Astronomers decode what Earth may look like to advanced aliens

In the News

Astronomers decode what Earth may look like to advanced aliens

Any alien civilisation near Earth will have to be more technologically advanced than humans to find them, reveals a new study.

Researchers, including those from Manchester University, used crowd-sourced data to simulate leakage of radio signals from mobile towers and predict what an extraterrestrial civilisation might find from various nearby stars, including one that is six light years away from Earth.

Any hypothetical civilisations within 10 light years away from our planet that match human technology, and that are equipped with a receiving system comparable to Earth’s, cannot depend on current mobile tower radio signals leakages into space to detect human life, said the findings published in the journal MNRAS.

Unless an alien civilisation is much more advanced than humans, they will find it difficult to detect current levels of mobile tower radio leakage from Earth, the study said.

The scientists generated models displaying the radio power that an alien civilisation may likely receive as Earth rotates and towers rise and set.