• Cosmic Simulation Reveals How Black Holes Grow and Evolve • The new simulation flies into a tangle of merging galaxies, ultimately zooming into an active supermassive black hole, or quasar, surrounded by a swirling disk of material called an accretion disk. A filamentary stream of gas has been wound up into the disk, funneling gas in at a rate sufficient to fuel the brightest known quasars in the universe. Near the end of the simulation, magnetic fields rip away the angular momentum from the r

Our Sun's swirling flow This NASA supercomputer simulation shows the strength of the turbulent motions of the Sun’s inner layers as materials twist into its atmosphere. The more saturated and bright reds represent the most vigorous upward or downward twisting motions. Clear areas represent areas where there are only relatively slow up-flows, with very little twisting. The data-driven animation helps scientists better understand the Sun and what phenomena drive the patterns of its activity. Learn