accretion disc
Sign in to savestructure formed by diffuse material in orbital motion around a massive central body
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An accretion disc is a swirling disk of material orbiting around a massive object like a black hole or star, where the material gradually spirals inward and falls onto the central body. These discs matter because they're found throughout the universe and can release enormous amounts of energy in the process, making them important for understanding how stars form, how black holes feed, and some of the most violent events in space.
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The hot accretion disk of a black hole, showing the relativistic effects imposed on light when it is emitted in regions subject to extreme gravitation. This image is the result of NASA simulations and shows a view from outside the horizon of a Schwarzschild black hole.
An accretion disk is a structure (often a circumstellar disk) formed by diffuse material in orbital motion around a massive central body. The central body is most frequently a star. Friction, uneven irradiance, magnetohydrodynamic effects, and other forces induce instabilities causing orbiting material in the disk to spiral inward toward the central body. Gravitational and frictional forces compress and raise the temperature of the material, causing the emission of electromagnetic radiation. The frequency range of that radiation depends on the central object's mass. Accretion disks of young stars and protostars radiate in the infrared; those around neutron stars and black holes in the X-ray part of the spectrum. The study of oscillation modes in accretion disks is referred to as diskoseismology.