“But I think it’s going to be a lot of follow-up work before a really strong confirmation of radio waves caused by a planet comes out.” “This could really plausibly be it,” Villadsen said. The researchers think that YZ Ceti b is the best candidate spotted so far for a rocky exoplanet with a magnetic field. “There should also be aurora on the planet if it has its own atmosphere.” “We’re actually seeing the aurora on the star - that’s what this radio emission is,” Pineda said. Scientists imagine that the interactions between YZ Ceti and its planet also create an aurora, but this light show actually takes place on the star. Energetic bursts from the sun can disrupt satellites and global telecommunications and cause dazzling light shows near Earth’s poles, like the aurora borealis, or northern lights.
In our solar system, activity on the sun can create space weather that impacts Earth. “This idea is what we’re calling ‘extrasolar space weather.’” “This is telling us new information about the environment around stars,” Pineda said. The researchers measured the radio waves they detected to determine the strength of the planet’s magnetic field. Alice Kitterman/National Science Foundation The plasma then interacts with the star's magnetic field, creating an aurora and radio waves. This illustration depicts plasma emitted by a star deflected by the magnetic field of the exoplanet orbiting it. All of these energetic reactions create and release strong radio waves that can be detected on Earth. While YZ Ceti b whips around its star, plasma from the star collides with the planet’s magnetic field, bounces off and interacts with the star’s magnetic field. Meanwhile, the shortest orbit in our solar system is the planet Mercury, which takes 88 Earth days to complete a lap around the sun. YZ Ceti b only takes two Earth days to complete a single orbit around its star. If the planet has a magnetic field and it plows through enough star stuff, it will cause the star to emit bright radio waves.”
“These planets are way too close to their stars to be somewhere you could live, but because they are so close the planet is kind of plowing through a bunch of stuff coming off the star. “We’re looking for planets that are really close to their stars and are a similar size to Earth,” she said. “What we’re doing is looking for a way to see them,” said study coauthor Jackie Villadsen, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, in a statement. Second potentially habitable Earth-size planet found orbiting nearby star Its Earth-size sibling, TOI 700 d, can be seen in the distance.
Newly discovered Earth-size planet TOI 700 e orbits within the habitable zone of its star in this illustration. But finding magnetic fields on smaller planets the size of Earth is more difficult because magnetic fields are essentially invisible. Previously, researchers have detected magnetic fields on exoplanets similar in size to Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. “Whether a planet survives with an atmosphere or not can depend on whether the planet has a strong magnetic field or not,” Pineda said. In order for the radio waves to be detectable on Earth, they must be very strong, the researchers said. Magnetic fields can prevent a planet’s atmosphere from being diminished and essentially eroded away over time as particles release from the star and bombard it, Pineda said. “When we saw it again, it was very indicative that, OK, maybe we really have something here.” “We saw the initial burst and it looked beautiful,” said lead study author Sebastian Pineda, a research astrophysicist at the University of Colorado Boulder, in a statement. James Webb Space Telescope discovers its first exoplanet LHS 475 b is relatively close, 41 light-years away, in the constellation Octans. Researchers will follow up this summer with additional observations with Webb, which they hope will allow them to definitively conclude if the planet has an atmosphere. The planet whips around its star in just two days, far faster than any planet in the Solar System. Based on new evidence from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, this illustration reflects the conclusion that the exoplanet LHS 475 b is rocky and almost precisely the same size as Earth.
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