My erratic schedule often sees me stumbling through Centennial Park after dark rather a lot these days. Happens more often than I would like it, but what can you do. It’s a hard life after all. You know what’s it like. Trying to eke out an existence for yourself, the wife, and the charming kids, but someone’s got to do it.

Then there’s in-laws, deadlines, and in-boxes overflowing with spam to dodge. I really need time to chill out and just day-dream, and the park is the perfect place to get this daily time-out fix, no matter how late it is.

So there I was, in the park, heading due east and home, the other evening. I know I was bearing east because, a) the constellation Scorpius (or Scorpio the scorpion) was sitting low on the horizon before me, and b) the bright lights of Westfield Bondi were er, rising, sure as, um, Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti.

Yes, indeed.

In particular I was focusing on the centrepiece of Scorpius, the red giant star, Antares. As we all know, a red giant is a star that has used up its hydrogen fuel, has expanded to many hundreds of times its original size, and could blow up at anytime, destroying all that is nearby in the process.

Just as well planet Earth doesn’t orbit Antares then, isn’t it?

Well it seems Antares days are well and truly numbered. The end could be nigh, and like really soon. And we’d better be as prepared as possible for this event. When Antares blows, it will be massive. It will be spectacular, so much so, the explosion may even be visible during the day.

So with 600 light years between us and Antares is there any chance we may somehow be affected by this cosmic fire cracker? Nick Lomb, the curator of Sydney Observatory thinks probably not…

“It’s sufficiently far that it’s not likely to cause too much damage to the Earth.“

Well, that’s reassuring, isn’t it? Not too much damage.

What exactly constitutes not too much damage though? What does this actually mean? I mean is this something the people of the global community, such as it is, need to think a little more about? I would think not too much damage from a relatively nearby (in cosmic terms) exploding star, might just be understating the situation.

I fear not too much damage may in fact be a little too much damage. Could it be we’ll all need extra strength sunscreen for a couple of centuries until the worst has passed, or are we talking something a little more stringent, such as, say, evacuating the planet?

Whatever the case, there is some breathing space. 600 light years of it to be precise. It would take about 600 years for whatever consequences of Antares exploding, to reach us. That’s assuming Albert Einstein was correct, and the speed of light is the ultimate speed limit in the universe.

Ah, but that’s another story of course.