Radio signals from another planet outside the Solar System have been detected. They have been recorded by instruments located on Earth, and for the first time, their origin has been accurately determined.
They come from an exoplanet 63 light-years away and were not generated by an alien civilization. They are generated by the auroras that illuminate the skies of Beta Pictoris b, a giant planet about 10 times the size of Jupiter.
The study was conducted by the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and has been published on the scientific articles platform pending approval by the scientific community.
This planet orbits its star Beta Pictoris, and has an extremely intense magnetic field, thousands of times stronger than Earth's, and the radio signals may be powered by the planet's very rapid rotation, which completes a full rotation around itself in 9-10 hours.
Observations have revealed short and repetitive radio pulses, characterized by highly circularly polarized radio waves.