Skip to main content

What is an accretion disk?

An accretion disk is an astronomical term that refers to the rapidly spiraling  matter that is in the process of falling into an astronomical object. In principle, any  star could have  an accretion disk, but in practice, accretion disks are often associated with highly collapsed stars such as black holes or  neutron stars. 


The matter that serves as the base of the accretion disk can be obtained when a star passes through a region where the  interstellar matter is thicker than normal. Normally, however, a star gets an accretion disk from a companion star.  When two stars  orbit each other, there is an invisible figure eight around the two stars, called the Roche lobes.  The Roche lobes represent all the points in space where the gravitational potential from each star is equal.  Therefore any matter on the Roche lobes could just as easily fall into either star. If one star in a binary system becomes larger than the Roche lobes, matter will fall from it onto the other star, forming an accretion disk.

The matter falling into a collapsing star hole tends to form a disk because a spherical  mass of gas that is spinning will tend to flatten out.  The faster it is spinning, the flatter it gets. So, if the falling material is orbiting the central mass, the spinning flattens the matter into an accretion disk. 

Black holes are objects that have  collapsed to the point that nothing, not even  light, can escape the incredible  force of their gravity. Because no light can escape, however, there is no way to directly observe it. However, if the  black hole has an accretion disk, we can observe  the black hole indirectly by observing the accretion disk, which will emit x rays.  Without accretion disks there would be little hope of astronomers ever observing black hole.

 Accretion disks can also occur with a  white dwarf in a binary system.  A white dwarf is a collapsed star that is the final stage in the evolution of stars similar to the  Sun. White dwarfs contain as much mass as the Sun, compressed to about the size of  Earth. Normally the nuclear reactions in a white dwarf have  run out of fuel, but the  hydrogen from the accretion disk falling onto a white dwarf fuels additional nuclear reactions.  White dwarfs have  some unusual properties that do not allow them to expand slowly to release the  heat pressure generated by these nuclear reactions.  This heat pressure therefore builds up until the surface of the whited dwarf explodes.  This type of explosion is called a  nova (not to be confused with a  supernova), and typically releases as much  energy in the form of protons in less than a year as the Sun does in 100,000 years.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why do the Indian telecom operators offer their services with 28 days validity, not 30 days?😡😡

Here telecom operator are very clever, b ecause telecom operators want to earn money of 13 months instead of 12 months. Let do the calculation and find out why telecom operators are offering 28 days validity. Each month they get 2 days more, therefore in a year they get additional 24 days. There are 7 month which has 31 days so they get additional 7 days.Now in case of February  ,it has only 28 days not 30. So the total number of days they get are=24+7-2=29 days. So if you recharge 12 times then more 29 days are left in a year.🤔🤔 Means for another 29 days you have to recharge from that telecom operator.😫😫 So you have to recharge 13 times in a year instead of 12 times in a year. So telecom operators provide 28 days validity only. First one telecom operator started and then another telecom operators also understood this concept and they also applied 28 days validity both in data packs and voice packs.😱😱😱

Why swiss Bank is Famous for Black Money?

Hello everyone, here we are going to talk about Swiss Bank. When a person hear the name of this bank the only thing that come to our mind is Black Money. When any kind Fraud occur we hear the name of Swiss Bank and Government also tell that he is going to bring all the black money from Swiss Bank. Swiss Bank is located  in Switzerland and was established in 1872 as Basler bankverein. According to Switzerland banking law bank officials cannot disclose the name of account holder name unless and until Swiss court order them. Swiss court give the order only when there is a criminal charge on account holder name for example money laundering, fraud etc. The account in Swiss Bank are secretive account. Anyone who open a bank account in Swiss Bank he has to complete his KYC as normal bank do. But they never reveal the identity and address of account holders name. The account is in coded digits. In bank statement the account holder name is also not disclosed to any one. Here Swi...

Why are stars not blurred even though the earth is moving?

Why are stars not blurred even though the earth is moving ? •Stars are blurred when viewed from earth. We just don't notice it much with our naked eyes because of the high temporal and low spatial resolution of the human visual system. •Take a glow stick, sparkler, or flashlight and spin it very quickly in the dark. You don't see an individual object anymore, but see instead a circular blur of light. •The reason for this is that the spin rate is faster than the rate at which our eyes can discern distinct images.  •The distinct images of the object get smeared together in a process known as motion blur.  •So why don't the stars look like spinning glow sticks? The rotation of the earth does cause the stars to spin in the sky, but the spinning is much slower. •Whereas it takes the stars one day to trace out a circular path in the sky, it takes tenths of a second for the glow stick to spin in a circle.  •Our eyes can mostly keep up with the motion of the stars becau...