(ORDO NEWS) — For the first time, planetary scientists have recorded periodic radio bursts caused by the interaction between the magnetosphere of a rocky planet near the star YZ in the constellation Cetus and the star’s magnetic field.
The discovery for the first time indicated the presence of powerful magnetic fields in potential “twins of the Earth“.
“For a full-fledged search for “Earth twins”, we need to be able not only to determine whether there is water, an atmosphere and rocks on distant planets, but also to assess whether they have a magnetic field.
The observations made by colleagues not only indicated that the planet YZ Ceti b has a magnetic field, but they also opened the way for the search for magnetic fields in other exoworlds,” said Joe Pesce, program manager at the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), quoted by the NSF press service.
Over the past 10 years, astronomers have discovered thousands of exoplanets and tens of thousands of possible candidates for this role.
Most of them are among the so-called “hot Jupiters”, but scientists are increasingly finding smaller planets comparable in size to the Earth.
The growing number of potential “twin Earths” is causing planetary scientists to wonder how many of these worlds could support life.
According to the current ideas of researchers, for the origin and existence of life, such exoworlds must have not only vast reserves of liquid water, but also a constant magnetic field.
It will prevent the atmosphere of these “twins of the Earth” from escaping into space, and will also protect its surface from bombardment by cosmic rays and solar wind particles.
The exoplanet’s magnetic field
A group of planetary scientists led by Sebastian Pineda, a researcher at the University of Colorado at Boulder (USA), has discovered the first evidence that rocky exoplanets can have sufficiently powerful magnetic fields.
They made this discovery while observing the recently discovered planet YZ Ceti b, located in the constellation of Cetus at a distance of 12.1 light-years from Earth.
This planet is a rocky exoworld the size of a smaller copy of Venus or the Earth, which makes it one of the closest candidates for the role of “Earth twins” to us.
It orbits the YZ star at a relatively short distance and orbits this red dwarf in about two days, due to which very high temperatures should prevail on its surface.
Piñeda and colleagues recently discovered with the ground-based VLA radio telescope that the YZ star system produces unusual periodic radio flares, the frequency of which corresponded to the way YZ Ceti b orbits a red dwarf.
The subsequent analysis of the structure of the spectrum and power of these bursts of radio waves showed that they were generated by the interactions of the planet’s magnetosphere and the magnetic field of the star, which is present in the stellar wind emissions.
Similarly, as scientists suggest, you can look for traces of the presence of magnetic fields in other rocky planets located at a relatively small distance from the stars.
This will allow scientists in the near future to assess how often potential “twins of the Earth” have a constant magnetic field, which is critical for further searches for extraterrestrial life, summed up Pineda and his colleagues.
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