Earth's magnetic field protects life on our blue planet — and astronomers just found evidence of a magnetic field on a rocky exoplanet 12 light-years away.
On Earth, we often take our planet's magnetic field for granted. It protects living creatures from the sun's rays, draws compass needles north and even creates beautiful auroras.
Other worlds in our solar system have magnetic fields too — but what about Earth-like planets around other stars? New research may have revealed a promising lead.
Recent observations from the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescopes in New Mexico revealed evidence of a magnetic field on the rocky exoplanet YZ Ceti b, which orbits a star about 12 light-years away from Earth. This is the first possible detection of a magnetic field on a planet beyond our solar system, according to a study published on April 3 in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Magnetic fields are particularly interesting to astronomers because they're an important part of making a planet habitable. Without a magnetic field, energetic particles from a star can erode a planet's atmosphere, stripping away the blanket of gas that can support life.
"The search for potentially habitable or life-bearing worlds in other solar systems depends in part on being able to determine if rocky, Earth-like exoplanets actually have magnetic fields," Pesce said.
YZ Ceti b, however, isn't a habitable planet. To detect the radio waves from a small, far-away exoplanet's magnetic field, astronomers had to look towards a particularly extreme example. YZ Ceti b is quite close to its star — far too close to be a pleasant temperature for life — and it's also orbiting at such a pace that one of its years is only two Earth days long.
This is so close that the planet "plows" through material sloughing off of the star, according to the researchers. The planet's magnetic field pushes electrically charged plasma back toward the star, which then interacts with the star's own magnetic field, emitting bright flashes of energy.
Essentially, the radio waves the team observed were an aurora on the star, likely created by the interactions with the planet, the team said.
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