Astronomers looking for Earth-like planets have discovered one in another solar system that appears to possess one of the unique criteria for sustaining life – a magnetic field.
You may not pause often to thank Earth’s magnetic field for being here today, but it is essential to protect our planet’s life-sustaining atmosphere.
It does this by scattering the high-energy particles and plasma that are regularly erupted from the Sun.
Scientists now believe they have found another Earth-sized planet with a magnetic field – YZ Ceti b, a rocky planet orbiting a star about 12 light-years from Earth.
Because magnetic fields are not visible, it is difficult to determine whether a distant planet actually contains one, according to Jackie Feldsen, an astronomer at Bucknell University in the US.
Joe Pesci of the National Science Foundation said that being able to tell whether it is is vital to the search for potentially habitable or life-bearing worlds.
“This research not only shows that this particular rocky exoplanet likely has a magnetic field, but provides a promising way to find more,” he added.
The researchers detected radio waves that they hypothesized were caused by interactions between the planet’s magnetic field and the star it orbits.
The research was published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Sebastian Pineda, an astrophysicist at the University of Colorado, said the planet’s magnetic field could prevent its atmosphere from being eroded over time by particles emitted from its star.
In other words, a strong magnetic field can make or break a planet’s atmosphere.
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YZ Ceti b is uninhabitable – it’s too close to its star for that, but it has another similarity to Earth – the aurora borealis.
The sun’s high-energy particles create solar weather around the Earth, and the interaction between this and the Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere creates the phenomenon of the aurora borealis, or northern lights.
Interactions between YZ Ceti b and its star also create an aurora – but on the same star.
However, scientists said there should also be aurorae on the planet if it had its own atmosphere.
The two researchers agreed that YZ Ceti b is the best candidate so far for a rocky exoplanet with a magnetic field, but said there would be “a lot of follow-up work” before this could be confirmed.