(May 22, 2017 at 8:39 am)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote: So we will find many more of these, making it less likely it's an artificial event?
We probably will eventually find another, but it might take a long time if the act is indeed very brief compared to the life of stars. So the percentage of stars currently undergoing this process must be vanishingly small even if a large percentage of star underwent this process at one time or another.
But I suspect we will eventually learn to identify evidence thaat such a process had taken place in an planetary system even if the process is not currently occurring. One possible evidence might be a sizeable number of stars have elevated levels of heavy metal in their atmospheres. We may also refine our model of planetary formation to better model the process whereby an outer planet is dragged in towards the parent star, and how planets of different types behave when they are pulled very close to the parent star, so we can better match the observed behavior to a detailed model.
