At the beginning of 2020, the world held its collective breath as a nearby behemoth star, called Betelgeuse, start to dramatically fade. Could this mean the star is about to go supernova? With the recent flutter of news activity settling down, we are now finally starting to understand what might have really happened. Today, we take a deep dive into what makes massive stars like this tick, and then get into how we might have now finally come up with answers to this bizarre event. An educational video written and presented by Prof. David Kipping. You can now support our research and the Cool Worlds Lab at Columbia University: https://www.coolworldslab.com/support Chapters 0:00 Teaser 0:53 Massive Stars 7:07 Dying Massive Stars 12:47 Dimming 2020 17:36 Explaining the Dimming References ► Fuller, J. & Ro, S., 2018, "Pre-supernova outbursts via wave heating in massive stars - II. Hydrogen-poor stars", MNRAS 476, 1853: https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.04251 ► Dimming plots come from @betelbot (https://twitter.com/betelbot) Twitter account run by Michael Hippke, which collates AAVSO data. ► Gerhz, R. et al., 2020, "Betelgeuse remains steadfast in the infrared", Astronomer's Telegram #13518: http://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=13518 ► Sukhbold, T. & Adams, A., 2019, "Missing Red Supergiants and Carbon Burning", MNRAS 492, 2578: https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.00474 ► Dolan, M. et al. 2020, "Evolutionary tracks for Betelgeuse", ApJ 819, 7: https://arxiv.org/abs/1406.3143 ► Adams, S. et al., 2017, "The search for failed supernovae with the Large Binocular Telescope: confirmation of a disappearing star", MNRAS 468, 4968: https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.01283 ► Levesque, E. & Massey, P., 2020, "Betelgeuse Just Isn't That Cool: Effective Temperature Alone Cannot Explain the Recent Dimming of Betelgeuse", arXiv preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.10463 Videos used: ► Simulation of forming protostars by Matthew Bate, The UK Astrophysics Fluid Facility, University