Christian Knigge, Professor in Physics and Astronomy, worked with colleagues from around the world to study one of the most important, but least understood processes in astronomy – accretion, where the mass of an object grows by gravitationally collecting material from nearby.
The article Accretion-induced variability links young stellar objects, white dwarfs, and black holes has been published in the latest edition of the journal Science Advances.
The paper reveals a close relationship between the way in which different types of accreting objects vary in brightness over time. Their results connect proto-stars resembling our Sun at the time of its birth, to accreting white dwarfs, to supermassive black holes with a billion times the mass of the Sun, located in galaxies millions of light years away.
Read the full press release here.