A gas disk with a mass of four hundred thousand suns encircles the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Its gravity works like a gravitational rudder: slowly but inexorably turning the orbits of binary stars, driving them into the region where tidal forces tear the pair apart.

Usually, an Accretion disk (a gas disk falling onto the hole) is imagined glowing from friction, but here its mass is more important. The disk's non-spherical field creates a torque that gradually reduces the angular momentum of the binary orbit. When the momentum drops nearly to zero, the star enters the Roche limit — the zone of inevitable tidal disruption. It’s like turning a rudder, steering a ship into a steep descent.

Numerical simulation of tens of thousands of orbits has shown: over several million years, such a disk can disrupt about a hundred binary systems in the center of our galaxy. The burst occurred around 5 million years ago — exactly when star formation flared up in the nucleus and a disk of young stars formed.

After the disruption, one star is captured into a very tight orbit — this is how the S-cluster, a swarm of objects near the hole, is replenished. The second star, like from a slingshot, flies away and becomes hypervelocity. The trajectory of S5-HVS1 and its age precisely match the ejection scenario 5 million years ago.

ADDD (accretion disk-driven disruption) is a universal mechanism. Any episode of active galactic nucleus activity, accompanied by a massive disk, should leave a similar imprint: a population of hypervelocity stars and frequent tidal disruption flares as the remaining stars evolve. Even mergers of compact objects that produce gravitational waves could be accelerated by this steering effect.

The disk's gravitational rudder leaves no dents, but each of its turns carves a lasting trail — a swarm of faint S-stars near the event horizon and rapidly fleeing loners. Future telescopes will be able to read this chronicle and refine how often such a mechanism has operated in galactic centers.