The Large Magellanic Cloud, a close neighbor to the Milky Way, may house a giant black hole. It's the closest supermassive black hole outside of our galaxy.

More information: Jiwon Jesse Han et al, Hypervelocity Stars Trace a Supermassive Black Hole in the Large Magellanic Cloud, arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2502.00102.

Some fast-moving stars within the Milky Way have been traced back to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). In a preprint paper that has not yet completed peer review, the astronomers who demonstrated ...

If more of these trace back to the Cloud, it would provide further confirmation that a black hole is at work. In the much longer term, the Milky Way is destined to have a closer relationship to the ...

Fast-moving stars in the Milky Way indicate there could be a supermassive black hole in the neighboring Large Magellanic Cloud—something that has never been detected in a smaller galaxy.

The Large Magellanic Cloud is located about 160,000 light-years from Earth, making it among the closest galaxies to the Milky Way. That makes this the nearest supermassive black hole to us aside ...

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.

Bending light: Artist's impression of a microlensing event caused by a black hole observed from Earth toward the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The light of a background star located in the LMC is bent ...

Some fast-moving stars within the Milky Way have been traced back to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). In a preprint paper that has not yet completed peer review, the astronomers who demonstrated ...

“The Large Magellanic Cloud, given its mass and structure, is totally expected to have a supermassive black hole of this mass. We just needed to find the evidence for it,” Mr Han said.