Does anyone else watch 'Dr. Becky' on YouTube?
Her March 'Night Sky News' video, subtitled 'The biggest black hole burp, a wobbly Milky Way & Betelgeuse is brighter' says that...
Obviously lots of theories that have been thrown around this by various different people in the academic community, the amateur astronomy community, and also just people commenting on line as well.
But a paper that caught my eye this month was by (Emily M.) Levesque and (Philip) Massey (2020)1 who pose the explanation... dust... which if you know anything about astrophysics in general, you know magnetic fields and dust are just the bane of astronomers' lives.
Why exactly are magnetic fields "just the bane of astronomers' lives"? How do magnetic fields mess with astronomers' observations?
Cued at 09:16
for the quote, but the topic of Betelgeuse (and Dr. Becky's "I told you so" begins after 07:32