Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Aliens may be sight-seeing Earth’s major landmarks, according to a new study.
The research suggested that certain types of advanced distant extra-terrestrials might be able to pick out buildings – but only from 3,000 years ago due to the time it takes for light to cross the universe.
The peer-reviewed paper is published in the March 2024 edition of Acta Astronautica, entitled “Are we visible to advanced alien civilizations?”.
Author Z.N. Osmanov, a Research Affiliate at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) institute, says that by utilizing the universality of the laws of physics, the maximum distance for potential detection is around 3000 light-years.
This would mean the aliens could use huge telescopes to pick out the structures of the major civilizations of the time, which would include the Romans, Greeks and Egyptians.
To answer the question of our visibility, the study classified the technological level to which an alien civilization belongs. These include those who could fully harness the energy of their local star.
It hypothesized there might be three major technological civilizations: Type-I is an alien society that consumes the total energy incident on a planet from their host star; Type-II is an extraterrestrial civilization utilizing the total energy of the star; and Type-III is an advanced alien society, that consumes the total galactic energy.
The study reads: “In particular, the question is: can the artifacts of our technological society be visible and potentially detectable by the telescopes of ETs?
“Since the question is to identify our society with civilization, the major focus should be on the search for large ships, buildings and space satellites, etc. Such artifacts might easily be identified as artificial constructions.
“For this purpose, it is natural to focus on the visible light reflected from the corresponding objects. To identify an observed object with an artificial one, the best way is to spatially resolve it. Therefore, optical telescopes will be used.”
Further suggestions for the potential observation are several alien telescopes working together or super-advanced computations.
The study says: “Instead of using large telescopes of astronomical sizes, one can apply long-baseline optical interferometry by using at least two telescopes separated by a huge distance.
“We have shown that Type-I, II, III advanced alien societies might use quantum computers based on artificial black holes, which are able to record the mentioned signals.”
Produced in association with SWNS Talker
“What’s the latest with Florida Man?”
Get news, handpicked just for you, in your box.