![\"Artist's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/gravitational-lensing.jpg\")
Credit: dottedhippo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\nAstronomers have proposed a radical alternative to the long-held belief that a supermassive black hole sits at the centre of the Milky Way, suggesting that instead a dense clump of dark matter could generate the same gravitational effects.<\/p>\n
The new study, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, argues that an ultra-compact dark matter core can explain both the rapid motions of stars near our galactic centre and the larger-scale rotation of our Galaxy.<\/p>\n
Credit: dottedhippo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
A new theory for Sagittarius A*?<\/p>\n
For decades, the object known as Sagittarius A*<\/a> has been interpreted as a black hole<\/a> more than four million times the mass of the Sun, largely because stars in its vicinity, called S-stars, whirl around However, an international team have put forward a fermionic dark matter model that could reproduce the same stellar motions without a black hole.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the first time a dark matter model has successfully bridged these vastly different scales and various object orbits, including modern rotation curve and central stars data,\u201d says the study\u2019s co-author Dr Carlos Arg\u00fcelles.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe are not just replacing the black hole with a dark object; we are proposing that the supermassive central object and the Galaxy\u2019s dark matter halo are two manifestations of the same substance.\u201d<\/p>\n Their model posits that a type of dark matter made up of fermions can form a dense core nested within a more diffuse halo.<\/p>\n That dense region would exert a gravitational influence strong enough to mimic a black hole\u2019s effects on nearby orbits and could even bend light.<\/p>\n That would create a \u2018shadow\u2019 surrounded by a bright ring, like the one captured by the Event Horizon Telescope in 2022.<\/p>\n Lead author Valentina Crespi explains: \u201cThe dense dark matter core can mimic the shadow because it bends light so strongly, creating a central darkness surrounded by a bright ring.\u201d<\/p>\n If confirmed, the discovery would force a total rethink of how galaxies form.<\/p>\n Rather than being shaped by a central singularity, the Milky Way might be held together by a continuous \u2018skeleton\u2019 of dark matter from its core to its farthest edge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Astronomers have proposed a radical alternative to the long-held belief that a supermassive black hole sits at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":573675,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[79,193],"class_list":{"0":"post-573674","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/573675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
it at enormous speeds.<\/p>\n![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/sagittarius-a-meerkat.jpg\")
An image of Sagittarius A* at the centre of the Milky Way, captured by the MeerKAT radio telescope. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, SARAO, Samuel Crowe (UVA), John Bally (CU), Ruben Fedriani (IAA-CSIC), Ian Heywood (Oxford)<\/p>\n![\"Astronomers](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/sagittarius-a-star-image-first-5ac6298-e1652430754537.jpg\")
The first ever image of Sagittarius A* at the centre of our Galaxy. Credit: EHT Collaboration<\/p>\n