An international team including Cornell researcher Jake Turner has developed a novel analysis method capable of uncovering previously undetectable stellar and exoplanetary signals hidden within archival radio-astronomical data. Thanks to this innovation, scientists have discovered new radio bursts originating from dwarf stars and possibly from exoplanets. The analysis method, Multiplexed Interferometric Radio Spectroscopy (RIMS), found that some of the signals detected are consistent with star-planet interactions.
The results, "The detection of circularly polarized radio bursts from stellar and exoplanetary systems" were published in Nature Astronomy, on Jan. 27.
Modern radio telescopes collect colossal volumes of data; the synthesized images are used to study distant galaxies and black holes. Until now, these archives had never been used to monitor, minute by minute, the variable activity of the hundreds of stars hidden within the field of view of each observation, which is what RIMS enables. The method transforms each radio observation into a simultaneous survey of hundreds or even thousands of stars, much like a net that captures many fish where a single fishing rod would catch only one.
"RIMS exploits every second of observation, in hundreds of directions across the sky. What we used to do source by source, we can now do simultaneously," said Cyril Tasse, researcher at the Paris Observatory and lead author of the study. "Without this method, it would have taken nearly 180 years of targeted observations to reach the same detection level."
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