According to astrophysicist Alexander Gagliano of the National Science Foundation Institute for Ai and Fundamental Interactions at the University of Massachusetts, it was as if the star and the black hole were engaged in a “fatal tango”. For years, the star lost mass in a spiral -shaped dance with the black hole, until the moment of the explosion, with more energy being released in one second than our sun produces throughout its entire lifespan.
The discovery was made by an AI algorithm that was designed to track down unusual cosmic explosions in real time. Thanks to this early warning, astronomers could follow the phenomenon extensively with telescopes on earth and in space.
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The supernova, called SN 2023ZKD, showed unusual brightness peaks and turned out to be slowly increasing in intensity four years before the explosion – a rare phenomenon.
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The exact cause of the explosion is not yet completely clear. According to Harvard astrophysicist Ashley Villar, co-author of the study, it may be that the black hole pulled the star completely apart, or that the distortion caused an instability that caused the star to collapse. In both scenarios, a heavier and more powerful black hole was left behind.
The discovery offers new insight into how stars come to an end, especially when they are in a binary system with a black hole as a companion. Such systems are not rare, but this explosion shows how dramatically the influence of a black hole can be on his star partner.