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David A. Aguilar / CfA
If an alien civilization builds brightly lit cities like those shown in this artist's conception, future generations of telescopes might allow us to detect them.
Astronomers suggest that artificial illumination creates a signature that could point to the existence of civilizations on other worlds — and they say we should get started on a survey of the edges of our own solar system, just in case.
The suggestion comes from Harvard's Abraham Loeb and Princeton's Edwin Turner, in a research paper submitted to the journal Astrobiology. A version of the paper appears on the arXiv.org preprint server and sparked a write-up today on Technology Review's Physics arXiv Blog.
Loeb, who chairs Harvard's astronomy department and is affiliated with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, acknowledged that detecting aliens by looking for the glow of their cities would be a long shot. But he pointed out that the cost of the exercise would be low.
"We say that we can piggyback on existing surveys that people are doing anyway. There's no need to use extra resources. ... My philosophy is simple: If we can do it, why not do it and check? Why put blinders on ourselves?" Loeb told me today.
Here's how the idea could work: An object's brightness varies with distance, but the relationship between those two factors will depend on whether the brightness is due to reflected sunlight or due to illumination from the object itself. For a self-illuminated object, the brightness varies by a factor of 1 over the distance squared, but "if you have an object that reflects light from another source ... the flux dies out like 1 over the distance to the fourth power," Loeb said.
Monitoring the changes in the brightness of an object on the edge of our solar system, in a broad disk of icy material known as the Kuiper Belt, could provide a "very simple test" to determine whether extraterrestrials have turned on the lights, Loeb said.
"We conclude that existing telescopes and surveys could detect the artificial light from a reasonably brightly illuminated region, roughly the size of a terrestrial city," on a Kuiper Belt object, Loeb and Turner write.
NASA
The lights of Cairo, Alexandria and the Nile shine through the night on Oct. 28, 2010, as seen from the International Space Station. Astronomers say such illumination could serve as a tip-off in the search for civilizations on other worlds.
How likely is it that E.T. would be found on the edges of our own solar system? Not that likely, but Loeb and Turner speculate that it could happen. "Artificially lit KBOs [Kuiper Belt objects] might have originated from civilizations near other stars," they write. "In particular, some small bodies may have traveled to the Kuiper Belt through interstellar space after being ejected dynamically from other planetary systems."
In addition to the E.T. search, Loeb said the Kuiper Belt survey would also be useful for studying how Kuiper Belt objects reflect light at different points in their orbits. "Even if the answer is, 'No, there is nothing peculiar,' we can still learn something from doing that," he told me. "And if there's something out there worth finding, that could change our perception of our place in the universe."
The technique could conceivably be extended to other stars once next-generation telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope and the Giant Magellan Telescope come online, over the next decade or so. There's been a lot of debate over whether the traditional search for radio signals from alien civilizations might be fruitless if E.T. moved beyond analog radio transmissions — and the search for artificial illumination could be worth checking out as a new frontier.
Someone could even try looking for the spectral signature of artificial light. (Do aliens use incandescent bulbs, compact fluorescent or LEDs?) But that particular kind of search would not be easy.
"For this signature to be detectable, the night side needs to have an artificial brightness comparable to the natural illumination of the day side," Loeb and Turner write. And when you consider that Earth's day side is about 600,000 times brighter than the night side, that means E.T. would have to cope with one heck of an electric bill.
What do you think about the search for E.T.'s city lights? Feel free to add your comment below.
More about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence:
- Donations revive the SETI quest
- Gallery: Four decades of SETI
- Alien-hunters add super-Earths to their list
- A new idea in the search for E.T.'s footprints
- More from Cosmic Log about aliens ... and about SETI
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding me to your Google+ circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
Leave a Comment:
Kinda silly if you ask me. How long would a civilization make recognizable artificial light? 1,000 years before we run out of fuel? Therefore the planet must be within 1,000 light years and we need to ba able to recognize the technology for making the light. (Same as ours?....maybe). How long have we had life on this planet with no artifical light......billions of years? Millions with homonids on it.
With the probability of a suitable planet being relatively low (earth like, in survival zone, long lived star but not too small)
Unlikely!
The majority of worlds we are surveying with Kepler currently are all within a couple of hundred of light years, so the distance factor is out of the running there. You also assume that they would be using fossil fuels as an energy source. Our own research into renewable energy sources show that this would be a bad assumption. It would actually be a far better way of searching for potentially inhabited worlds than just "keeping an ear out". As the amount of time this planet has been around without artificial light, keep in mind that a light year is the distance light travels in a year, so if we are looking at a world 400 light years away, we are looking at a world as it was 400 years ago. Again it is fallacy to assume that life on another planet went through the same evolutionary path ours did.
Uh, there's no reason to think a civilization would ever run out of energy to make light, genius. There are plenty of renewable sources. If they run out of energy there isn't going to be any civilization left anyway.
The real question is why would a civilization in the Kuiper Belt be illuminating the exterior surface of their planet on the scale of one of our cities? Are they comfortably strolling around on the thin frozen film that used to be their atmosphere?
And what if they can see in the dark or don't use electricity. Of course new ideas are great and perhaps we don't have the intelligence to understand this idea. Then there is the overwhelming odds against finding a planet that does have life and using energy to produce light. Remember in the history of earth mankind existence is only a few seconds of history. The odds of finding anything on any planet that lights up is infinitesimal .
There is enough energy in a cup of water to power New York city for a week.
There is no need for a civiliation to run out of energy in 1000 years. Any such alien civilization would have arisen on a planet that orbits a star. That's an energy source that lasts for billions of years.
I think the bigger arguments against this come from biology more than physics:
1. There is no good reason to assume that nervous systems will inevitably evolve on a planet. Bacteria, plants, protozoa, and fungi all do very well without one.
2. Even if a nervous system evolves, there is no reason to assume that high intelligence will evolve. Of all of the species on earth that have nervous systems, only *ONE* has a brain capable of building a civilization.
3. Even if a species evolves the right kind of brain, they STILL won't build a civilization if they don't have some sort of body part that allows the precise manipulation of objects. It may have been one huge, happy accident that, on our planet, high intelligence evolved in a species that recent tree climbing ancestors.
4. Even if a technological civilization does arise, there is no reason to assume that they would, necessarily have eyes. No eyes means no point in making lights.
5. Even if all of the above are satisfied, there is still the question of how long most civilizations would survive before some moron destroys it with nukes (or whatever).
I'm not saying it's impossible that there could be an alien civilization on a planet orbiting some reasonably nearby star. I'm just saying that the list of things that could prevent it is very long, indeed.
Well Alan, I have to say this is kind of a "Well Duh" theory. Well, duh, civilizations are going to light up the night sky.
My old Journalism professor would call this a "no sh*t" story. Not your fault, you're just reporting what they published which is your job and we're glad you do it so well.'
But I do think they have forgotten one very important possibility that is particularly applicable to the Kuiper Belt. What if the civilization has moved beneath the surface, like on Mars, huh?
No there's another pinch of Tobac to put in your pipe and smoke.
Agreed Junicon...we keep looking for signatures of us out in the cosmos when "aliens" may not resemble anything we have come to know as life. The only way we will find extraterrestrial life is if we create the ability to travel to other planets in our own solar system and expand from there to other solar systems. But then again, we can't even afford to get back to the moon at this point.
Junicon,
Bacteria are Protozoa.
Your, 'biological arguments,' are counter intuitive to the concept of evoulution. There is every good reason to expect that life behaves the same way throughout the cosmos provided the same conditions exist for the same amount of time.
It's a virtual certainty there is life elsewhere under different conditions that is far removed from our expectations. Only 60-70 years ago, no one would have expected to find the abundant and diverse extremophile life discovered right here on earth around thermal vents in the deep ocean or in deep caves or extreme acidic or basic conditions.
Bacteria have been recently discovered living at extreme depths in the rock mantle of the earth at incredible temperatures and pressures. Single celled Amoeba four centimeters long have been observed in the deep ocean. The fact that cell walls and other cell structures and common cell behavior developed under those conditions is significant.
These creatures are doing what life can be expected to do everwhere, sucessfully exploiting an environmental niche. Where the right conditions exist, we can fully expect bilateral symetry, nervous systems, alimentary canals, spines, eyes, ears and big brains to evolve.
These systems all develop because of the advantage they provide for the continuation of the species. They would provide the same advantage anywhere the conditions were comparable... as would the higher order of consciousness we credit ourselves with.
There is no reason to expect humans are the only creatures to have that highly developed a sense of self awareness either. We are discovering that whales, octopi, and other creatures have distinct personalities, use tools and language and even elephants can recognize themselves in a mirror... something the average dog or cat does not do.
Aside from all that, there are bacteria, plants, fungi, alge, jellyfish, insects, fish and cephalopods on earth that have developed the ability to create artificial light without the development of civilization... I expect there are counterparts throughout the cosmos and that is worth knowing in itself.
I have to agree with Junicon. there is no reason that intellegent life would evolve to be anything human-like or even animal-like. It most likely would not even be carbon based - methane based life would work just as well. The millions of accidents it took to get mammilian life to it's present stage would be extremely difficult to duplicat on another planet. A small change in gravity, atmosphere composition or surface temperature would change everything.
Chuck W,
Get a clue chuck. CH4... the formula for Methane... C stands for Carbon, H for Hydrogen.
I tuned to CH4 and all I got was the weather
WTF?!
Stupid chemistry
@Seriously? No...Really?!
Like I said, it all depends on the conditions. In some cases chemistry results in something stupid and evolution may even appear to regress. Case in point: In one environment, say maybe a middle school lunch room, you might be considered witty and your jokes funny, while in another environment, like a science forum, you might be considered juvenile or if you are older, just a moron.
Kev, I thought his joke was funny and I'm not at all what you describe. Just because this is a scientific thread doesn't mean you can't have a sense of humor.
I did like your earlier post however. Carbon is the most flexible element we have and there's no reason to assume another form of life wouldn't use it as a base. If the ingredients for our life were delivered by a meteor, then who's to say it wasn't delivered the same way to a similar planet?
I for one believe there is a great chance that in this expanse of space there is life of some form, whether simple or complex. Like they said in Contact, loosely quoted, "If life didn't exist elsewhere, it sure is a waste of space".
@ KevinMC-408868
Ooops! I forgot.
The internet is serious business! ^_^
Tiggle,
My sense of humor is working just fine but humor is in the eye of the beholder. Tossing around WTF's and stupid's and then pretending others have no sense of humor is a passive/aggressive game for juveniles, like I said.
My impression was he was picking up for some folks who got called out because they badly didn't know what they were talking.
Thanks for the the vote on my original post which ironically does not mention carbon... that subject was introduced by Chuck W... one of those folks.
Seriously...
You seem to take it seriously enough when you want to rant about politics. When you control the subject, you're all business while the laughs are reserved for everyone else's ideas.
I looked up and down the whole thread before I made my reply. I saw your fingerprints all over the page... Try Ritalin, it might calm you down and help you focus.
There is enough energy in the fabric of space that surrounds us to power New York City indefinitely.
@ KevinMC-408868
So I take it that joking every so often is a no-no ^_^
Control the conversation? Wasn't even trying...just made a quick quip about CH4 being channel four
That's when the bug must have crawled up further in you ^_^
Sorry to rain on your parade...I didn't realize that I interrupted your carefully planned lecture on the subject of interplanetary forest fires
You know, since we're on the subject of chemistry. Lithium would be fantastic to help balance out those wild mood swings of yours.
Perhaps we can save your bipolar aspects for a discussion on magnetism
Carry-on ;P
Seriously,
You must be a graduate of the Pee Wee Herman School of Witty Repartee... Magna Cum Laude from the looks of it. Was your dissertation entitled: I know you are but what am I?
Each of our personalities and capabilities are well illustrated in these posts. Most people would say from my posts I like to read the articles and responses carefully and call people out methodically when they make stupid or phoney comments.
Most people would say you appear to enjoy calling attention to yourself by making stupid comments based on poor observations. You have staked out your territory to the nth degree.
I'm done now, you may have the field funny man.
@ KevinMC-408868
...sigh
enjoy your ignore troll
Also, how would one discern between a forest fire at nite, and artificial light at night, assuming it is a fire burning organic material? Similarly, how would one discern active volcanism lighting up the nite sky on a distant planet, from purely artificial light?
Seeing a "forest" fire on another planetary body would still become the biggest discovery of the human race. Just saying.
The colors emitted by each of these would be different on the spectrum than artificial light.
temperature ,,,, ?
"Only Who can prevent forest fires?"
(please select an answer)
"That's incorrect, the correct answer, is You"
Max: If there is a forest to have a fire, then there is life on that planet. ;-)
A forest fire would indicate the presence of alcohol and ATVs.
Possibly Ewoks and an Imperial outpost as well...
The Death Star didn't radiate a lot of artificial light. Why would an alien city?
Well, true, but then again the Deathstar had to have a very noticable tug on Endor as they both rotated. Of course we don't have the technology today to detect such a small wobble from such great distances (of a artificial moon on a moon, not a gas giant on it's parent star). The Deathstar also probably was very active in the infrared and most likely X-rays. From a reasonable distance it would be immediately noticable to anyone tracking that moon for potential life. You wouldn't need lights to know something was up.
If someone finds an artificially illuminated city inhabited by non-human intelligences on a KBO in this solar system, I will eat my own foot on national television. I'll do it with a big smile on my face.
We cant even directly see whole planets yet. The "planet finders" are working on indirect readings; star wobble and blinking.
Actually, that's not correct:
http://spacejibe.wordpress.com/2008/11/14/first-direct-images-of-planets-around-other-stars/
This story was not worth the time it took to read it.
Neither was your comment. And it took a whole lot less time.
Think of how much time you just saved!
MSNBStupid
You are the very definition of "stupid". Stupidity is defined as repeating an action over and over again and somehow expecting a different outcome.
If MSNBC is "stupid" then why do you waste you time reading it? Because, you sir or madam, are STUPID.
Why don't you surf on over to FOX and consort with others like yourself.
"Stupidity is defined as repeating an action over and over again and somehow expecting a different outcome."
Hey Skipper, I thought that was how idiots defined "insanity".
I like the idea of sharing science time with other projects,there are ways to allow a little time for et detecting on most space science projects.If you ask most people,they only have but a few questions about the universe,how did this all come about ?and is anybody else out there?.So it's very important as humans to know who we are and where we came from,is there other's?
How ridiculous! Why would we waste a nickel searching for non-existent "advanced" civilizations that would be so far away that knowledge of them would be essentially meaningless? When will we wake up and realize an absolutely critical truth? There may be other forms of life in the universe, but there is nothing like us.
Think about it. Of the perhaps 10 billion species that have existed on this planet, only one has had the self-awareness and skill to develop advanced civilization. The situation of Earth--located in a temperate region of the solar system, shielded from cosmic rays by a sufficiently strong electromagnetic field, protected from frequent comet bombardments by a larger planet further out, blessed with a tides-producing moon created by a chance encounter with a rogue planet eons ago--has enabled to evolve without fatal interruption over the past four billion years. Our place in the universe is unique; our situation as an advanced species is unique as well.
Why is this so important? Because what we have created on this planet is fragile yet essential. No where else do creatures ruminate on their place in the universe. No where do creatures feel compelled to stretch out to the stars. We absolutely must expend our efforts on preserving our existence and spreading ourselves out to the farthest reaches of the universe. Wasting energy looking about for aliens who are not there is foolishness. Humanity, we are it!
I'm sorry to say that I completely disagree with you pedagoguish. To believe that humanity is the only advanced species in this entire cosmos is completely arrogant and really goes against probability. I find it impossible that, in such a vast universe, we are the only "advanced species".
That you know of. Modern society has existed for a sufficiently short amount of time that you would find virtually no evidence of it at all 30 million years from now.
Further; define advanced.
If you happen to have an annual income of US $10,000, congratulations, you make more money than 2/3s of the humans on planet earth. 'Civilization' isn't that far removed from the stone age for the majority of the human race.
Very true that life is fragile and precious, however there is no harm in looking. There is life elsewhere in the universe, it is statistically impossible for that not to be true. The jury is still out on whether there are any other examples of life here in our own galaxy. The statement that:
is laughable. How do you know dolphins do not do this? Or for that matter the common domesticated dog? Humans can't even communicate properly with animals, we always seem to try and force them to speak our language rather than use their native tongue. When our meager effort fails, we proclaim animals to be non-sentient.
How much of a bombshell would it be that 'heaven' exists, and its on a KBO? I can imagine theists heads literally exploding.
"Think about it. Of the perhaps 10 billion species that have existed on this planet, only one has had the self-awareness and skill to develop advanced civilization. The situation of Earth--located in a temperate region of the solar system, shielded from cosmic rays by a sufficiently strong electromagnetic field, protected from frequent comet bombardments by a larger planet further out, blessed with a tides-producing moon created by a chance encounter with a rogue planet eons ago--has enabled to evolve without fatal interruption over the past four billion years"
-- Well, you just said it yourself. If it is possible here and now, why not at some other place and time? The fact that it happened here and now means it must be possible at some other time and place. No one said that probably is not very small, but it is certainly possible.
"No where else do creatures ruminate on their place in the universe. No where do creatures feel compelled to stretch out to the stars."
--I'm sorry, how do you know this? Have you been speaking to or observing them? No you haven't.
"We absolutely must expend our efforts on preserving our existence and spreading ourselves out to the farthest reaches of the universe. Wasting energy looking about for aliens who are not there is foolishness."
--Where will we go? It has to be some place habitable and with resources. If you find aliens, then you are likely to find that which you are seeking.
For ignorant people, all endeavors are ridiculous. If we listen to fools like you, we would still be banging stones to make tools.
For one thing how can one statement make to contradictory points? Explain this, if “advanced” civilization are non-existent, what does it matter how far away they are? If none-existent, being concerned of the distance is irrelevant. Alternatively, if the “advanced” civilization is far away, then they exist, no matter the distance does not make something none-existent.
Further more, science has never stated that any existing life form will be anything like us. Most likely you are making that statement based on science fiction novels and special affects movies. Maybe you don’t know the difference between a scientist and a Hollywood director.
Next paragraph, it sound you already know the answer what’s out there. So it begs the question: How do you? How do you know we are unique? Did you already traveled throughout the universe? If so when and how?
Our Universe is vest and the probability is high there are other planets in ideal conditions. You arrogantly already arrived a conclusion based on what. You are case of arrogant ignorance, someone arguing for the sake of ignorance.
If you imagine that that handful of conditions (even in the unlikely event that all of them are required for life) makes us "unique" then you are utterly clueless about the size of the universe, or even the galaxy.
Okay, go ahead and say it: You know all this because it says so in the Bible, right?
There are billions upon billions of solar systems in the universe, and the fact that we exist means one thing: life is possible. I'd bet any amount of money that there are PLENTY of other planets with life, and likely several with intelligent life.
I find comfort in knowing that I don't know everything. None of us do.
If he said that he would be lying.
I agree with most of the responses. Is life out there? Probably. Will we find it in the next 20 years? Probably not. Will we have more than two or three back-and-forth communications (we say something, they respond, repeat x3) with said life in the next millenium? Probably not. Is it worth knowing if and where other life is? Yes. Would that knowledge be incredibly useful once we are ready for a manned interstelar mission? Yes.
Completely agree - there's no ET. We're it.
The only quality that makes humans unique on this planet is the fact that we are the only species here capable of self-delusion.
Hopefully there are sentient beings on other worlds without the "self-delusional" gene.
I seem to have rubbed most of you the wrong way. Good! You need a good rubbing. I tend not to believe in gods, tooth fairies, and E.T.s. There is absolutely no observational data to support the notion of advanced civilizations zipping around the universe. SETI has wasted years listening to hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies and has heard absolutely nothing. Now that the junior Carl Sagans have given up on the radio wave approach to finding little green men they cough up lights as the answer. I'm not sure this is going to work either. Perhaps the aliens are all bats.
The only relevant point is this: we are what is as far as civilization is concerned. It is absolutely essential for us to expend our best efforts on preserving and exporting the unique and precious thing that has occurred on our tiny planet, the evolution of us. We are the universe's sole eye on itself. If we die out, the eye closes, and it may never open again.
@ pedagoguish-1262191
Entirely plausible as there is no observational data yet to support civilizations elsewhere in the universe, but considering how there are the presence of extremophiles on Earth in all sorts of unusual places, it doesn't negate the possibility of at least some sort of life elsewhere in the universe.
However, in terms of spotting civilizations as or more advanced than our own...we've got some issues to contend with.
Hard part for us is that we are bound by gravity and the bending and speed of light and how that restricts our ability to collect information about our universe.
For example, it wasn't until just about 200 years ago that humans were making any significant amount of artificially generated light that could be seen from space, let alone from any significant distance away. The date of the invention of the radio, and the point at which humanity was generating sufficiently strong radio waves to traverse into space is only just about 100 years old.
The fact that we haven't spotted any civilizations at least as developed as ours (assuming their same technological progression), we haven't spotted artificial light, artificially generated radio transmissions, or frankly any other sort of unusual transmissions not generated by natural forces acting on their own. But then again, we've only been able to, and equipped to observe the majority of such signals in only the last 50 years.
What it comes down to is that such civilizations, if they exist, are either too far away for lightspeed transmissions to have reached us yet, are directly on the other side of the black hole in our galaxy (thus information is not crossing over to us), or were extinct long before we had the capability to observe the transmissions they were sending out.
For now...and agreed...I don't think many people realize how easy it would be for us to be extinguished as well. Heck. It wouldn't even have to force us into extinction. Our civilization could topple if we even had a slightly cataclysmic event that disrupted our technology sufficiently and for a long enough period to cause massive starvation and a collapse.
The Dark Ages are always just around the corner if we lack the redundancy to avoid a collaps.
"Seriously...No, Really?!" is closer to the truth than most of us. The universe is so vast, and the distances to any potential civilization so far, that the question of "do they exist" is really irrelevant. Some cosmologists say that the infinite scope of the universe requires that our own existence is replicated exactly somewhere else in the universe: that there is a world exactly like ours with grand and individual histories exactly like ours, but with a future independent of ours. Hell, there may be an INFINITE number of such worlds if you really think about it.
So what? If such places exist, they are so far away and so untouchable that their existences simply don't matter. What is the point in looking for something that can never be found?
There is plenty enough around the observable universe that is worth looking for. Unmanned probes within the solar system make sense. New and more powerful telescopes make sense. There is plenty of real science to do without going out on snipe hunts looking for phantom critters.
You can learn a lot about humans by taking a look at artificial light on our planet. One thing is most people live close to large bodies of water. We can make reasonable speculations on many things regarding alien life and human life by looking at history . . .
If the aliens have a government like ours many of the aliens probably can not afford the artificial light.
You live in Somalia?
Let's use the money to take care of the 7 billion on this planet. When everyone is taken care of here and we have leftover money then maybe we can look for E.T.s.
The problem with trying to take care of 7 billion people on this planet, there is not enough money to do so. There is never enough and at the end you will come way short to do so.
So basically there will never be any leftover monies to use in other endeavors. If we followed what you suggest, concentrating all the resources in taking care of the 7 billion we would never make any further advances in science and technology.
The problem is when we "take care" of the 7 billion, they become 14 billion, then 28 billion, and so on. You can get some lab mice and try the experiment yourself. What's worse is, the harder you try to take care of them, the less able to take care of themselves they become. Compare your lab mice with ones caught from the wild.
You will never have sufficient resources to keep up, let alone spend on R&D to increase your resources.
I like how people like ibog make these kinds of asinine statements thinking first that the money spent on R&D and exploration would even be spent helping these downtrodden people if it were taken away from such pursuits; two, that the discoveries made aren't already helping such impoverished masses; and three, that the funding is mutually exclusive and that there must be staggering amounts that would save the world if not for the wasteful mission to seek out life and explore our universe.
It makes me sad how many ibogs there are in this world...people like this completely disregard ALL of the valuable information and discoveries that such scientific pursuits have brought us, even as they blindly make use of many of the innovations themselves!
@Max headroom. the spectrum would be completely different.
I'll be calling my congressman about this latest crap. Hey, professor-man, the economy is getting milked too much with B.S. projects like this....get a real job.
Seriously? It took these "geniuses" at Harvard this long to come up with this? I am sorry but this has been common knowledge since I was a kid. We always talked about about why they don't just look for light signatures since elementary school. Just because noone printed it in a scientific journal doesn't make it new.
You really are an idiot.
Looks like the machinery has started up to reveal to the public that there is, indeed, intelligent life elsewhere in space. I would not raelease that info, but this looks like a nice, long term project to condition the public to accept the new paradigm.
I'm sick of waiting..
Aliens- If you're out there, let's hang out!
Someone wants a probing!
Sure,let's waste more millions we can't afford on stupid crud.
What makes Abraham and Edwin think E.T.s need light?
All the money anyone has ever spent for any purpose whatsoever has been paid to people on this planet. That includes all the money spent to send men to the moon, and all the money spent to look for ET.
Besides, it's only money. Someday we'll find a planet where it grows on trees!
What do you mean? it already does. It's just paper. :)
Hah, you're right! No wonder the aliens keep popping in! :D
@ Mike Maxwell
Then you completely ignored Mercury 7's mission to launch $100 million dollars directly into the sun!
How unpatriotic
I would think that an advanced alien civilization would at some point realize that causally shining street lights into space is a massive waste of energy, money, and a foolish way to unintentionally advertise your existence to other potentially hostile aliens. Then again, it appears we are foolish enough to do all that. So good luck in that search! Turn the lights off, shield the necessary ones from spraying light at everything except what's intended to be illuminated. This is pollution far more noticeable and wasteful than any other...and fixing this issue will have a domino effect on many other environmental issues...fewer emissions, lower energy bills for example. And I want the night sky back thank you. This is something YOU can, we ALL can do and take responsibility for.
I have only seen the Milky Way once that I can recall. Big :(
Where I live, the lights outshine the full moon in many places, and most of them have nothing to prevent the light from going to the sky...
I see everyone here is neglecting one important detail. Even if an outdoor light shines all its light at the ground, guess what, the GROUND will reflect that light back into the sky (and out into space). The only way to keep light from "escaping" is to eliminate all outdoor lights, or enclose every inch of illuminated ground in large roofed structures. AKA we would have to make it so there is no more "outdoors".
"AKA we would have to make it so there is no more "outdoors"" - We're working on that, Stephen. :-(
We have enough problems to solve right here on Earth without blowing billions of dollars to satisfy the curiosity of some overpaid scientists.
The curiosity of these "overpaid" scientists is what allows you to make such outrageous and incredibly ignorant comments
The billion of dollars the overpaid scientist waste often bring fruitful results. It's a good investment and yes, looking for solutions for Earth's problems is part of their job.
Perhaps Shandril is clamoring that these job-destroying amounts of government waste would have been better suited as part of the bonus packages paid out to AIG and Goldman Sachs executives!
@ Shandril
I'm glad you read up on your crisp new GOP "What to Think, and How to Think It" 2012 handbook!
I think Fox News brought some CoolAid! Enjoy!
We need Helicopters that emit different colored lights, combined with different musical sounds.
Soon.
OH and for those who dont know.. The intergalactic standard greeting is. "Booby Boop bop Bap" sung in a high pitched voice.
Hold on! I'm chargin' ma lazah!
The intensity of light varies with the inverse square of the distance from its source. Lets spend our research dollars wisely since they are not unlimited. Lets be creative in our endeavors.
The real question is if these "scientists" are going to such prestigious school's and have come to the understanding that aliens are little green men with the exact same technology as human's have. Who on there planet created this light and light bulb? How large is there society? If they are so intelligent and far above our Mental understanding are we ever going to be ever to communicate or reason with them if they are too exist? If they do exist why do they continue to come to earth in there "UFO and USO"? So honestly, if these scientists are wanting to spend how ever much it's going to cost to put this project in action to try and find light's from Alien Cities for example: Alien Bar's, Alien Airports, Alien Police Stations, Alien School's be my guest! But i'm pretty sure we've got better things on our hands, lets figure out our own priorities before we go knocking on our neighbors door!
They would not need lights if they are nocturnal.
Our own people have already pointed out that a solar complex of a few acres in north eastern Arizona or New Mexico could supply all the electricity the United States would ever need. That aside looking for ET's lights assumes that they need artificial light. Still there is the other side to that coin. Developing on a world that depends on a central star for heat and light might conclude that the inhabitants would create artificial light on the dark side of their plant. If they are smarter then we are those lights would be on high ground away from climatic and environmental dangers. Since this survey can be piggy backed on other on going surveys it is worth a shot. I am surprised they had not thought of this before. What other obvious effects that our technology has on this planet could be observed on other worlds?