Astronomers from the Villanova University in Philadelphia conducted a study that showed the star T Pyxidis is closer to Earth than earlier speculated.
T Pyxidis
The said star is said to become a supernova very soon, which is an explosion with the force of '20 billion billion billion megatons of TNT.' An explosion this powerful and this close would strip away the Earth's ozone layer, our only protection against deadly space radiation.
T Pyxidis has an apparent magnitude of 15.5 (a measure of a star's brightness. The lower the number, the brighter the star), but there occurred eruptions with maximal apparent magnitude of about 7.0 in the years 1890, 1902, 1920, 1944 and 1966. Despite these explosions, it seems that the star is only growing, and is about to reach the Chandresekhar limit. When this limit is reached, the star would collapse and turn into a supernova.
The American Astrological Society believes that the next explosion is overdue, which occurs every 20-25 years. The next explosion was expected to occur as early as 2007, or as late as 2012.
"The star may certainly become a supernova soon," said vice-president of the UK's Society for Popular Astronomy Robin Scagell.
"But soon could be a long way off, so don't have nightmares."
Don't panic yet, though. Prof. Alex Fillipenko contends that the calculations for the damage caused could be off, because the current computations used data for a gamma-ray burst (GRB), which isn't expected to be produced by T Pyxidis. Another expert stated that "A supernova would have to be 10 times closer [to Earth] to do the damage described."
Dr. Edward M. Sion, when contacted by Scientific American, stated "At the accretion rate we derived, the white dwarf in T Pyxidis will reach the Chandrasekhar Limit in ten million years."
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