Artist's impression of an exoplanet, here Kepler 32f.
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NASA Ames / JPL-Caltech / Tim Pyle
It could be a world first.
An international network of researchers from the CNRS, the Paris Observatory, the University of Orleans (Loiret) and Cornell University (United States) have succeeded in capturing radio waves coming from an exoplanet.
"All the planets with a magnetic field emit radio waves", including the Earth, explains a researcher from Orleans.
The closer the source, the more audible these waves are.
The researchers therefore sought to "hear" waves emitted by planets located 100,000 times farther away, outside our solar system, reports
France 3 Center-Val-de-Loire.
By using a radio telescope array, a Cornell postdoctoral researcher and an international team of scientists may have detected emissions from a planet beyond our own solar system.
https://t.co/kx05k2QcUk
- Cornell University (@Cornell) December 17, 2020
The origin of these waves remains to be confirmed
Scientists focused on the "Tau Bootis" system, located 51 light years from Earth and made up of a giant gas planet and its two stars.
To do this, they used the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) network bringing together 50,000 radio telescopes.
By dint of observations, the researchers succeeded in isolating radio waves which would come from this exoplanet.
The signal being very weak, they prefer to remain cautious about their conclusions, waiting to be able to confirm that the waves come from this exoplanet and not from one of its stars.
The results were published this Wednesday in the journal
Astronomy & Astrophysics.
If this discovery were to be confirmed, it could subsequently allow us to study the interior of these exoplanets and perhaps answer some questions about the formation of our own solar system.
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