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Black holes seem like such mysterious and complicated objects. On one hand, they are,
and astronomers have been studying them for decades to learn more. On the other, black
holes are actually quite simple. By this, we mean that black holes are defined by just
two simple characteristics: their mass and their spin. While astronomers have long been
able to measure black hole masses very effectively, determining their spins has been much more
difficult. A new result from researchers using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory
and ESA's XMM-Newton takes a step in addressing the spin question. By a lucky alignment, the
light from a quasar some 6 billion light years has been magnified and amplified due to an
effect called gravitational lensing. This allowed researchers to get detailed information
about the amount of X-rays seen at different energies. This, in turn, gave the researchers
information about how fast the supermassive black hole at the center of the quasar is
spinning. When combined with the spins from other black holes using more indirect methods,
astronomers are beginning to better understand just how black holes grow over time across
the Universe.