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Dr. Evgenya Shkolnik
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Dr. Evgenya Shkolnik Astronomer, Lowell Observatory
TRANSCRIPT:
Well, the direct way to detect them would be looking for radio emission from the planet itself. This has not been done. There have been several attempts, and so far we've come up empty-handed. But the signature that we're looking for is, if you have a hot Jupiter with a strong magnetic field close to its star, the stellar wind with lots of charged particles gets trapped on the magnetic field lines. And they spiral all along the magnetic field lines, emitting a radio wave.
This radio wave, at this frequency, should not be coming from the star itself, as the star would not have such a strong radio signature. It must be coming from the planet. Therefore, you can then take what the frequency is of that radio wave and directly extrapolate the magnetic field strength of the planet. That is a goal of ours, and we have not yet done it.
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