The Flow of Magnetized Gas into a Rotating Black Hole

Illinois researchers Charles Gammie and Jonathan McKinney, together with Hungarian computational physicist Gabor Tóth have recently developed a new numerical method that allows them to study the flow of magnetized gas into a rotating black hole. This snapshot from one of their simulations shows the logarithm of density in the meridional plane; high density is dark red, low density is dark blue. The black hole is at the center left. The flow is turbulent because of the presence of magnetic fields. The details of this work are described in a paper that will soon be published in the Astrophysical Journal.