Betelgeuse Is Brightening Again

• Still no explanation on the gravitational wave anomaly.
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  Astronomers Detect a Burst of Gravitational Waves From The Direction of Betelgeuse
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• Betelgeuse Is Brightening Again
  by BRIAN KOBERLEIN, https://www.universetoday.com/, 25 Feb 2020
  The latest observations of Betelgeuse show that the star is now beginning to slowly brighten. No supernova today! Nothing to see, better luck next time.
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  Despite some of the hype, this behavior is exactly what astronomers expected. Betelgeuse is a very different star from our Sun. While our Sun is a main-sequence star in its prime of life, Betelgeuse is a red giant star on the verge of death. But the death of a star is not a simple process.
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  Stars shine so brightly and for so long because of a delicate balance of gravity and nuclear fusion. Gravity would like to collapse a star under its weight. Without nuclear fusion, gravity would crush a star into a white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole. But the crushing pressure gravity creates allows hydrogen in the star’s core to fuse into helium. The process is known as the proton-proton chain (or pp-chain) and combines four hydrogen nuclei into one helium nucleus. About 3% of the original mass is converted to energy in the form of gamma rays. This energy heats the core even further, letting it push back against gravity.
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