Could Sgr A* be a core of dark matter instead of a supermassive black hole?
I'm going to say, &quot;probably not&quot;, because (as tfb points out) we have very good evidence for SMBHs in other galaxies -- in particular galaxies with active nuclei where the phenomenon associated with accretion disks around BHs are seen. The most extreme case is probably NGC 4395, where a Seyfert 1 nucleus and associated radio jets exist. The best estimates for accretion-disk+SMBH models suggest a SMBH mass of only a few hundred thousand solar masses; a recent direct dynamical measurement (den Brok et al. 2015) indicate a central &quot;dark object&quot; gravitational mass of $M_{\rm BH} \sim 400,000$ solar masses. There are numerous other galaxies with active nuclei where the estimated or measured central-object masses are $M_{\rm BH} \sim 10^{6}$--$10^{7} M_{\odot}$.
This is rather difficult to square with the claim that &quot;above a critical mass, a dark matter clump could gravitationally collapse into a supermassive black hole&quot; because if you follow up the associated reference to Argüelles et al. (2021), it ends up predicting a critical mass of $\sim 10^{8} M_{\odot}$. This is consistent with something like M87 ($M_{\rm BH} \sim 6 \times 10^{9} M_{\odot}$), but not with all the evidence for accreting SMBHs in galaxy centers with $M_{\rm BH} &lt; 10^{7} M_{\odot}$.
The &quot;flares observed from Sgr A* in recent years&quot; are, I believe, generally supposed to be evidence for a very weak, transient accretion disk around the SMBH (e.g., the discussion on this web page), and so would be difficult to explain with this model.