North Star May Be Wasting Away

A solar mass is over 300,000 Earths, and Polaris is atleast 7 solar masses, adjusting for the most conservative of all estimates. It's apparent magnitude is about 1.9, while the magnitude of drop off (nolonger visible to the human eye) is defined at 7 (with 6 being relatively hard except under good conditions).

Setting aside the nuclear chemistry that will occur in the meantime (which tends to increase brightness), that Polaris is, in fact, multiple stars and the overall reduction of radiative and mass pressure that will be reducing the production/consumption rate*, I would posit even losing half of its mass, it would likely still be visible in 2000 years, which means the Northern Star will have since switched to Gamma Cephei.

So, no big loss here. Personally, I, for one, welcome our new Alrainian OverStar.

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*You know what, I'm actually going to do these in the coming weeks. This is sound like a fun problem, even though I do a lot more in theoretical particle physics than cosmology.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/EU3qFy8sUDw/north-star-may-be-wasting-away

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