Astronomers report the first convincing direct detection of radio signals from an exoplanet \u2014 and no, it is not aliens, Live Science reported Wednesday, covering a new arXiv preprint.<\/p>\n
A team led by Kevin Ortiz Ceballos at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian used South Africa\u2019s MeerKAT array to observe Beta Pictoris b, a gas giant about 64 light-years away with roughly 10 times Jupiter\u2019s mass. They detected rapid, recurring, highly circularly polarized radio bursts. By comparing radio images with background quasars as fixed reference points, the team localized the emission to the planet rather than its host star \u2014 something no prior radio detection had unambiguously done.<\/p>\n
The signal matches electron-cyclotron maser emission from auroras. Emission up to about 3.5 GHz implies a magnetic field of at least roughly 1,250 gauss at the source \u2014 the first direct exoplanet magnetic-field strength measurement. For comparison, Jupiter\u2019s field is about 4.3 gauss and Earth\u2019s about 0.5 gauss. Oxford astrophysicist Suzanne Aigrain, who was not involved, called it the first truly convincing direct detection and stressed the signals are natural, not technosignatures. The preprint has not yet been peer-reviewed.<\/p>\n
Sources:<\/strong> Live Science (Pandora Dewan)<\/a>; arXiv preprint 2609.16720<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MeerKAT pins auroras on Beta Pictoris b \u2014 first direct exoplanet magnetic field ~1,250 gauss<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":326,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/bb-beta-pictoris-radio-0923.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}