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From the 1960's to the present, the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System radars have been broadcasting enormous amounts of coherent power on specific, non-nat
by mandevil 5y ago
From the 1960's to the present, the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System radars have been broadcasting enormous amounts of coherent power on specific, non-natural frequencies into outer space: if we were to detect a signal like that we'd almost certainly determine it was artificial.
You can see the list of stars which would have recently started seeing the first glimpses of the BMEWS Line radars here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_star_systems_within_55%E2%80%9360_light-years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_star_systems_within_55...
Obviously many other radars (DEW, Hen House, etc.) are doing the same thing, but BMEWS has continuous operation and power on its side.
- rootusrootus 5y agoI hope that little forest of stars is not just dark, but actually empty.
- zardo 5y agoHow far away will the signal be detectable above the background noise?
- giantrobot 5y agoIn theory yes but in reality Earth rotates and orbits the Sun. Any particular observer outside our solar system has a very low probability of catching any one of those beams at the moment it's photons are reaching them. There's also little chance of those beams will ever hit the same observer. The inverse square law also means that a potential observer would need to be in a relatively small radius from our system.
- rimliu 5y agoAnd those signals have travelled 60 light years. Our Galaxy is 100 000 ly accross…