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arXiv · 1112.4822

Disruption of a Proto-Planetary Disk by the Black Hole at the Milky Way Centre

Ruth A. Murray-Clay·Abraham Loeb
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Abstract

Recently, an ionized cloud of gas was discovered plunging toward the supermassive black hole, SgrA*, at the centre of the Milky Way. The cloud is being tidally disrupted along its path to closest approach at ~3100 Schwarzschild radii from the black hole. Here, we show that the observed properties of this cloud of gas can naturally be produced by a proto-planetary disk surrounding a low-mass star, which was scattered from the observed ring of young stars orbiting SgrA*. As the young star approaches the black hole, its disk experiences both photo-evaporation and tidal disruption, producing a cloud. Our model implies that planets form in the Galactic centre, and that tidal debris from proto-planetary disks can flag low mass stars which are otherwise too faint to be detected.

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Ruth A. Murray-Clay, Abraham Loeb. 2011-12-20. Disruption of a Proto-Planetary Disk by the Black Hole at the Milky Way Centre. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms2044

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