[Chad N. Freud]

Thanks; I learned something (I think) just reading your replies to everyone.

I still can’t picture a Massive Moon and a Massive Earth, with a Plasma Bridge, not colliding in a shorter time than it even takes for their image to be observed by astronomers, but I defer to those who are more learned in these things.

[LibWhacker]

I think it's because that plasma bridge is so thin and tenuous in comparison to the mass of the two stars. It has no structural integrity whatsoever. It's like a puff of air trying to slow down a trillion freight trains barreling down the mountainside. It can do it, but it takes a very long time.

Now in truth, I don't know how long it would take exactly. We would have to get into the mathematics. It depends, among other things, on how dense the bridge is and how fierce the winds are (which I'm sure now I shouldn't have described as "a puff of air").

Another way to look at it is if such a merger happened almost instantaneously every time it happened, what would the probability be that we would ever get lucky enough to see one actually happening before our eyes?