Space

Tiny dwarf galaxy might house a supermassive black hole

Fast-moving stars zooming through our galaxy might have been slingshotted from a black hole inside the neighbouring Large Magellanic Cloud

By Jonathan O’Callaghan

13 February 2025

A supermassive black hole in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) may be the source of nine stars zooming through our galaxy – a surprising hint that dwarf galaxies can host large black holes.

“This is the first compelling evidence for a supermassive black hole in [a dwarf] galaxy,” says Jiwon Jesse Han at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts. He estimates the mass of the black hole inside the LMC would be about 600,000 times that of the sun. For comparison,…

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