Loosely speaking, a black hole is a region of space that has so much mass concentrated in it that there is no way for a nearby object to escape its gravitational pull.
Astronomers now have observational evidence that at least some blackholes spin about like whirlpools, wrapping up the fabric of space with them. Dr. Tod Strohmayer of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, has studied one such black hole system with NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer and found unique patterns in the X-ray radiation that have previously only been seen in spinning neutron stars. With these new parameters, he could verify that a black hole, like a neutron star, can spin. The observation also challenges theories about neutron star radiation.