Search for radio signals finds no hint of alien civilisation on K2-18b
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2516306-search-for-radio-signals-finds-no-hint-of-alien-civilisation-on-k2-18b/
Search for radio signals finds no hint of alien civilisation on K2-18b
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2516306-search-for-radio-signals-finds-no-hint-of-alien-civilisation-on-k2-18b/
24 Comments
Maybe they all just stayed quiet on purpose?
We’re the guy yelling and making a bunch of noise in the woods while everyone else is silently hiding from the planet eaters. Basically screaming that we’re morons ripe for harvest.
Unserious comment.
We wouldn’t detect any signals even if there was a thriving technological civilization on that planet. At 124 light years any signals being sent would look exactly like the background radiation that fills the universe. The Inverse square law all but insures that we won’t ever detect anything this way, and that no one else out there will be detecting us.
Look the neighbours are being nosey again, keep quiet.
Is this the whole spectrum or just radio
Why would another civilisation have radio 4
How very surprising. The great silence in all likelihood has very deep seated causes.
An advanced civilization would not use 1920’s tech.
Ok but k2-18b is 127 light years away. If they scanned us they wouldn’t fin anything either because we would be in the year 1899… soooo… I don’t think it means anything.
How many LY away are they?
I mean, they are probably drawing the same conclusion while looking at earth. There wasn’t much going out from earth 124 years ago.
For a second there I missed the words ‘no hint of’ and got excited.
“Ugh it’s Earth, don’t pick up.”
The problem with that kind of observation is your still looking into the past
I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Here’s the paper if anyone’s interested: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.09553
They searched for narrowband signals, and say they’d have detected down to around 10^12 W. So they would have detected the Arecibo message if they’d been beaming one right at us, arriving during the 80 minutes this experiment was observing. I don’t think they would have detected anything else humanity has emitted.
Crap, I was planning on watching some of their sitcoms this weekend.
We assume that any advanced civilization out there is obeying the same laws of physics that we do. What if their technology is so advanced that we are completely incapable of detecting it let alone deciphering it.
Maybe the aliens don’t listen to the radio.
Frankly, if we were going to detect radio signals, it would probably be from stray ship to ship communication from relatively close by. Or beacons that are just that – beacons with no real information, like lighthouses.
OK guys, they are gone. I think we fooled them. Turn up the music!!
assuming they had powerful enough broadcasts at least 124 years ago.. how long have we been detectable by K2-18b?
Quantum entanglement communications with relay stations.
We wouldn’t be able to detect their radio signals from here anyway, so this is moot. If there are any civilizations out there sending communication signals between stars they’d be using lasers, since they have much further range and can carry a much greater signal density than radio. Using radio to communicate between stars is like using smoke signals to communicate across the ocean.
Unfortunately with the distances and time involved I don’t think we will ever find a alien civilization.
did they see any semaphore flags?