When a planet ventures too close to its star, tidal forces rip it apart, igniting a cosmic funeral pyre. The debris forms a radiant disk. Scientists modeled the demise of planets around other stars, tracking the brightness of such flares. It turns out the orbit sets the script: for a Jupiter-like planet on a circular orbit, the pyre builds up over 12 days; on an elongated orbit, it flares up in a day, but the light is unstable. For Neptune-like planets, it's the opposite: an elongated orbit slows the ignition. Color reveals temperature: the brighter, the bluer, like white-hot metal. The gas and dust cloud smolders for years. Surprising fact: if this happened at Proxima Centauri, we'd see the funeral pyre with the naked eye. Now astronomers will search for these flares — beacons of perished worlds.
Proxima Centauri could destroy its planets with tidal forces, but so far we haven't seen such flares.