Supermassive black hole in the Large Magellanic Cloud?

[Deleted member 690984]

Ok, I know, it's science fiction, you can make anything work if you really want it to. I'm planning out a sci-fi story which I wanted to try and keep as grounded as possible in believable scientific concepts. For context, the basic premise is: humanity detects a wormhole on the outer edge of the solar system, and sends an expedition through it. The two locations I had in mind as to where the wormhole could lead include either M87 or the Large Magellanic Cloud. I want a supermassive black hole to feature in the story as part of the setting (hence M87 being one of them).

My question is simple: while the LMC does not have a supermassive black hole, is it beyond the realms of possibility for it to be able to form one? The LMC is approximately 158,200 light years from Earth, so we have a 158,200 year delay on anything that occurs there. Does the LMC have enough mass contained within to form a SMBH?

 

[phyzguy]

I don't think you can say that, "the LMC does not have a supermassive black hole". This paper puts an upper limit of about 10 million solar masses on a SMBH in the LMC. So it could easily have a SMBH of a few million solar masses, similar to the one in the center of the Milky Way. Look at Figure 10 in this paper. The rotation curves look very consistent with a SMBH of 1 million solar masses, which would be consistent with the known mass of the LMC.

 

[Deleted member 690984]

Perfect! Thank you!

 

[Vanadium 50]

A SMBH in the LMC is not impossible, but it would be unexpected - it's a small galaxy with no bulge.