Radio waves streaming from an alien planet may offer a new tool in the hunt for life elsewhere in the universe.<\/p>\n
Astronomers have spotted these waves coming from what seems to be an aurora at the poles of Beta Pictoris b, a planet that circles a star more than 63 light-years from Earth. The aurora is probably caused by a powerful magnetic field, according to the research team.<\/p>\n
If so, it would be the first confirmed magnetic field on a planet outside our solar system, and it could be a precursor to finding more worlds that might host life. The findings, which have yet to be peer-reviewed, were posted online<\/a> on Sept. 15.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is really exciting,\u201d said Imke de Pater, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the paper. \u201cNobody has seen radio emission from a planet in this way.\u201d<\/p>\n Earth\u2019s magnetic field protects the planet\u2019s atmosphere \u2014 and the conditions for life on the surface \u2014 from being blown away by radiation flowing off the sun. That\u2019s partly why astronomers have been keen to find such fields on alien worlds.<\/p>\n \u201cHabitability is probably one of the main reasons we\u2019re interested in magnetospheres,\u201d said Yvette Cendes, an astronomer at the University of Oregon who is an author of the paper. <\/p>\n Detecting magnetic fields on alien worlds is hard, but one trick is to look for radio emissions<\/a> from the planets. A magnetic field will funnel electrons to a planet\u2019s poles, producing auroras like the ones we see on the worlds of our solar system. When those electrons hit the poles, they can bounce back, releasing radio waves.<\/p>\n Kevin Ortiz Ceballos, a graduate student at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., and his colleagues started by looking for radio emissions from a variety of stars using the MeerKAT radio telescope. MeerKAT is an array of 64 antennas spread across Meerkat National Park in South Africa and is one of the most advanced radio telescopes in the world.<\/p>\n In 2025 and early 2026, the team spotted something on Beta Pictoris b. The planet was discovered in 2008<\/a> through direct imaging: Astronomers saw the faint blip of light from the planet by blocking the light of its much brighter host star. It is nearly twice the size of Jupiter and is about 12 times as massive.<\/p>\n Follow-up observations this May helped the team pinpoint radio emissions from Beta Pictoris b that seem to correspond to \u201cvery strong magnetic activity,\u201d Mr. Ceballos said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe could actually distinguish the positions of the star and planet and figure out that the emission was coming from the planet,\u201d Mr. Ceballos said. \u201cWe\u2019re really pushing what this kind of telescope can do.\u201d<\/p>\n The frequency of the radio waves reveals the potential magnetic field\u2019s strength. Earth\u2019s is about 0.5 gauss, which is a tiny fraction of the strength of a bar magnet. Jupiter\u2019s is more intense at up to 14 gauss. Beta Pictoris b, by comparison, would have an \u201cextraordinary\u201d magnetic field strength of at least 1,250 gauss, Mr. Ceballos said.<\/p>\n Mary Knapp, a planetary scientist at M.I.T. who was not involved in the paper, called the finding a \u201cpretty solid result.\u201d We have seen hints of magnetic fields<\/a> on exoplanets before, but until now there has been no direct detection. \u201cI hope this is the start of more,\u201d Dr. Knapp said.<\/p>\n Beta Pictoris b\u2019s magnetic field would be similar in strength to those of large objects known as brown dwarfs, failed stars up to 80 times as massive as Jupiter. But exactly why it would be so strong is unclear. It could be related to the young age of the planet, barely 25 million years old, Mr. Ceballos said. Younger planets are hotter, and so have more energy to drive the dynamo that powers a magnetic field.<\/p>\n Or the field could be caused by something more speculative, like a moon orbiting the planet. In our solar system, Jupiter\u2019s moon Io feeds its aurora by spewing charged particles from its myriad volcanoes into the planet\u2019s atmosphere. However, no conclusive evidence for a moon has yet been found<\/a> around Beta Pictoris b.<\/p>\n Aside from habitability, astronomers are excited about alien magnetic fields because they allow humans to study the interiors of distant planets in a unique way. We know these fields are normally driven by the spin of a planet\u2019s core, so it\u2019s likely that something similar is happening inside Beta Pictoris b. \u201cYou have a giant dynamo system creating this gigantic magnetic field,\u201d Dr. Cendes said.<\/p>\n Astronomers want to examine smaller planets in the future for magnetic fields.<\/p>\n But rocky planets like Earth would have much weaker fields, and our planet\u2019s atmosphere is \u201clike a completely opaque wall\u201d blocking their radio emission, Mr. Ceballos said. To find them, we would need to place radio telescopes in space or on the far side of the moon<\/a>.<\/p>\n Until then, giant worlds \u2014 like Beta Pictoris b \u2014 will be easier to assess. \u201cIt\u2019s been really beautiful to have studied this,\u201d Mr. Ceballos said, \u201cand finally measure the magnetic field of an exoplanet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Radio waves streaming from an alien planet may offer a new tool in the hunt for life elsewhere…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":615839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[13666,303367,111,139,69,393,6251,147,13301],"class_list":["post-615838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-physics","tag-extraterrestrial-life","tag-magnets-and-magnetism","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-physics","tag-planets","tag-science","tag-space-and-astronomy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=615838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/615839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}