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5d ago

Black Hole-Star Encounter Likely Sparked Rare Double-Peaked Supernova

The study published in The Astrophysical Journal provides the strongest evidence to date that a black hole companion can detonate a massive star.

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The Zwicky Transient Facility, which scans the sky from the Palomar Observatory in Southern California, first detected the strange supernova in July 2023.

Overview

  • The LAISS AI tool flagged SN 2023zkd in real time months before its anomalous behavior, enabling swift coordinated observations across ground- and space-based telescopes.
  • Archival data reveal years-long pre-explosion brightening and a rare double-peaked light curve with two maxima separated by roughly eight months.
  • A CfA/MIT-led paper interprets these features as resulting from a close black hole–star merger, offering the strongest evidence yet that a compact companion can trigger or reshape a supernova.
  • The team highlights the necessity of identifying more binary-driven explosions to assess how often compact companions influence stellar deaths.
  • This discovery underscores the critical role of AI-enabled triage as astronomers prepare for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s unprecedented transient detection rates.