Some of the 'supermassive black holes' in space might actually be giant clouds of dark matter with a tiny, dead star trapped in the center.
April 14, 2026
Original Paper
Possible Supermassive Dark Object Composed of Light Fermionic Gas with an Embedded Neutron Star Core
arXiv · 2604.10011
The Takeaway
This theory proposes that supermassive objects like Sgr A* aren't black holes, but 'dark objects' made of invisible fermionic gas. It suggests that a neutron star can act as a gravitational seed to pull in enough dark matter to mimic the mass and appearance of a black hole.
From the abstract
The structure of dark matter admixed neutron stars (DANSs) are investigated, adopting a non-annihilating self-interacting fermionic dark matter (DM) model, with a particular focus on the case of the light DM particle mass $m_D \in [10^{-10}, 1]$ GeV. The DANSs become DM-dominated configurations when $m_D <10^{-1}$ GeV, where a compact neutron star core becomes embedded within an extremely large DM halo. It is found that the maximum mass of DANSs is inversely proportional to $m_{ D}$, approximate