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[nenjin]

http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/01/21/will-the-earth-have-two-suns-by-2012/?hpt=T2

Note the choicest line of the article:

And while the celestial event could take place before the end of 2012, it may not occur for a million years.

So, you know, freak out at your own risk. Betelgeuse has been a red giant in our knowledge for a while, so this is probably just pandering to the 2012 interest. But still, can you imagine several weeks of eye-obliterating light, or the whackiness that will follow? And the pic in the article makes the point that Betelgeuse is ****ing HUGE.

[Darvi]

Well so much for Ford's non existent home planet.

Does that also imply a sort of arctic summer? Ya know, no night.

[nenjin]

Yeah. And I assume that even on the darkside of the planet, it will be far lighter than normal for several weeks.

[AntiAntiMatter]

This is interesting. I don't believe the pic was a size comparison of Sol and Betelgeuse, though.

Well so much for Ford's non existent home planet.

This was my first though upon seeing this thread.

[Cthulhu]

We've known about this for a long time, this is just sensationalist nonsense.

[Darvi]

Yeah. And I assume that even on the darkside of the planet, it will be far lighter than normal for several weeks.

*groan* Great. I hate too much light.

[Urist Imiknorris]

This is interesting. I don't believe the pic was a size comparison of Sol and Betelgeuse, though.

Well so much for Ford's non existent home planet.

This was my first though upon seeing this thread.

I thought "Too bad for Zaphod, he's about to lose his homeworld."

[woose1]

Wow, the echo comments have some pretty strange stuff in there. "Project Blue Beam"? What?

[Farseer]

Does anyone else really hope something interesting like this would happen in their lifetimes?

[Boksi]

I wouldn't really mind this, being pretty used to the sun being up at midnight. Still, it'd probably have some effects on the Earth's ecology, wouldn't it? Screw with a lot of cicadian rhythms and stuff.

[AntiAntiMatter]

Does anyone else really hope something interesting like this would happen in their lifetimes?

While it would be cool, I am incapable of sleeping in light that is at all bright. I can't tolerate the light pollution from a large-sized city, let alone 24 hours of day. It would be nightmarish. I like the night. Not to mention how much it would screw everything up.

[ChairmanPoo]

I wouldn't really mind this, being pretty used to the sun being up at midnight.

This line made me think of this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhMYgq-0cGI

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Particularily the narration was reminiscent

Your children will be born in a world a two suns. They will never know a sky without them. You can tell them that you remember when there was a pitch black sky with no bright star, and people feared then night.

My favorite bit was the sequence AFTER the Narration, however, in which Europa's oceans melt, and volcanic eruptions generate an atmosphere, with the final scene being an alien jungle, with a monolith towering over it.

[Jopax]

I would really like to see this happen while i'm alive, just for the wow factor since really there aren't many things i have seen that are very impressive, this would do nicely

[Euld]

However, with distance estimates in the last century that have ranged anywhere from 180 to 1,300 light years from Earth, calculating its diameter, luminosity and mass have proven difficult. Betelgeuse is currently thought to lie around 640 light years away...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse
The temporal language of that article bugs me.  If Beletegeuse blew up, then it blew up quite some time ago and referring to it in the future tense makes me wince.
/english_nazi

[Leafsnail]

There's probably some kind of Astronomy Tense Convention (For the Purposes of Sanity).