#star explosion

Massive stars in our Milky Way Galaxy live spectacular lives. Collapsing from vast cosmic clouds, their nuclear centres ignite and create heavy elements in their cores. After only a few million years (for the most massive stars), the material is blasted back into interstellar space where star formation can begin again.

This expanding debris cloud known as Cassiopeia A is an example of this final phase of the stellar life cycle. Light from the supernova explosion that created this remnant would have been first seen in planet Earth's sky about 350 years ago, although it took that light 11,000 years to reach us. This sharp image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows the still-hot filaments and knots in the supernova remnant. The whitish, smoke-like outer shell of the expanding blast wave is about 20 light-years across. A series of light echoes from the massive star's cataclysmic explosion are also identified in Webb's detailed images of the surrounding interstellar medium.

“Miracle” by Jordan Bolton

Introduction:

A supernova is a name given to the cataclysmic explosion of a massive star at the end of its life. Supernova is the biggest explosion that humans have ever seen. Each blast is an extremely bright, super-powerful explosion of a star. When a star with a mass of five times our sun dies it dies with a bang! It is a powerful and luminous explosion of a star. It has the plural form supernovae or supernovas. The last supernova to be directly observed in the Milky Way was Kepler's Supernova in 1604.

Why Supernova Happens:

Massive stars burn huge amounts of nuclear fuel at their cores. This creates a lot of energy. Energy creates heat and heat creates upward pressure. Because of the size of a star, very strong gravity tries to squeeze the star to its smallest. But the upward heat pressure canceled out this inward gravity pressure and maintain a stable form for millions of years. But once the fuel of the star is finished the gravity pressure wins the game and collapses inward. Now imagine an object with a mass five times our sun collapsing in 15 seconds! The collapse happens so quickly that it creates enormous shock waves that cause the outer part of the star to explode! With it, a burst of gamma rays started to travel for hundreds of lightyears. Usually, a dense core is left behind and is called a neutron star with an expanding cloud of hot gas called a nebula. A supernova of a star more than about 10 times the size of our sun may leave behind the densest objects in the universe black holes. After millions of years, these clouds of gases started to create new stars. Maybe our star was also created with the remains of a dead star. Allah knows better.

Magnificent & Deadly:

A supernova explosion and its nebula is the most beautiful scenario in the universe as well as the most deadly thing in the universe. After a supernova explosion, the remaining dust and gas cloud forms a nebula as large as 1800 light-years. From afar it looks majestic. But when a supernova happened the gamma rays with other cosmic rays started to destroy planets for lightyears.

Is our Earth safe?

Our sun is not massive enough to go supernova. After 5 billion years it will become a red giant consuming mercury, venus, and maybe earth. But if a supernova occurred as close as 30 light-years away the intense blast of radiation would carry a massive influx of high-energy neutrinos that would boil any living creature from the inside out. This will end life as we know it. The entire Earth could be vaporized in just a fraction of a second if the supernova was close enough. The shockwave would arrive with enough force to wipe out our entire atmosphere and even our oceans. But there is nothing to worry about because there are no supernova candidates closer than about 500 light-years.

AI Revolutionizes Cosmic Event Detection

Astronomers have recorded what may be the first known case of a massive star exploding while interacting with a black hole, potentially introducing a new class of stellar explosions. The star, named SN 2023zkd, was first observed in July 2023 by the Zwicky Transient Facility in California. Located approximately 730 million light-years away, it resides in a galaxy with minimal star formation activity, making the discovery even more remarkable.

How AI Made the Discovery Possible

The detection of SN 2023zkd was powered by artificial intelligence (AI) specifically designed to identify unusual cosmic phenomena in real time. Traditional methods can take days or weeks to pinpoint rare events, but AI algorithms can instantly analyze massive volumes of telescope data, flagging anomalies that would otherwise go unnoticed.

Once SN 2023zkd was detected, telescopes across the globe and in space were alerted immediately, allowing astronomers to capture the explosion in its earliest stages, which is crucial for understanding the physics behind such rare interactions.

Implications for Astrophysics

The event offers a rare glimpse into how massive stars can interact with black holes, possibly leading to an entirely new category of stellar phenomena. By combining AI technology with traditional telescopic observation, astronomers can:

Identify unusual cosmic events earlier and more accurately

Observe rare stellar interactions in real time

Expand our understanding of black hole dynamics and star evolution

The Future of AI in Astronomy

This discovery highlights the growing role of AI in astrophysics. With AI, astronomers can now process vast amounts of observational data efficiently, predict events before they fully unfold, and uncover phenomena previously hidden in the universe’s depths.