Findings Could Put a New Spin on Black Holes

The way that light gets distorted by the warped space-time around black holes soon could help scientists directly detect whether those monsters spin, researchers said.

These findings could shed light on the physics of black holes in more detail than earlier deemed possible.

Gravity is a force that leads bodies like planets and stars to pull not just on matter and light, but on space and time itself. If a massive body is rotating, it swirls the fabric of space-time around it, an effect known as frame-dragging that is even detectable around Earth. Although scientists have conjectured that the black holes such as the one suggested to exist at the center of our galaxy are spinning, no one has any direct evidence yet that they do so.

Full article here

I never tire of this stuff. There are so many great observations and discoveries to be made in the near future. Only one thing though, the claim of the article that Hawking radiation could be discernible through such observations, seems very far out there to me.

Interesting, but why would they not spin. Everything else observable spins: moons, earth, other planets, the sun, our solar system, galaxies, so why not a black hole.

Black holes might well spin, as you mention; it's just that we don't know if they do or not, or whether some do and some don't. There are different mathematical models based on whether black holes have spin, and whether they do or not has implications for some of their other properties.

Some of the different types of black holes are described here: en.wikipedia.org...

(note: angular momentum = spinning)