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The Messy Habits Of Small Black Holes

This artist's illustration shows a stellar mass black hole drawing gas from a nearby star into its accretion disk. New research shows that this process is chaotic and messy. Image Credit: JAXA

Stellar mass black holes have only a few solar masses, and are much different from their gigantic counterparts, supermassive black holes. When these modestly-massive black holes are actively accreting matter, new research shows that the process is anything but orderly. Instead, it's characterized by different velocities, different ionization zones, and other complexities.



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