Scientists have over the years claimed that a supermassive black hole is located at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. However, new research suggests that something more mysterious could be in the middle of the galaxy.

Sagittarius A*, the huge object at the center of the Milky Way that has a mass equivalent to 4 million Suns, was always believed to be a black hole after the stars around were observed. However, in 2014, this notion was challenged as a gas cloud known as G2 came close to the black hole.

Is Sagittarius A* not a black hole?

Scientists thought the cloud will be destroyed due to the gravity of the Sagittarius A* black hole, but that didn’t happen and the gas cloud survived without an issue. Now, some researchers suggest that Sagittarius A* is not a black hole, but a bundle of dark matter.

Dark matter is an invisible material that is said to account for 80% of the total matter in the cosmos. However, there is no evidence to prove its existence as it doesn’t interact with light. To confirm this theory, scientists at the International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics (ICRA) did an experiment.

The team made a simulation where the Milky Way was replaced with dark matter –an elementary particle known as a “darkino” that would be dense at the center of the mass, but lesser on the edges.

Dark matter could form supermassive black holes

“Darkinos”, the scientists say, are a kind of fermion and are limited to how densely they can be packed together. This would have allowed G2 to survive, allowing close-by stars to exist and even cause a rotational curve of the galaxy’s outer halo.

While the supermassive black hole is still the most likely scenario, the answer could be beyond our understanding at the moment. Recently, scientists also suggested that supermassive black holes could be formed from dark matter, which could explain their swift formation, even before the galaxies around them could exist. The research was published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters.