There's something mysterious and invisible hiding at the centre of our galaxy, scientists suggest

It feels like every other day now, new research emerges which manages to turn our understanding of the universe completely on its head.

We're always ready to have our minds blown, of course, and new research has suggested that entire galaxies could be rooted to enormous "dark stars" at their cores.

Oh, and they're almost completely invisible.

Of course, anyone familiar with the study of dark matter will know that many scientists believe in the existence of this mysterious element of the universe which frequently defies definition.

Last year, experts claimed that odd behaviour exhibited by Mars could be explained by dark matter. More recently, scientists claimed that there was a 'second big bang' which brought dark matter into the universe for the first time.

Now, now research has emerged which puts forward a fascinating theory - but to understand it, first we need to consider the concept of ‘fuzzy’ dark matter.

Could the centre of galaxies be made up of enormous, invisible stars?iStock

While it’s previously been argued by scientists that dark matter is incredibly heavy, the new theory states that hypothetical particles are incredibly light – and they’re called ‘fuzzy dark matter’ particles.

If they are as light as is suggested by experts in the new paper, they’d be able to stabilise in such a way that allowed them to clump together and form dark stars – and, eventually, form the centres of galaxies.

The research is published in a paper published in December 2024 on the preprint server arXiv [via Live Science].

The astrophysicists behind it constructed a simple model made up of to explore their theory, and found that the fuzzy dark matter soon clumped together at the centre.

According to the research, the gas then mixed in with it and formed a ‘fermion-boson star’. These stars don’t fit our typical understanding of what a ‘star’ is – in fact, it would be mind bogglingly large, up to 10,000 light years wide.

In addition, it would be almost completely invisible apart from the barely perceptible flow of gas across it.

We do love it when research comes along that makes us question the very fabric of the universe, and this is no exception.

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