Nature:
An elongated gas cloud that is being pulled toward the
supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way may
arise from a planet-forming disk around a young star. Based on
their simulations, Ruth Murray-Clay and Avi Loeb of the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, believe that the star could have been pulled
from orbit around the black hole. They propose that the gas
cloud itself results from planetary dust being boiled away by
UV radiation from the vicinity of the black hole and that the
cloud's distorted shape results from the black hole's intense
gravitational field. Murray-Clay and Loeb's simulation matches
many of the observed characteristics of the gas cloud, but
calculates only a 0.1% chance that a star pulled from its
galactic orbit toward the black hole could have followed the
gas cloud's observed path. However, if the model is correct, as
the cloud nears the black hole, the increase in radiation
intensity would illuminate the denser material around the
star.
