AI Just Caught a Star Trying to Eat a Black Hole and Things Got Explosive
- Aug 21, 2025
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 24, 2025
When cosmic cannibalism goes horribly wrong
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Imagine being so hungry you try to swallow something that could literally destroy you. That's exactly what happened 730 million light-years away when a massive star decided to make a black hole its final meal. The result was SN 2023zkd the most bizarre supernova explosion astronomers have ever witnessed and it took artificial intelligence to catch this cosmic catastrophe in the act.
The Zwicky Transient Facility spotted the initial flash in July 2023 but six months later something unprecedented happened. An AI algorithm called Light curve Anomaly Identification and Similarity Search started sending alerts through Slack notifications because this explosion wasn't behaving like any supernova on record. Instead of fading away like stellar explosions normally do SN 2023zkd suddenly brightened again creating a double-peaked light show that had astronomers scrambling for explanations.
