Accretion discs
From Scholarpedia
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Author: Dr. Marek A. Abramowicz, Physics Department, Göteborg University, Sweden and N. Copernicus Astronomical Center, PAN, Warsaw, Poland
Author: Miss Odele Straub, N. Copernicus Astronomical Center PAN, Warsaw, Poland
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Accretion discs are flattened astronomical objects made of rapidly rotating gas which slowly spirals onto a central gravitating body. The accretion discs physics is governed by a non-linear combination of many processes, including gravity, hydrodynamics, viscosity, radiation and magnetic fields. The gravitational energy of infalling matter extracted in accretion discs powers stellar binaries, active galactic nuclei, proto-planetary discs and some gamma-ray bursts. The black hole accretion in quasars is the most powerful and the most efficient engine known in the whole Universe. /Observational evidence for accretion discs in the Universe /Basic physics of accretion discs /Analytic models of accretion discs /The fundamental unsolved problems
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| Invited by: | Dr. Eugene M. Izhikevich, Editor-in-Chief of Scholarpedia, the peer-reviewed open-access encyclopedia |
