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Astrophysicists have created computer simulations of black holes and have realised that they may be more messy than previously thought.
A team from Johns Hopkins Univeristy and the University of Virginia led by John Hawley and Jean-Pierre De Villiers
Julian Krolik of John Hopkins said that "These programs are opening a new window on the complicated story of how matter falls into black holes, revealing for the first time how tangled magnetic fields and Einsteinian gravity combine to squeeze out a last burst of energy from matter doomed to infinite imprisonment in a black hole."
Their computer simulations have revelaed the complexity of magnetic fields and how matter behaves in the areas just outside the edge of a black hole. For example they discovered that some mass spinning outside the hole actually can determine how fast the black hole can spin.
Such computer simulations can now be useful in comparing how real black holes behave as observed through telescopes. |
A computer simulation of a black hole shows that it is not such a smooth ride.
image: Johns Hopkins University - Univeristy of Virgina
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