The spaghettification of stars by supermassive black holes: understanding one of nature’s most extreme events - Andrew Mummery On a rare occasion an unfortunate star will be perturbed onto a near-radial orbit about the supermassive black hole in its galactic centre. Upon venturing too close to the black hole the star is destroyed, in its entirety, by the black hole’s gravitational tidal force, a process known as “spaghettification”. Some of the stellar debris subsequently accretes onto the black hole, powering bright flares which are observable at cosmological distances. In this talk I will discuss recent theoretical developments which allow us to describe the observed emission from these extreme events in detail, allowing them to be used as probes of the black holes at their centre. I am a Leverhulme-Peierls Fellow in the Department of Physics and Merton College. I completed both my undergraduate degree and DPhil at Oxford, working for my DPhil in the astrophysics department under the supervision of Steven Balbus. I work on astrophysical fluid dynamics, with a particular focus on the behaviour of fluids when they are very close to black holes.
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The spaghettification of stars by supermassive black holes: understanding one of nature’s most extreme events - Andrew Mummery On a rare occasion an unfortunate star will be perturbed onto a near-radial orbit about the supermassive black hole in its galactic centre. Upon venturing too close to the black hole the star is destroyed, in its entirety, by the black hole’s gravitational tidal force, a process known as “spaghettification”. Some of the stellar debris subsequently accretes onto the black hole, powering bright flares which are observable at cosmological distances. In this talk I will discuss recent theoretical developments which allow us to describe the observed emission from these extreme events in detail, allowing them to be used as probes of the black holes at their centre. I am a Leverhulme-Peierls Fellow in the Department of Physics and Merton College. I completed both my undergraduate degree and DPhil at Oxford, working for my DPhil in the astrophysics department under the supervision of Steven Balbus. I work on astrophysical fluid dynamics, with a particular focus on the behaviour of fluids when they are very close to black holes.
How computers have changed the way we do physics - Structure in complex systems
Theoretical Physics - From Outer Space to Plasma
36 minutes
9 years ago
How computers have changed the way we do physics - Structure in complex systems
The power of available computers has now grown exponentially for many decades. The ability to discover numerically the implications of equations and models has opened our eyes to previously hidden aspects of physics. In physics, "complex systems" are systems of many similar interacting parts, such as the interacting atoms that make up a solid or liquid, but also interacting organisms in an ecosystem, or interacting traders in the stock market. This lecture will discuss how recent advances in modeling and computer simulation have allowed us to apply physics-style approaches to these previously challenging real-world systems to learn about such things as the spread of diseases, the flow of traffic or the structure of entire human societies.
Theoretical Physics - From Outer Space to Plasma
The spaghettification of stars by supermassive black holes: understanding one of nature’s most extreme events - Andrew Mummery On a rare occasion an unfortunate star will be perturbed onto a near-radial orbit about the supermassive black hole in its galactic centre. Upon venturing too close to the black hole the star is destroyed, in its entirety, by the black hole’s gravitational tidal force, a process known as “spaghettification”. Some of the stellar debris subsequently accretes onto the black hole, powering bright flares which are observable at cosmological distances. In this talk I will discuss recent theoretical developments which allow us to describe the observed emission from these extreme events in detail, allowing them to be used as probes of the black holes at their centre. I am a Leverhulme-Peierls Fellow in the Department of Physics and Merton College. I completed both my undergraduate degree and DPhil at Oxford, working for my DPhil in the astrophysics department under the supervision of Steven Balbus. I work on astrophysical fluid dynamics, with a particular focus on the behaviour of fluids when they are very close to black holes.
