Vedantham Lab

Research focus

ERC Starting Grant · 2021

Chasing plasma storms on exoplanets

Are there other worlds out there that can sustain life? A key factor in the ability of a planet to host life is its atmosphere. Stars can erode planetary atmospheres by bombarding the planet with plasma. How well planets can protect their atmospheres depends on the strength of their magnetic fields. We do not know the ultimate fate of exoplanet atmospheres because we have neither detected massive plasma ejections on stars nor measured the magnetic fields of exoplanets. Both of these shortcomings can be solved with sensitive radio observations at low frequencies (< 300 MHz). Previous radio observations did not simultaneously have the sensitivity and on-sky exposure to detect the faint,…

From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.