Black holes turned out to be hungrier than previously thought.

Black holes absorb “food” much faster than scientists previously thought.

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This is evidenced by the results of a new study by scientists from Northwestern University (USA).

Scientists came to this conclusion as a result of highly detailed 3D simulations carried out using one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world.

Simulations show that spinning black holes twist the surrounding spacetime, eventually tearing apart the turbulent vortex of gas (or accretion disk) that surrounds and feeds them:

• this results in the disk being torn into internal and external subdisks;
• First, the black holes consume the inner ring;
• Debris from the outer subdisk then moves in to fill the gap left by the completely consumed inner ring, and the “eating” process is repeated.

One cycle of the endlessly repeating eat-replenish-eat process takes only a few months—a shockingly fast time span compared to the hundreds of years researchers had previously estimated, the paper notes.

Scientists say this new discovery could help explain the dramatic behavior of some of the brightest objects in the night sky, including quasars that suddenly flare up and then disappear without explanation.

It is noted that traditional theory assumed that accretion disks are relatively ordered. It was believed that gas and particles rotate around the black hole in the same plane and in the same direction as it. Scientists assumed that hundreds to hundreds of thousands of years passed as gas particles gradually swirled into the black hole and fed it.

For decades, people have made a very large assumption that accretion disks are aligned with the black hole’s rotation, the researchers note. “But the gas that feeds these black holes doesn’t necessarily know which way the black hole is spinning, so why should they automatically align?”

So, by rejecting this assumption in their simulations, the scientists saw that the regions around the black hole are much more disorderly and turbulent places than previously thought.

Source: Racurs

David

I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.