Black Hole Spin Measured for First Time by Astronomers

Astronomers studying supermassive black holes say they have accurately measured how fast the mysterious consumers of space matter spin.

The black hole at the center of the spiral galaxy NGC 1365 was measured by research and is spinning at roughly 84 percent as fast as Einstein's general theory of relativity would allow.

"It's the first time that we can really say that black holes are spinning," Fiona Harrison, study co-author from Caltech in Pasadena, told Space.com. "The promise that this holds for being able to understand how black holes grow is, I think, the major implication."

The black hole is 56 million light-years away from Earth and is pumping out large quantities of energy that has caught the attention of researchers. Using images taken in July 2012 by  X-ray telescopes aboard the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton observatory and NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, researchers were able to trace the motion of the disk of matter that rotates around the black hole.

Guido Risaliti of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics Arcetri Observatory led the study and were able to measure the rotation speed at 84 percent allowed by the theory of general relativity. A rate of speed so fast that it wouldn't make sense in miles per hour, the report says.

"The analogy of an actual velocity is not quite right," Harrison said. "But what you can say is that spinning black holes twist space-time around them. And if you were standing near the black hole, basically your space-time would be twisted, or dragged, around such that you would have to rotate once every four minutes just to be standing still."