Lifeboat Foundation

Around planets that have a magnetosphere, something magical happens.

If you listen with the right instruments, you can hear chirping and whistling, almost like the singing of birds at dawn and dusk. These so-called chorus waves have been recorded at Earth, and Jupiter, and Saturn; and observed at Uranus and Neptune.

Now, led by astronomer Mitsunori Ozaki of Kanazawa University, scientists from Japan and France have detected them whistling around Mercury, barren and alone as it skirts the Sun.