![]() "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. Credit: Sasha Tchekhovskoy/Northwestern University Matthew Liska/University of Amsterdam They control how fast the black holes spin and, as a result, what effect black holes have on their entire galaxies." Simulation shows the inner region of the accretion disk aligns with the black hole's equatorial plane, signaling the long-sought Bardeen-Petterson alignment. "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. ![]() 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.Īfter 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. This discovery solves a longstanding mystery, originally presented by Nobel Prize-winning physicist John Bardeen and astrophysicist Jacobus Petterson in 1975. The research will publish 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.
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