It lines up :)

Credit: Sasha Tchekhovskoy/Northwestern University; Matthew Liska/University of Amsterdam

Black hole secrets are finally being revealed with the latest data stating that the accretion disc lines up with the equator of the black hole.

An international team has constructed the most detailed, highest resolution simulation of a black hole to date. The simulation proves theoretical predictions about the nature of accretion disks—the matter that orbits and eventually falls into a black hole—that have never before been seen.

Credit: Sasha Tchekhovskoy/Northwestern University; Matthew Liska/University of Amsterdam

How they found out.

After a decades-long, global race to find the so-called Bardeen-Petterson effect, the team's simulation found that, whereas the outer region of an accretion disk remains tilted, the disk's inner region aligns with the black hole. A smooth warp connects the inner and outer regions. The team solved the mystery by thinning the accretion disk to an unprecedented degree and including the magnetized turbulence that causes the disk to accrete. Previous simulations made a substantial simplification by merely approximating the effects of the turbulence.

Credit: Sasha Tchekhovskoy/Northwestern University; Matthew Liska/University of Amsterdam

Intense compute power combined with skilled analysis did the deed.

From Bardeen and Petterson until present day, simulations have been too simplified to find the storied alignment. Two main issues have acted as a barrier for computational astrophysicists. For one, accretion disks come so close to the black hole that they move through warped space-time, which rushes into the black hole at immense speed. Complicating matters further, the black hole's rotation forces space-time to spin around it. Properly accounting for both of these crucial effects requires general relativity, Albert Einstein's theory that predicts how objects affect the geometry of space-time around them.

Second, astrophysicists have not had computing power to account for magnetic turbulence, or the stirring inside of the accretion disk. This stirring is what causes the disk's particles to hold together in a circular shape and what causes gas eventually to fall into the black hole.

Sherlock Holmes would be proud. :)