New Way for a Black Hole to be a Messy Eater

Abstract

F ive to ten percent of the black holes in galaxies sit at the center of an accretion disk, where blobs of plasma slowly lose angular momentum and spiral inward to feed the black hole. In a simulation, Nicholas Kaaz of Northwestern University, Illinois, and his collaborators now find that for a rapidly spinning black hole surrounded by a thin, tilted disk this “eating” process is quicker andmessier than previously thought [1].