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AI predicts age of newly discovered supernovae within milliseconds

An AI that predicts the time of first light from exploding stars could help astronomers sift through millions of such events and speed up scientific discovery

By Jeremy Hsu

11 December 2023

The remnants of a supernova

The remnants of a supernova

MPIA/NASA/Calar Alto Observatory

Artificial intelligence can accurately predict the age of supernovae and other rare stellar explosions within milliseconds of a telescope spotting them.

That could prove useful for projects like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time, which is slated to begin observing in 2025. The 10-year survey of the southern sky will take 15 terabytes of data per night and could spot more than 10 million potential cosmic events each night. That may boost supernovae discoveries 100-fold.

“It’s going to observe potentially…

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