Amazing visualisation of a star captured and ripped apart by the immense gravitational well of a Black Hole.

As the outer atmosphere of the star is accelerated by the black hole’s gravity much of it reaches escape velocity and is strewn into space, while some becomes trapped in a highly eccentric orbit. Stellar material reaching the event horizon closer to the back hole is super heated by frictional heating and turbulent flow, generating a bright accretion disk.

Meanwhile jets of concentrated electromagnetic radiation and ionised particles are blasted deep into space along the axis of rotation – a so called astrophysical jet. This transfer of kinetic energy means the black hole system is slowly loosing angular momentum over time.

I often think the universe at this scale is like witnessing a vast machine running on the conservational of energy. A wonderful illustration of the exchange of gravitational potential, angular kinetic, linear kinetic, heat and mass energy.

All energy was created at the big bang singularity and all physical processes from star birth, star death, black holes and even organic human life is the transfer and redistribution of this original energy state.

Video credit: DESY, Science Communication Lab