Scientists have discovered a peculiar supernova that may have resulted from a star’s misguided attempt to swallow a black hole.
The new case, soon to be published in The Astrophysical Journal, supports the idea that massive stars don’t just explode when they get old. Dramatic space collisions may trigger at least some of these fatal blasts, too.
To find the exotic supernova, dubbed SN 2023zkd, astronomers used a new artificial intelligence algorithm tied to a Slack bot to scan for unusual explosions in real time. Called the Light curve Anomaly Identification and Similarity Search, the tool’s prompt notification gave them enough of a lead to plan and execute large telescope observations before the explosion faded out.
Scientists have used classic AI methods like this for decades to help sift through heaps of data, said V. Ashley Villar, an assistant professor of astronomy at Harvard, especially in the age of robotic telescopes, which spot thousands of flickering lights nightly. But nowadays, generative AI, which can learn from data, is becoming increasingly helpful, said Villar, an author of the paper.
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