Astronomers say they have directly detected, for the first time, radio emissions coming from a single planet outside the solar system — a signal traced to the gas giant Beta Pictoris b, 63 light-years from Earth, that points to one of the most powerful magnetic fields ever measured on a planet.
The repeating radio bursts were picked up by South Africa's MeerKAT radio telescope array by a team led by Kevin N. Ortiz Ceballos of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, with researchers from the University of Oregon also involved. The finding was described in a paper posted September 15 to the preprint platform arXiv and has not yet undergone peer review.
The team concluded the bursts came from Beta Pictoris b rather than its host star by examining their position and radio characteristics. The star is relatively magnetically quiet, which helped the researchers isolate the planetary signal, and distant quasars were used as reference points to map the source of the emissions.
Not aliens — auroras
The scientists emphasize the signal is not a sign of intelligent life. The bursts are believed to be natural auroral emissions — the same kind of process that produces Earth's northern lights and auroras on Jupiter, where high-energy particles interact with gases around a planet's magnetic poles. "I know radio signals are associated with searches for extraterrestrial intelligence," said Harvard astronomy professor Edo Berger, a coauthor. "But this is something very different."
A magnetic monster
The observations let the team estimate the strength of the planet's magnetic field at approximately 1,250 gauss in the radio-emitting region — against Jupiter's equatorial field of around 4.3 gauss and Earth's roughly 0.5 gauss, though the measurements refer to different regions of the respective magnetic fields. Beta Pictoris b is estimated to be between nine and 13 times the mass of Jupiter, part of the young Beta Pictoris planetary system.
Researchers say the discovery opens a new way to study the magnetic environments of exoplanets, which shield atmospheres from stellar winds and cosmic radiation — information that could eventually help assess the environments of distant worlds.
Sources:
First Radio Signal From A Planet Beyond Our Solar System Detected — NDTV Profit
Radio signal detected for the first time from a planet outside our solar system — CNN
The repeating radio bursts were picked up by South Africa's MeerKAT radio telescope array by a team led by Kevin N. Ortiz Ceballos of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, with researchers from the University of Oregon also involved. The finding was described in a paper posted September 15 to the preprint platform arXiv and has not yet undergone peer review.
The team concluded the bursts came from Beta Pictoris b rather than its host star by examining their position and radio characteristics. The star is relatively magnetically quiet, which helped the researchers isolate the planetary signal, and distant quasars were used as reference points to map the source of the emissions.
Not aliens — auroras
The scientists emphasize the signal is not a sign of intelligent life. The bursts are believed to be natural auroral emissions — the same kind of process that produces Earth's northern lights and auroras on Jupiter, where high-energy particles interact with gases around a planet's magnetic poles. "I know radio signals are associated with searches for extraterrestrial intelligence," said Harvard astronomy professor Edo Berger, a coauthor. "But this is something very different."
A magnetic monster
The observations let the team estimate the strength of the planet's magnetic field at approximately 1,250 gauss in the radio-emitting region — against Jupiter's equatorial field of around 4.3 gauss and Earth's roughly 0.5 gauss, though the measurements refer to different regions of the respective magnetic fields. Beta Pictoris b is estimated to be between nine and 13 times the mass of Jupiter, part of the young Beta Pictoris planetary system.
Researchers say the discovery opens a new way to study the magnetic environments of exoplanets, which shield atmospheres from stellar winds and cosmic radiation — information that could eventually help assess the environments of distant worlds.
Sources:
First Radio Signal From A Planet Beyond Our Solar System Detected — NDTV Profit
Radio signal detected for the first time from a planet outside our solar system — CNN
