Animation: Black Hole Destroys Star

Animation: Black Hole Destroys Star

Video Illustration Credit:
DESY,
Science Communication Lab

Explanation:
What happens if a star gets too close to a black hole?

The black hole can rip it apart — but how?

It’s not the high gravitational attraction
itself that’s the problem — it’s the
difference in gravitational pull across the star that creates the destruction.

In the featured animated video illustrating this disintegration,
you first see a star approaching the black hole.

Increasing in orbital speed, the
star’s outer atmosphere is ripped away during closest approach.

Much of the star’s atmosphere disperses into deep space,
but some continues to orbit the black hole and forms an
accretion disk.

The animation
then takes you into the accretion disk while looking toward the black hole.

Including the
strange visual effects of
gravitational lensing,
you can even
see the far side of the disk.

Finally, you look along one of the
jets being expelled along the spin axis.

Theoretical models indicate
that these jets not only expel energetic gas, but also create energetic
neutrinos — one of which may have been
seen recently on
Earth.