A reading of the article “Mystery of the Shrinking Red Star ” by Wal Thornhill. Narrated by David Harrison, proprietor of Stickman On Stone.
The red supergiant star Betelgeuse, the bright reddish star in the constellation Orion, has steadily shrunk since the mid-1990s. Its radius is about five times the radius of Earth’s orbit—and the speed at which it is shrinking is just under 500 miles per hour—meaning it has shrunk by a distance equal to the orbit of Venus.
Red stars cannot satisfy their hunger for electrons from the surrounding plasma. So they expand their surface area to collect electrons by growing a large plasma sheath—and this huge sheath takes on the uniform red anode glow to become a red giant star.
When seen in electric terms, instead of being near the end point of its life, Betelgeuse may still be in childhood continuing to lose sufficient mass and charge to begin the next phase of its existence.
Betelgeuse is merely a young star that has not yet achieved the kind of electrical equilibrium that comes with a bright main sequence star like our own Sun.
