Scientists have detected cosmic waves resembling bird chirps in an unexpected place. These plasma bursts, called chorus waves, oscillate at the same frequency as human hearing.
When converted into sound signals, the sharp notes mimic high-pitched bird calls.
Researchers had previously captured similar sounds in space, but now, they have detected these chirping waves from much farther away—100,000 kilometers from Earth, a distance never measured before.
Allison Jaynes, a space physicist at the University of Iowa who was not involved in the study, said, "This raises a lot of new questions about the physics that could be possible in this field."
While scientists are still unsure how these perturbations occur, they believe Earth's magnetic field may be involved.
Detected near Jupiter and Saturn The chorus has been detected in radio antennas for decades, including receivers at a research station in Antarctica during the 1960s.
NASA's twin spacecraft, the Van Allen Probes, also heard the chirps from a much closer distance within Earth's radiation belts.
The latest notes were captured by NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale satellites, launched in 2015 to study Earth's and the Sun's magnetic fields. The new research was published in Nature on Wednesday.
Chorus waves have also been detected near other planets like Jupiter and Saturn. They may even generate high-energy electrons capable of interfering with satellite communications.
More to discover Chengming Liu, a study author from Beihang University, said in an email, "These are among the most powerful and significant waves in space."
The newly discovered chorus waves were detected in a region where Earth's magnetic field is stretched, raising new questions about how these chirping waves form.
Jaynes commented, "This is very fascinating, very challenging. We definitely need to find more of these events."
