Was the soft X-ray flare in NGC 3599 due to an AGN disc instability or a
  delayed tidal disruption event?
  We present unpublished data from a tidal disruption candidate in NGC 3599
which show that the galaxy was already X-ray bright 18 months before the
measurement which led to its classification. This removes the possibility that
the flare was caused by a classical, fast-rising, short-peaked, tidal
disruption event. Recent relativistic simulations indicate that the majority of
disruptions will actually take months or years to rise to a peak, which will
then be maintained for longer than previously thought. NGC 3599 could be one of
the first identified examples of such an event. The optical spectra of NGC 3599
indicate that it is a low-luminosity Seyfert/LINER with L_bol~10^40 ergs/s The
flare may alternatively be explained by a thermal instability in the accretion
disc, which propagates through the inner region at the sound speed, causing an
increase of the disc scale height and local accretion rate. This can explain
the <9 years rise time of the flare. If this mechanism is correct then the
flare may repeat on a timescale of several decades as the inner disc is emptied
and refilled.
