Title: Measuring Black Hole Spin
Abstract:
An astrophysical black hole is completely described with just two parameters: its mass and its dimensionless spin. A few dozen black holes have mass estimates, but until recently none had a reliable spin estimate.
Spins have now been measured for a few black holes in X-ray binaries.
The talk will describe the method used to make these measurements and will discuss implications of the results obtained so far.