From a tweet by Nasa. This is an artists depiction of a black hole. Ive always found black holes amazing; theyre like parts of the universe where the universes game engine bugs out and makes weird errors.
The black half circle in the center is the black holes event horizon, where gravity becomes so strong that the escape velocity exceeds the speed of light. Its termed the event horizon because any event that occurs within it cannot be seen by nor measured by nor can it affect the outside universe.
Surround it is the accretion disk, matter spiralling into the black hole that begins to heat up due to tidal forces and friction. Finally, the expanding beam shooting out of the top is the relativistic jet: particles flung out before reaching the event horizon at absurdly high speeds.
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