S&T: Tilt a black hole and watch what happens

[Ann]

When a black hole ingests a meal that is coming at it from one side, dramatic things may happen to the jets coming out of the black hole and the disk surrounding it.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Read more about it here.

Ann

[Curious Jay]

Can anything approach a black hole from anywhere but one side? It would seem likely that regardless of its mass, energy or velocity an intruding object would be shunted around to a 'side' of the black hole before being sucked in - isn't that why the event horizon appears disc shaped in the first place?

[Ann]

The point, as I understand it, is that the plane of the accretion disk that surrounds the black hole says something about how "food" is usually approaching it - typically from one direction. But if a particularly large chunk of matter falls into the hole from a quite different direction, the accretion disk is made to change.

Compare a black hole and its accretion disk with the Sun and the plane of the solar system. Most of the planets orbit the Sun in the same plane, but Mercury and Pluto orbit out of plane. Something has probably happened to Mercury, and Pluto may never have orbited the Sun in the same plane as the major planets. And Mercury and Pluto are too small and low-mass to affect the overall symmetry of the solar system. But there are other solar systems which are very much more chaotic, where the planets follow very strange orbits. Something has probably happened to those solar systems, and the most likely cause is the approach from outside of a large chunk of matter that made the order of the system go haywire.

Ann

[Curious Jay]

I think I see - the disc and the jets are not only controlled by the gravity and spin of the black hole but also to a lesser extent by outside factors i.e. infalling matter.