As experts have known it, Betelgeuse is thought to have expanded to 1,000 times wider than the sun. Considering that it will be a part of our own solar system, it is believed that the red giant Betelgeuse star was once so huge that it would reach out to Jupiter's orbit. However, a new discovery has recently intrigued a lot of scientists after it has suggested that the red supergiant star may have been born with a companion star, and later swallowed that star.
Betelgeuse: How Soon Will It Explode?
In one of his statements reported by Daily Galaxy, astronomer J. Craig Wheeler of The University of Texas at Austin and a supernova expert, together with his team has claimed that the swallowed companion theory could potentially explain both Betelgeuse's rapid rotation and this nearby matter. Furthermore, the study's lead expert and his team are found to be continuing their investigations into this enigmatic star. Wheeler claimed that since Betelgeuse is indeed a mysterious and massive star that's nearing to its end life, the team has revealed that it will soon explode as a supernova, but no one knows exactly when.
Furthermore, according to Daily Mail, experts said that the faster rotation of the smaller star is, it will be potentially transferred into Betelgeuse, causing the larger body to speed up. Following its meal, Wheeler's team believes that Betelgeuse would have let out a sort of cosmic burp, blasting a cloud of debris out into space at around 36,000 km/h (22,400 mph). Ultimately, experts have highly emphasized that although no one knows the origin of the red supergiant star with full certainty, there is evidence that Betelgeuse had some kind of commotion, which devoured its sister star on roughly 100,000 years ago when the star expanded into a red supergiant.
