A virtual banquet for a black hole

The eight colored spots in this image represent eight stars of a different kind merged by brutal black hole. It is a virtual banquet, hosted by a team of astronomers led by Taihu Rio From the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany. Thanks to a collaboration with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the world has created a series of simulation models To better understand the dramatic cosmic processes that lead a supermassive black hole to swallow a star completely. But not for all stars, the confrontation with these cosmic predators is deadly, and it shows well in Video Under.

The eight stars in the simulation approach a black hole 1 million times the mass of the sun: They are all stretched and deformed by the body’s gravity, but only some of them separate completely into a tall body gas flow. On the other hand, other stars managed to retain part of their mass, returning almost to their original shape after the terrible confrontation with the black hole.

On what does this survival depend? The most obvious answer is from pulp: The more massive stars have a better chance of surviving. But the study by Ryu and colleagues shows that there is also another defining advantage in these dramatic processes: the density. stars with Higher inner density They are the ones who come out unscathed from the encounter with the black hole. Simulations like this help to better understand catastrophic cosmic events occurring in galaxies millions of light years away.

Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center / Taiho Rio Mba