In an earlier thread, I had a question about what would happen to a planet whose orbit was catastrophically disrupted, sending it on a path into its parent star. It seems some scientists who are looking for exoplanets have run the numbers for a similar scenario [1]. This is what they think might happen:
"Asked whether his team ever cranked the temperature high enough to vaporize the entire Earth, not just the crust and the mantle, Fegley admits that they did. " 'You’re left with a big ball of steaming gas that’s knocking you on the head with pebbles and droplets of liquid iron,' he says. 'But we didn’t put that into the paper because the exoplanets the astronomers are finding are only partially vaporized,' he says." Eric [1] http://phys.org/news/2012-08-simulations-vaporization-earth-like-planets-planet-hunters.html
