What would aliens learn if they observed the Earth? Our study provides an answer
The idea that we might be watched by a distant alien civilisation, however, is usually confined to the realm of science fiction.
- The idea that we might be watched by a distant alien civilisation, however, is usually confined to the realm of science fiction.
- But if there are other technological civilisations out there, they would probably be significantly more developed than we are.
- And no one can deny that the pace of our own technological progress is accelerating, in some areas at a blistering pace.
- Our model is no doubt crude and incomplete, but it is our best estimate of the techno-signature mobile towers leak out into space.
- The model is complicated by the fact that the transmission of mobile towers is typically beamed towards the horizon.
Alien conclusions?
- We worked out that an alien civilisation near these locations would, however, need much better telescopes than we have to detect the Earth’s mobile radio leakage.
- While these signals would be relatively rare events for an observing alien, they have the advantage of being extremely powerful.
- An advanced alien civilisation could no doubt have a good guess at our particular phase of industrialisation and our energy consumption.
- On Earth, we use the Kardashev scale for estimating the development of alien civilisations based on their energy usage - on that scale we’d appear as an emerging technical civilisation, not yet on the bottom rung of the ladder.
- And even if an alien species failed to detect all this at the moment, they might do better very soon.