A physicist from the University of Southern Queensland believes the Earth will experience multiple days of constant daylight due to a dying star — even as soon as 2012.

Is this a sign of the apocalypse?

No, says University of Minnesota physics professor Priscilla Cushman.

According to physicist Brad Carter from Australia, the second biggest star in the universe, Betelgeuse, is losing mass, indicating a supernova, or explosion of the star.

“It goes bang, it explodes, it lights up,” Carter explained to news.com.au. “We’ll have incredible brightness for a brief period of time for a couple of weeks and then over the coming months it begins to fade and then eventually it will be very hard to see at all.”

Physicists have known about the dying star since 2005, Cushman said, who said the star could go supernova anywhere from 10 to 1000 years from now.

“Indeed if it does go nova, it will be very bright for a week,” Cushman said. “There will be neutrinos emitted during the process, but neutrinos, even lots and lots of them, are only weakly interacting, so they won’t affect life on earth.”

Full Article: via Huffington Post