Astro 101: Black Holes - Roche Lobes
This website aims to visually explain how the amount of material a black hole in a binary system can consume depends on its companion object.
This representation of a binary system maintains distance, but if the objects were to get closer, the roche lobes would shrink, allowing for easier overflow.
Press the Increase/Decrease buttons to change the age of the star, and see how that affects Roche Lobe Overflow.
Created by Khang Nguyen for the Creative Work assignment.
Details
An object warps spacetime, resulting in a gravitational pull within certain limits. When two objects are close together, their gravitational auras pull on each other and create Roche Lobes, the teardrop white outlines shown in the visuals.
Any material within a Roche Lobe is gravitationally bound to that object. In the representation, both the black hole and the star have their own Roche Lobe.
Roche Lobe Overflow describes the process where material moves outside of the companion's roche lobe, moves towards the black hole's roche lobe, and then is gravitationally bound to the black hole, eventually getting sucked in.
As stars get older, the swell up and become red giants, filling up their roche lobes and making it easier for material to overflow.