Most-detailed-ever simulations of a BH solve long standing mystery

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around a recent high-resolution simulation of a black hole and its implications for understanding accretion disks. Participants explore the nature of black holes, the alignment of accretion disks, and the effects of magnetic fields in these simulations.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Technical explanation
  • Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants highlight that the simulation provides new insights into the alignment of the inner-most region of an accretion disk with the black hole's equator.
  • One participant questions whether the black hole's equator is determined by its jets and if the spin rate is influenced by the spin of the accretion disk.
  • Another participant expresses a long-standing belief that simulations should incorporate more accurate representations of magnetic fields rather than generalized effects.
  • A participant raises a hypothetical scenario regarding the effective mass of a toroidal structure around a black hole potentially exceeding that of the black hole itself, suggesting complex interactions involving feed rates and magnetic fields.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express varying viewpoints on the implications of the simulation and the role of magnetic fields, indicating that multiple competing views remain and the discussion is unresolved.

Contextual Notes

Some discussions involve assumptions about the behavior of black holes and accretion disks that may not be universally accepted or verified. The complexity of magnetic field interactions and their effects on simulations is also noted but not fully explored.

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TL;DR
Most-detailed-ever simulations of black hole solve longstanding mystery
"An international team has constructed the most detailed, highest resolution simulation of a black hole to date. 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.

The research will publish on June 5 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Among 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. ..."

From, https://phys.org/news/2019-06-most-detailed-ever-simulations-black-hole-longstanding.html
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There is a nice movie that I can't seem to copy and paste in the article above.
 
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Very Nice.
Am I correct in assuming that the black hole's (unseeable) equator is determined by taking it jets as the poles and its spin rate is determined by the spin of the accretion disk?
 
jedishrfu said:
This site has a working version of the video:

The video works in the article of the link I provided but I wanted to copy it into my post with no luck, does not seem to be at youtube yet. Thanks.
 
Yeah, the PF site limits the media sources to specific well known sites.
 
This is a very nice article, and I pointed out on a different forum that I have thought, and commented, that they needed to use a better simulation of their magnetic fields in their simulations rather than just a generalized effect, and I have commented on such fer decades now in different places and the article bears it out.

I still wonder what you have when the effective mass of the close torus actually exceeds that of the BH? It would take some outrageous feed rate, but in the midst of some of these superclusters there are some Very Active galactic nuclei. I know they have done the math for toroidal shaped BH's, and how they might split apart, but I can only think of a couple ways for there to be such in the first place, one is by spinning up a BH to the point it goes 'flat' and concentrates mass to the outside of the circle, or to have a torus about a BH that becomes dense enough to collapse at a certain orbit level, just outside of strong BH pull and inside the heavy centripetal force of the moving torus. I would imagine the magnetic field interactions would have a great deal to do with whatever DOES Happen at that level/point in the mass scaling.
 

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