UT Arlington: Follow the Radio Waves to Exomoons

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UT Arlington: Follow the Radio Waves to Exomoons

Post by bystander » Wed Aug 13, 2014 7:46 pm

Follow the Radio Waves to Exomoons
University of Texas, Arlington | 2014 Aug 11
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Scientists hunting for life beyond Earth have discovered more than 1,800 planets outside our solar system, or exoplanets, in recent years, but so far, no one has been able to confirm an exomoon. Now, physicists from The University of Texas at Arlington believe following a trail of radio wave emissions may lead them to that discovery.

Their recent findings, published in the Aug. 10 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, describe radio wave emissions that result from the interaction between Jupiter’s magnetic field and its moon Io. They suggest using detailed calculations about the Jupiter/Io dynamic to look for radio emissions that could indicate moons orbiting an exoplanet.

“This is a new way of looking at these things,” said Zdzislaw Musielak, professor of physics in the UT Arlington College of Science and co-author of the new paper. “We said, ‘What if this mechanism happens outside of our solar system?’ Then, we did the calculations and they show that actually there are some star systems that if they have moons, it could be discovered in this way.” ...

Detection of Exomoons Through Observation of Radio Emissions - Joaquin P. Noyola, Suman Satyal, Zdzislaw E. Musielak
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Schematic of a plasma torus around an exoplanet, which is created by the ions <br />injected from an exomoon's ionosphere into the planet's magnetosphere.
Schematic of a plasma torus around an exoplanet, which is created by the ions
injected from an exomoon's ionosphere into the planet's magnetosphere.
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— Garrison Keillor

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