I think you all look like pooh, Aliens take poops too. To enable Verizon Media and our partners to process your personal data select 'I agree', or select 'Manage settings' for more information and to manage your choices. All rights reserved.Privacy Policy ⢠Cookie DeclarationThe Planetary Society is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. If your horizon is 20 miles away, you must be about 20 feet tall or something. Explorers – usually financed by governments due to the great expense of traveling those distances. And at a large enough distance, the random quantum behavior of the atoms and electrons in your receiver radio will drown out their reaction to any incoming radio waves. Signals that don't bounce or refract are also limited to line of sight propagation. site design / logo © 2020 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under cc by-sa. Normal people have a horizion about 5 miles away. Everything in this world made for a purpose. 3. How far would radio waves travel through space in 5 billion years given that electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light in a vacuum? Even at light-speed, radio waves take a long time to reach even nearby celestial objects. They may not look at any differently than we do the use of horses, dogs, and other species in the advancement of our civilization. The odds of two species achieving similar levels of technology at around a similar time in which information could be exchanged, or even detected between two separate planets seems to me to be incredibly small. How far would radio waves travel through space in 5 billion years given that electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light in a vacuum? @zEyeland There can be radio waves and sound waves of the same frequency (low frequency radio waves and high frequency sound might both be found in the kHz range). The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) institute is constantly listening with our most capable radio telescopes, and they are broadcasting messages from us as well. Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience. Just pieces of our society may be valuable, resources we have already mined and require no further work on there part other than forcibly take, nuclear weapons, there are items that we possess that would be attractive to a rogue ship of raiders who made their livings the way similar people have throughout our history. What it is the inmate address at newton Iowa work release correction? The other day, I was playing around with stumbleupon and came across this photo, which -- well, it speaks for itself. One thought that I have had for quite awhile is that WE on Earth are the first civilization in the universe. So I increase the amp of a radio wave; now the wave is stronger/louder/taller but I still can not hear it because of the frequency. Why thin metal foil does not break like a metal stick? Do all radio waves potentially travel the same distance? And thinking like an alien, I would prefer not to be conflicted with ignorance of a top down species like humans can be. the maths: 5 000 000 000 years = 157 680 000 000 000 000 Copyright © 2020 Zidbits Media - Learn something new everyday! I was thinking of nautical applications where the lookout is high up. This is how far human radio broadcasts have reached into the galaxy . Do mirrors extend a Medusa's Petrifying Gaze? Go forth & multiply. There are several factors here, including: Do all radio waves potentially travel the same distance? So how far in light years would Marconi’s 25,000 watts of power travel (when he sent radio telegraphy signals across the Atlantic), before they would drop below background noise? And the MASER begat the LASER. the sun. But if I were a alien, I would not know your intentions because as being advanced “so to speak”, I would not underestimate the abilities of a species, one which could destroy me. 2. It’s now becoming possible to detect the atmospheric composition of extrasolar planets. Wow. Actually, I'm a little surprised that the dot shows up on this image at all. Your email address will not be published. Our citizen-funded spacecraft successfully demonstrated solar sailing for CubeSats. Radar technologies, anywhere near the frequencies needed to span interstellar space only came along in WWII. I have a lot of other projects going right now that do not automatically produce blog posts, and not enough time. 4. Lions were made to maintain the population of herbivores animals. HuffPost is part of Verizon Media. If you threw a dart at the map of the Milky Way, and wherever that dart landed is where an advanced alien species resides, there would be a cosmically small probability that they live close enough to be aware of our existence. From their perspective we are nothing remarkable or unworthy of even bothering to make contact with. We might consider our Milky Way, with its estimated 100 to 400 billion stars, a significant fixture in the cosmos. Most of what they pick up are either interference from our planet (I went to the GBT, a radio telescope, and they wont even let you use gas powered cars because they require spark plugs) or radio waves from other planets, i.e. The expanding sphere of radio signals traveling outward from the earth is often portrayed in TV shows and Hollywood movies to be like a time machine. If you have a transmitter that can produce a power of $x$ watts at a frequency of $y$ MHz, then you can always reduce its power output to some lesser value. Now consider that our species started broadcasting radio signals into space only about a century ago. That's not the point. Extent of human radio broadcasts Humans have been broadcasting radio waves into deep space for about a hundred years now, since the days of Marconi. Versus a sound wave amp being increase; I will noticeably hear the loudness. This is done routinely for any non-broadcast communication; reducing output power saves battery and lets other users use the same frequency at a distance without "overhearing" each other as much (just the same whether these are 'walkie-talkie' voice communications or several WiFi networks or anything else). All goes back to the invention of the MASER aka Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Actually, radio waves travel very quickly through space. They just might not be an advanced species. If ULF (ultra-low frequency), of ELF (extremely-low frequency) were used, great interplanetary distances could be reached easily. Radio waves don't stop at a distance, they just get weaker; you've read this correctly. They mostly use them to find the composition of distant nebulas. That's because radio waves aren't mechanical -- they're electromagnetic. Use MathJax to format equations. Radio waves can travel through space. Where is Martha Elliott Bill Elliott ex-wife today? Kevin's post is just excellent. That's represented by a small blue bubble measuring 200 light-years in diameter surrounding the position of the Earth. Do short waves pass through or reflect off concrete buildings? In 1900, Reginald Fessenden made the first — though incredibly weak — voice transmission over the airwaves. The earliest radio waves emitted from earth are currently about 200 light years away. This map designed by Adam Grossman of The Dark Sky Company puts into perspective the enormity of these scales. We’ve seen a great deal in our own history traders (usually come later once a land has been identified), explorers (perhaps most likely) or raiders (who pose the greatest risk to us). Correct? The core of the planet is dead. It's a daunting reality to consider when we're thinking about the possibility of making contact with any intelligence that might be out there. However as mentioned before they will keep going forever … Now The reason that communications stop working at some distance is that the signals are too weak to be understood. The material on this site can not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with prior written permission of Multiply. In a vacuum, with nothing else around, a wave simply loses power with distance. This means that we have to simply stop believing in alien attacks. Earlier generations did not yet possess the elements that make up much of our planet (stellar debris is the waste product of a stars life-cycle) Out solar system is about 4.5 Billion years old, the universe is 12 Billion – any sufficiently advanced planet based life form would have to have evolved at about the same time as we did.