#AthenaNuggets: Unlocking the mystery of Black Hole growth over cosmic time, by Laura Brenneman and Giovanni Miniutti
Black holes (BHs) can be fully described by only their mass and their spin or angular momentum. In particular, the spin can be used as a probe of SMBH growth history, since the distribution of BH spins in the local Universe depends on whether they have accumulated their mass predominantly via mergers, steady accretion or chaotic accretion. Laura Brenneman and Giovanni Miniutti tell us about how to discover how BH grew by measuring how fast they spin in our AthenaNuggets #9.