Quote from: RibsClock;1756389It's 640 light years away, and the way it's moving in our galaxy would have a lot to do with what directions particles from a supernova would travel.

It would seem to me there's a phenomenally higher likelihood of us being wiped out by an errant solar flare from our own sun.

I think you grossly underestimate the amount of energy expelled during a supernova. Stephen Hawking goes into supernovas a bit in 'A Briefer History of Time' that I happened to finish about a month ago. Not that I'm an expert, but he spelled out a supernova nearby is death to us.

EDIT: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-01/star-verge-supernova-could-threaten-life-earth

When did 640 lightyears away become nearby?

Quote from: DWARFINATOR;1756394When did 640 lightyears away become nearby?

In cosmic terms that's practically next door, or even in the same room. The Milky Way is about 100,000 light years across to give you some idea of scale.

QuoteGiven that scientist have recently found that T Pyxidis is but 3,260  light-years away from us -- a neighbor by cosmic standards and much  closer than previously thought -- that kind of epic explosion would not  be good for the stellar neighborhood.

i believe that the known universe is around 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 meters in length, so i dont know how far 640 light years could really be

also this is totally fitting for the threads theme

[U2]YCKANiM9tUM[/U2]

we all gon die

nothins gonna change my world

Quote from: DWARFINATOR;1756400we all gon die

If humanity doesn't manage to take itself out, or a natural disaster on Earth, the universe will eventually get us.

Quote from: RibsClock;1756402I would submit that there have been other supernovas relatively close to earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geminga - 522 light years away, about 300,000 years ago (homo sapiens would have existed at this time in an extremely primitive form)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_Supernova_Remnant - 800 light years, 11,000 years ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RX_J0852.0-4622 - 650-700 light years, 800 years ago

Mind you, these are but some of the very few that we've observed and know anything about.

We have no idea what the mass of those stars were, but we have a pretty good idea the mass of Betelgeuse. It's not tiny.

Also your last source isn't a good one.

QuoteIf the remnant is indeed young and nearby, its corresponding supernova  should have been visible from the Earth in about the year 1250. One  difficulty with this interpretation is that there are no contemporary  written reports of any supernova at that time or in that part of the  sky.

Something that close would have been seen.

Also you were correct about orientation with Betelgeuse, was reading up on it on Wikipedia. We should be safe from a gamma ray burst, however we've never witnessed a supernova that close with that much mass. Hawking paints a very dim picture when he describes it.

Quote from: RibsClock;1756204Doesn't its distance from us mean that it technically already did this a long long time ago?

This is true.

Quote from: RibsClock;1756204Doesn't its distance from us mean that it technically already did this a long long time ago?

In a galaxy far, far away...