Very large black holes are more voracious than expected: they devour matter more quickly and differently than previously thought. According to the most advanced computer simulation ever done so far, led by Nick Kaaz of Northwestern University in the United States and published in The Astrophysical Journal, the gas clouds around supermassive black holes – with mass millions of times that of the Sun – are being torn apart and divided chaotically. Simulations that would also explain the mysterious behavior of quasars, intense emissions of radiation that are generally short-lived and are believed to be produced by supermassive black holes.
Although knowledge of what happens in the universe has increasingly improved, there are still many mysteries and one of these is related to what happens near large black holes, distant, small objects which by definition are impossible to observe as not even the light can escape their enormous gravitational field. By exploiting the enormous computing power of one of the largest supercomputers on the planet, the Summit located at Oak Ridge National Laboratories, researchers have managed to create the most detailed simulation of what perhaps happens to gases that fall inside of a supermassive black hole, like the one found at the center of our galaxy.
These are very complex dynamics because the rotation of the black hole is able to distort the same space-time which is ‘dragged’ by the rotation of the black hole itself. According to standard models, the gases fall into the black hole in a rather linear way, but the new simulation indicates that the gases would instead be ‘torn’ in a chaotic way, creating distinct rings. The individual rings would fall into the black hole very quickly, a few days or months, against the hundreds of years predicted by standard models, at regular intervals. The new simulation, therefore, overturns some of the hypotheses made so far but would have the merit of giving an explanation to many anomalies observed in the sky, first of all the emissions of quasars, mysterious objects that release enormous quantities of radiation in a more or less cyclical way and for short periods. According to many, quasars would actually be black holes at the time of ‘meals’ and the simulation would support this hypothesis.
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