Now we know how fast a black hole spins when it shreds a star

Ages ago, in a galaxy some 300 million light years away, an unwitting star veered fatally close to a powerful black hole. After shredding the star apart, the black hole ejected pulses of energy into the cosmos.

Astronomers received this ancient signal, made of x-rays, in 2014.

Now, a team of astrophysicists used these x-rays to reveal insights about this enigmatic black hole, specifically, how rapidly it’s spinning. They published the study Wednesday in the journal Science.

“You’re getting information from right next to the black hole,” Dheeraj Pasham, an astrophysicist at MIT and the study’s lead author, said in an interview. “You’re getting information from the strongest gravity that can exist.” Read more…

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