But would the disks in the real world

 But would the disks in the real world

 prove this simple, without any further complexities? (Whether "simple" is the right word for turbulence in an ultra-dense, out-of-control environment embedded in intense gravitational and magnetic fields where space itself is bent to breaking point is perhaps a separate question.)

Using statistical methods we measured how much the light emitted from our 5,000 disks flickered over time. The pattern of flickering in each one looked somewhat different.

But when we sorted them by size, brightness and color, we began to see intriguing patterns. We were able to determine the orbital speed of each disk—and once you set your clock to run at the disk's speed, all the flickering patterns started to look the same.

This universal behavior is indeed predicted by the theory of "magneto-rotational instabilities".

That was comforting! It means these mind-boggling maelstroms are "simple" after all.

And it opens new possibilities. We think the remaining subtle differences between accretion disks occur because we are looking at them from different orientations.