New research published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society depicts the most detailed, simulation of a black hole that has never been seen until now. The simulation demonstrates theoretical predictions about the type of accretion disks, the material that circles and ultimately falls into a black hole.
Among the discoveries, the team of computational astrophysics from Northwestern University, the University of Amsterdam and the University of Oxford noticed that the most central part of an accretion disk lines up with its black hole’s equator.
This finding answers a long-term mystery, initially described by Nobel Prize-winning John Bardeen and astrophysicist Jacobus Petterson in 1975. Back then, the scientists thought that the spinning black hole would make the inner area of an inclined accretion disk to line up with its black hole’s equatorial level.
In the new research, the team of scientists discovered that although the outside area of an accretion disk stays inclined, the disk’s inner part aligns with the black hole. The team figured out the mystery by thinning the accretion disk to an extreme degree and incorporating the magnetized turbulence that makes the disk to accumulate.
Accretion disk’s alignment with black hole’s equator confirmed in new simulation
Alexander Tchekhovskoy who co-led the research, also an assistant professor of physics and astronomy with the Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences said that this incredible discovery of ‘Bardeen-Petterson’ alignment, as it was dubbed, gives an answer the astrophysics community has been searching for, since more than four decades.
The study’s first author is Matthew Liska, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam’s Anton Pannenkoek Institute for Astronomy. He explained that these simulations aren’t solving the forty-year issue, but they have proved that, in contradiction to conventional thinking, it is possible to simulate the brightest accretion disk in full general relativity.
To create a code able of performing simulations of titled accretion disks around black holes, Liska and Tchekhovskoy utilized graphical processing units (GPU), rather than central processing units (CPU). GPUs are incredibly capable of manipulating computer graphics and image processing and accelerate the development of images on a screen.
Liska also used a technique named adaptive mesh refinement, which utilizes a dynamic mesh, or a grid, that changes and adjusts to the stream of movement during the whole simulation. This method saves energy and computer power by concentrating only on particular parts in the grid where movements appear.
These enhancements enabled researchers to simulate the thinnest accretion disk to date, with a 0.05 height-to-ratio proportion. When the disk was reproduced this thin, the team could observe alignment happen right next to the black hole.
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