According to this article, "Astronomers may have found a way to identify those Sun-like stars most likely to harbour orbiting planets.
"A survey of stars known to possess planets shows the vast majority to be severely depleted in lithium."
The explanation is thus:-
"Theory holds that planets grow from a disc of dusty material that develops around infant stars.
"The researchers propose that this disc and its contents alter the young star's spin, mixing its upper layers more effectively into the interior where its contents can be "burnt" in the fusion processes that power it.
""When discs form around stars there is interaction of angular momentum between disc, planets and parent star; and this interaction affects the rotation of the parent star and that will affect the lithium abundance," said Garik Israelian from the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, Tenerife, Spain."
So future scouts looking for T-prime worlds would be advised to look for an absence of the Fraunhofer lines of lithium when performing a spectrographic analysis of the parent star's light.
"A survey of stars known to possess planets shows the vast majority to be severely depleted in lithium."
The explanation is thus:-
"Theory holds that planets grow from a disc of dusty material that develops around infant stars.
"The researchers propose that this disc and its contents alter the young star's spin, mixing its upper layers more effectively into the interior where its contents can be "burnt" in the fusion processes that power it.
""When discs form around stars there is interaction of angular momentum between disc, planets and parent star; and this interaction affects the rotation of the parent star and that will affect the lithium abundance," said Garik Israelian from the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, Tenerife, Spain."
So future scouts looking for T-prime worlds would be advised to look for an absence of the Fraunhofer lines of lithium when performing a spectrographic analysis of the parent star's light.