Disruption of a proto-planetary disc by the black hole at the milky way centre.

Recently, an ionized cloud of gas was discovered plunging towards 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 ∼3,100 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 disc 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 disc experiences both photoevaporation and tidal disruption, producing a cloud. Our model implies that planets form in the Galactic centre, and that tidal debris from proto-planetary discs can flag low-mass stars, which are otherwise too faint to be detected.