Video: TACC’s Ranger Simulation Shows Event Horizon

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Researchers are using TACC supercomputers to study the role of black holes in shaping the cosmos.

The computational power of TACC Ranger enables these scientists to simulate the complex dynamics near a black hole including warped spacetime, gas pressure, ionizing radiation, and magnetized plasma. Shown here are the highest resolution thin disk simulations ever performed, allowing the researchers to resolve very small features. Varying only the rate at which the black holes accrete gas, the researchers reproduced the wide range of X-ray states seen in observations of most galactic black hole sources.

The magnetic field is important in the area outside the black hole because it whips the gas around and can dictate its dynamics,” said Scott C. Noble, who authored a paper on the work with Jeremy Schnittman and Julian Krolik. “Also, the movement of the field can lead to it kinking and trigger a reconnection event that produces an explosive burst of energy, turning magnetic field energy into heat.”

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