nova by century’s end. 7 Jan 2020. Phys.org. https://phys.org/news/2020-01-binary-star-sagittae-bright-nova.html
Accessed January 10, 2020. For published proofs of the prediction see. https://www.lsu.edu/physics/files/v_sagittae/vsge_technical-details.pdf
See also: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/09/science/betelgeuse-supernova-fading.html?auth=linked-google . We suspect that Betelgeuse will explode "soon," but we have no accurate predictions.
Still, if the astronomers are correct, what they have calculated will surpass the remarkable ancient prediction of an eclipse by Thales in 585 BCE because eclipses are frequently repeated phenomena. Novae occur in different parts of the sky in what previously has been a largely unpredictable set of occurrences. When the Crab Nebula or SN 1987 filled the sky with previously unseen light, night watchers were caught by surprise. The three astronomers from LSU predict with the relative assurance of college football prognosticators who listed the university’s football team as one of the top ten to watch in the 2019 season. Considering the variables, maybe the prediction that V Sge will brighten the sky six decades from now is far more remarkable, especially since LSU almost seemed to be a shoe in to play for the National Championship this coming Monday night.
Of course, one might say, “But V Sge is 7,760 plus 750 or minus 460 light years away. What kind of prediction is a prediction about something that already happened. If it blew, it blew over seven thousand years ago. We’ll just be the recipients of photons and neutrinos that after a long journey will reach us in 2083.”
And that’s an interesting observation. Those LSU guys are predicting something that already happened, like saying LSU has already won the National Championship. Would that all our predictions could be about something that already happened, like answering the questions on a Jeopardy rerun.
I’m writing this before LSU plays Clemson for the title. But I’m going out on a limb, and telling you that LSU will definitely win because it was written in the stars for it to win. But if I’m wrong, then unlike waiting for the prediction about V Sge to occur sometime over a period of 32 years but finding that it doesn’t occur for an additional 500 years, my football prediction will come and go in a relative instant. My guess is that as the time for the nova nears, there will be cults of people waiting for the doom they believe it will usher in, just the way Heaven’s Gate’s people awaited the doom supposedly associated with a comet, the people who thought the Mayan calendar predicted dire events, and those who thought that Y2K would destroy civilization or mark the Second Coming.
Of course, if LSU loses, then there will be a number of fans and bettors who will believe they have, in fact, lived in a time of doom—that I can predict with surety.
*Lavalle, Mini. Binary star V Sagittae to explode as very bright nova by century’s end. 7 Jan 2020. Phys.org. https://phys.org/news/2020-01-binary-star-sagittae-bright-nova.html
Accessed January 10, 2020. For published proofs of the prediction see. https://www.lsu.edu/physics/files/v_sagittae/vsge_technical-details.pdf
See also: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/09/science/betelgeuse-supernova-fading.html?auth=linked-google . We suspect that Betelgeuse will explode "soon," but we have no accurate predictions.
RSS Feed