SCARY BARBIE – SCI & TECH
News: Meet
Scary Barbie: AI helped discover this supermassive black hole shredding a star
What's in the news?
● A
supermassive black hole is tearing apart a distant star that is now faced with
a fiery and dramatic death. The scientists who discovered it have
affectionately named the black hole “Scary Barbie,” after a beloved children’s
character.
Scary Barbie:
● Scary
Barbie is a supermassive black hole
that is devouring a star with a thousand
times the brightness of a supernova.
● The
researchers discovered it using an AI
engine called Recommender Engine For Intelligent Transient Tracking
(REFITT) in Milisavljevic’s lab.
Discovery:
● The
supermassive black hole ripping apart the star is one of the most energetic,
luminous and transient celestial events that has been discovered, and yet, it
is not exactly blazing bright in the night sky.
● Instead,
astronomers had to unearth evidence of the star’s dying moments from a mass of
telescope data where it had been hiding undetected for years.