The Nova in Scorpius

I found out (through Jeff Duntemann's blog) that there was a nova in the constellation Scorpius recently. It may still be there but it is fading now. I'm not good at finding constellations - especially in the southern sky for some reason. So, I didn't actually get to see it but I mentioned it to our 10-year old son. He is fascinated with the stars and planets and I really need to help him learn more about these things. His grandmother gave him a telescope but we haven't really made use of it. This all fits in with what we talked about later, though.

We had talked about the fact that, when we look at the stars, we may be looking at something that no longer exists. Since they are so far away from us, it takes years (more likely hundreds of years) for the light to reach us. This nova just proves that point. Soon, we won't be able to see that star anymore as the nova is the bright flash that happens when the star explodes. But just a month or so ago, we could have looked at that star and it would have appeared normal. The idea of this, of course, led to a, "Dad, could that happen to our sun?" discussion. I don't want him to worry about too much stuff but there are things he needs to learn to worry about. The Sun going nova or the earth being hit by an asteroid are in the realm of, "don't worry about it." Then there is the worry about getting hit by a car if you're not careful. Then there are the things like everyone dies eventually - but don't dwell on them. We need to worry about the things over which we have control (brushing our teeth, looking both ways at the street, budgeting our money) and just accepting those things that we can't control (eventually dying, hurricanes, dropping a book when you reach for a cookie). There are folks who worry about everything and folks who worry about nothing. We're trying to teach our kids to be somewhere in the middle.

But then there are those things that we can't change our self (global warming, hunger around the world) but that we can help with if we join in with other people. If enough of us cooperate, we can do something about these things. I've always believed that this was the whole reason that governments (good and bad) were developed. They are an organized (sort of) way of cooperating to do things we can't accomplish our self (or with just our friends).

But, back to the point of the nova and the star not being there anymore: I told him we need to act like everything and everyone could be temporary. Not that we need to obsess about it but we need to make sure we do the things we should when we can (like learn to use the telescope, learn to play the piano, give Mom a kiss) because you never know if you'll always have it. We need to make sure we tell the people we love that we do love them. We need to be kind to everyone because we may end up needing them to be kind to us. The stars seem immovable and permanent and, indeed, they last for millions or billions of years but they can be gone in an instant (relatively speaking).

[Update - There may be a second nova in Scorpius near the first one. Maybe those science fiction stories about mad scientists setting off a nova to get back at another star system were right. They're in Scorpius and headed this way! :-) Maybe their leader told them that the people of that star system had weapons of mass destruction and the mad scientists were just "doing the right thing" to prevent the people in the Scorpius system from using their weapons first.]