Washington

Scientists say they have for the first time discovered and recorded mysterious “singing” plasma waves around planet Mercury.

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This phenomenon was discovered by astronomer Mitsunori Ozaki of Kanazawa University, and a team of other scientists from Japan and France.

While such chorus waves have been recorded on Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, and observed at Uranus and Neptune, this is the first time that “whistling” sound waves were found emitting from Mercury’s magnetic field.

What makes this discovery interesting is that while other planets have a strong magnetic field, Mercury doesn’t.

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Scientists shed light on new discovery 

Mercury is essentially a big rock with a pretty much non-existent atmosphere. Since it orbits too close to the Sun, the planet is constantly bombarded with solar radiation and wind.

There are also a few things that Mercury does not have: a thick and lush atmosphere, and permanent radiation belts where solar particles become trapped in a planet's magnetic field.

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Researchers believe that the findings could shed some light on the magnetic environment around Mercury, and how planetary magnetic fields in general are shaped by the solar wind.

Recently this year, scientists were able to discover that Mercury has auroras of its own kind, even though it has a non-existent magnetic field and atmosphere.

There has been sparse knowledge about Mercury as there have been not a lot of space missions dedicated to studying the planet.

Sparse knowledge of Mercury 

The fact that it has a magnetic field was discovered only during the 1970s when the Mariner 10 space probe was launched to observe the planet.

But now scientists are seeking to make up for the lack of information, with its Mercury BepiColombo mission that was launched in 2018. It houses an instrument called MIO dedicated to studying the Mercurian magnetosphere.

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Though the instrument is not quite in orbit yet due to the influence of the Sun’s gravity, it conducted flybys of Mercury in 2021 and 2022 during which it recorded observations of Mercury's magnetic field.

It was during that time the researchers found clear evidence of whistler-mode waves in the magnetosphere of Mercury.

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"To date, we still do not know whether Earth and Mercury have similar spatiotemporal properties of their electron-driven chorus," the researchers write.

"The present study paves the way for these challenging future investigations that will reveal how magnetized planet environments are shaped by the solar wind in our Solar System, with potential extrapolation to exoplanets and their interactions with stellar winds."

The research has been published in Nature Astronomy.

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