For one, accretion disks come so close to the black hole that they move through warped space-time, which rushes into the black hole at immense speed. Two main issues have acted as a barrier for computational astrophysicists. How long it took astrophysicists to find the elusive Bardeen-Petterson alignmentįrom Bardeen and Petterson until present day, simulations have been too simplified to find the storied alignment. “So it affects how a black hole’s spin evolves over time and launches outflows that impact the evolution of their host galaxies.” “Alignment affects how accretion disks torque their black holes,” Tchekhovskoy said. Accretion disks also control a black hole’s growth and rotation speed, so understanding the nature of accretion disks is key to understanding how black holes evolve and function. Without the intensely bright ring of gas, dust and other stellar debris that swirls around black holes, astronomers would not be able to spot a black hole in order to study it. Nearly everything researchers know about black holes has been learned by studying accretion disks. “This paves the way for a next generation of simulations, which I hope will solve even more important problems surrounding luminous accretion disks.” Elusive alignment
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“These simulations not only solve a 40-year-old problem, but they have demonstrated that, contrary to typical thinking, it is possible to simulate the most luminous accretion disks in full general relativity,” Liska said.
Matthew Liska, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam’s Anton Pannenkoek Institute for Astronomy, is the paper’s first author. Tchekhovskoy is an assistant professor of physics and astronomy in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and a member of CIERA (Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics), an endowed research center at Northwestern focused on advancing astrophysics studies with an emphasis on interdisciplinary connections. They control how fast the black holes spin and, as a result, what effect black holes have on their entire galaxies.” “These details around the black hole may seem small, but they enormously impact what happens in the galaxy as a whole. “This groundbreaking discovery of Bardeen-Petterson alignment brings closure to a problem that has haunted the astrophysics community for more than four decades,” said Northwestern’s Alexander Tchekhovskoy, who co-led the research. Previous simulations made a substantial simplification by merely approximating the effects of the turbulence. The team solved the mystery by thinning the accretion disk to an unprecedented degree and including the magnetized turbulence that causes the disk to accrete.
A smooth warp connects the inner and outer regions. This groundbreaking discovery brings closure to a problem that has haunted the astrophysics community for more than four decades.” Alexander TchekhovskoyĪfter a decades-long, global race to find the so-called Bardeen-Petterson effect, the team’s simulation found that, whereas the outer region of an accretion disk remains tilted, the disk’s inner region aligns with the black hole. At the time, Bardeen and Petterson argued that a spinning black hole would cause the inner region of a tilted accretion disk to align with its black hole’s equatorial plane. This discovery solves a longstanding mystery, originally presented by physicists Jim Bardeen and Jacobus Petterson in 1975. The research published on June 5 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.Īmong the findings, the team of computational astrophysicists from Northwestern University, the University of Amsterdam and the University of Oxford found that the inner-most region of an accretion disk aligns with its black hole’s equator. The simulation proves theoretical predictions about the nature of accretion disks - the matter that orbits and eventually falls into a black hole - that have never before been seen. An international team has constructed the most detailed, highest resolution simulation of a black hole to date.
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