Animation showing a star with accretion disc embedded inside a knot of dust
Animation showing a photo-evaporating debris-laden planetary disc that surrounds
a star and generates its circumstellar nebula
(courtesy of NASA and the James Webb Space Telescope)
http://etheric.com/g2-cloud-predicted-to-approach-twice-as-close-to-gc/
Paul LaViolette - The revised trajectory for the G2 cloud dramatically increases the chances that a star hidden within the cloud might have companion stars or planets ripped from it by tidal forces and ultimately consumed by the core. G2 cloud’s closest encounter with the Galactic core at somewhere between the end of January 2014 and the beginning of May 2014 with a median date of mid March. Since tidal force varies as the inverse cube of distance from a massive celestial body, this means that the G2 cloud will be subjected to tidal forces 8.5 times greater than previously estimated - having a mass of 50 Jupiter masses which has inflate to as much as 3 times the diameter of the Sun and is undergoing a high rate of mass loss as a result of the internal heating. Also since the radiation flux from the Galactic core varies as the inverse square of radial distance, the G2 cloud and its hidden star will be subject to a cosmic ray energy flux and galactic wind energy flux 4 times greater than previously supposed. Another factor disrupting an embedded star or planet is the celestial body’s internal genic energy flux which depends on the value of the ambient gravity potential. If the G2 cloud is to approach twice as close to our Galaxy’s supermassive core as had been previously thought, this will cause the genic energy output of embedded planets or stars at pericenter to be twice as large as had previously been estimated. (More will be said about these mechanisms below.)Animation showing a photo-evaporating debris-laden planetary disc that surrounds
a star and generates its circumstellar nebula
(courtesy of NASA and the James Webb Space Telescope)
http://etheric.com/g2-cloud-predicted-to-approach-twice-as-close-to-gc/
In a Starburst Foundation forum posting made last October, I had presented the possibility that the G2 cloud may harbor a jovian planet or brown dwarf, an idea that had also been suggested by Murray-Clay and Loeb. They proposed that the G2 cloud may contain an unseen low-mass star that is surrounded by a dust and debris accretion disc and that the material in this accretion disc has been evaporated to produce the enveloping G2 cloud as a result of exposure to ionizing radiation or because the accretion disc had been tidally disrupted by previous orbital encounters with the Galactic core. The idea I proposed agrees with their idea of a low mass star or brown dwarf being present. But I believe that the G2 cloud was generated because the contained star or planet has been expelling its atmosphere due to an enormous amount of internal heating it is currently undergoing. Although some of the generated G2 nebula could have come from evaporation of a disc of material orbiting the star, I believe that the main contributor is the atmosphere of the embedded star or planet.
Currently, the idea that the G2 cloud may have an embedded mass has gained more widespread acceptance following the discovery that the cloud is very compact, only about 100 AU in length. In fact this past March, astronomers Scoville and Burkert posted a paper in which they suggest that the G2 cloud may contain a 2 solar mass T Tauri star that is undergoing rapid mass loss, thereby generating the surrounding cloud. T Tauri stars have inflated photospheres typically 2 to 4 times the size of our sun and can be up to an order of magnitude overly luminous. Standard astronomical theory considers a T Tauri star to be an early type star that is accreting gas from its immediate environment to become a main sequence star. But, it is generally recognized that the region within a few light years of the Galactic core is too disruptive to allow star formation and growth through gas accretion. Scoville and Burkert do not address this problem. They do not explain how in such a turbulent environment a star could be surrounded by an accretion disc for long enough to allow it to develop into a T Tauri star. In my opinion, their suggestion is correct that the embedded star could resemble a T Tauri star whose photosphere is very expanded, overly luminous and in the process of discharging a large quantity of gas. However their suggestion that this process is fueled by matter accretion from a protoplanetary accretion disc, I believe, is off the mark. The real cause of the generation of the G2 cloud is the star’s entry into the unique Galactic core environment and the consequent stellar heating that occurs there. It has nothing to do with the star accreting a disc of debris that it may have transported with it on its inward journey.
As the cloud nears pericenter, if we see it appear to divide and spawn off a subcloud that begins rapidly accelerating directly toward the Galactic core, we will know this worst case scenario is about to occur. This subcloud will contain within it the binary companion star or jovian planet that has been tidally stripped off from the parent star. At this point we will have about two months before its inevitable impact on the core, at which point an exceedingly bright gamma ray burst and cosmic ray spike will be detected on Earth, far greater than any we have seen until now. The superwave will have arrived at our doorstep, possibly heralded by earthquakes occurring a few days before.
