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Black holes & accretion disks


ether

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I am slightly confused about accretion disks……. if all matter (including light) is drawn into the disk (which is circulating in one direction), then is there not a difference in the strength of that (gravitational) force according to what direction the ‘matter’ in question approaches it?

 

To try and clarify this further, supposing we have two photons of light travelling in opposite directions, one approaching the point of ‘no return’ in the same direction as the disks rotation, and one in the opposite direction (to that rotation), and we assume that their paths are such that the photon travelling in the same direction as the disk - will only just be caught by the black holes ‘gravitational pull’ – then surely the photon travelling in the opposite direction will have the momentum to escape the very same ‘gravitational grip’!?

 

Hope you are able to shed some light on this

 

Thanks

antony

 

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sorry to bother you for i have (in part) the answer i was looking for.

 

i am leaving now for i do not agree with the fact you do not allow people to edit their posts (after so much time has elapsed).

 

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if you hold the right to delete my posts as and when you please, then i would also like that right for myself.

 

its a bit silly is it?

 

well you would not believe the amount of times i have been on forums, and my words have been edited/deleted here and there to suit the message the forums moderators wish to portray....... me i believe that if you are unable to break down an arguement for what it is, then you should not be allowed the easy way out, and just ignore/sweep under the carpet that which threatens to burst your fragile bubbles.......

 

but then i doubt this will make much sense to you at the moment

 

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if you hold the right to delete my posts as and when you please, then i would also like that right for myself.

 

its a bit silly is it?

IIRC, a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, it was like that, but we had a problem with people going back and editing posts once the conversation based on said posts had began.

 

well you would not believe the amount of times i have been on forums, and my words have been edited/deleted here and there to suit the message the forums moderators wish to portray....... me i believe that if you are unable to break down an arguement for what it is, then you should not be allowed the easy way out, and just ignore/sweep under the carpet that which threatens to burst your fragile bubbles.......

 

but then i doubt this will make much sense to you at the moment

 

As far as I have seen, that has never happened here. We have a great staff.
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The reason for the restriction is that changing the contents of a post causes confusion downstream in a thread over time. It's very common for threads on this board to extend into multiple pages (sometimes a dozen or more), and a user could go back and change something earlier in a thread and then say "well I never said that", or words to that effect, and then the responder might face a reprimand from board leadership when in fact they were responding correctly.

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i am leaving now for i do not agree with the fact you do not allow people to edit their posts (after so much time has elapsed).
You have six hours to edit and that should be plenty. As yourdadonapogos pointed out, we've been burned in the past. The six hour limit is a happy medium. And as YT pointed out, you can always ask a Staff member to perform an edit after time has elapsed.

 

The very idea of changing someone else's posts against their will gives me the heebie-jeebies. I can see why you mention it but I wanted to go on record that the mere mention of it offends me greatly.

 

Btw, if any Staff member edit any post (even their own after five minutes) the edit is stamped at the bottom and requests a reason for the edit. There are no exceptions.

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since this thread started with accretion disc's i thought i should post a bit of interesting information that i found today, (since this thread has gone a touch "off topic"

 

The intense gravitational gradient (that occurs at the Active galactic nucleus and quasars) is great enough to cause) intense frictional heating; the accretion disc of a black hole becomes hot enough to emit x-rays (but only just outside of the event horizon). The huge luminosity of quasars is believed to be a result of gas being accreted by said supermassive black holes. This process is capable of converting about 10 percent of the mass of an object into energy (allot better than the 0.5 percent for the nuclear fusion processes). I just wonder if once we've beaten nuclear fusion in to submission will the human race attempt to master some of the more yielding methods of transforming mass to energy...thoughts please

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