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Saturday, December 13, 2008

Our Broadcast Bubble

This week we are purposefully transmitting a remake of the movie When the Earth Stood Still into space. Some folks are worried about how it represents our planet to whoever may tune it in. This is not new, we have now been broadcasting a bubble of our wireless transmissions into space for over a century. The transmissions now comprise an over 100 light year radius bubble.

Since it would take as much time to get a message back to us and if someone immediately answered our message, the round-trip bubble is 50 light-years There are about 150 sun-like stars in this volume of space that might have solar systems. So there are the rough dimensions for local, remote contact. For more stats.

Every broadcast the earth has made, from Morse to digital HGTV, available to anyone with a receiver and a bit of technical know how to interpret it. SETI has heard no response yet as we patiently wait.

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