The mystery of the haunted black hole solved with the most detailed simulation ever done

Using a supercomputer and custom code, an international team of researchers created the "most detailed" simulation of a black hole, proving a long-standing theory that has intrigued astrophysicists for 45 years.

The theory, first published in 1975, postulated that the most inward region of a rotating black hole would eventually align with the equatorial plane of the hole. Although it may sound a bit confusing and inconsequential, the way this region is deformed by the black hole can have huge effects on entire galaxies.

The new study, published Wednesday in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, details a simulated solution to the theory – known as the Bardeen-Petterson effect – and solves a problem that Sasha Chekhovskoy, co-lead author , said to have "haunted astrophysics for more than four decades".

When we saw the very first image of a black hole on April 10we were not really see the black hole. Black holes do not emit any visible light. Rather, the incredibly strong gravity of a black hole causes debris, gases, and other particles to spin around its edges, forming an "accretion disk." It's something we can see. This not only helps cosmic detectives to find and understand black holes, but these discs are also responsible for the evolution and operation of a black hole. In addition, they can tell astrophysicists more about how black holes turn and potentially the radiation that comes from them.

The team, whose first author, Matthew Liska, used graphics processing units (GPUs) to develop the code for their simulation.

"Once the code was created, we had to find a computer of sufficient size to perform the simulations," says Chekhovskoy, who led the research. "The National Science Foundation supercomputer, Blue Waters, was perfectly suited to this task."

Blue Waters, an extremely powerful computer running 1.5 petabytes of memory, is hosted at the University of Illinois at Urbana – Champaign, Illinois.

"We place a black hole inside a computer and put gas in it," says Chekhovskoy. Initially, the gas gravitates around the black hole in a plane inclined to the equator of the black hole, but over time the internal regions of the disk align on the equatorial plane, thus revealing the # 39; alignment.

The result may not be as impressive as our first sight of a black hole, but it's another first. Previously, astrophysicists who were studying the Bardeen-Petterson effect did not have access to sufficient computing power to adequately account for magnetic turbulence inside accretion. Thanks to the supercomputer, the researchers were able to simulate a more realistic black hole, with magnetic fields in place.

"The unique aspect of these simulations is their treatment of magnetic fields, general relativistic effects and a cooling function at the same time," says Rebecca Nealon, theoretical astrophysicist at the University of Leicester, not associated with the study. "Their results showing the Bardeen-Petterson effect while including these provide excellent confirmation of the general situation found in previous work."

Fields are a key factor in regulating the curvature and fall of the accretion disk, according to Chekhovskoy. In the end, the researchers found that even for the incredibly thin accretion disks, the proposed Bardeen-Petterson effect was retained – the accretion disks aligned well with the black hole.

"The alignment of the disk on the equatorial plane of the black hole is the new discovery of this work," says Chekhovskoy. "At larger radii, the disk is inclined with respect to the equatorial plane of the black hole."

The next phase of the research will focus on "radiation transport," said Chekhovskoy. Essentially, the team will be able to predict what would happen to the light particles produced during this process, thus providing astronomers with a potential way to visualize the phenomenon via a telescope.

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