Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I always wonder if other life in the universe has "seen" Voyager 1 and what they think of it.

Maybe it's extremely complex and impressive to them or looks like an amateur made it.



> I always wonder if other life in the universe has "seen" Voyager 1 and what they think of it.

No one's looked at it. It's in deep space, with a weak radio pointed highly directionally back at Earth.

Aliens are more likely to have listened to baseball games transmitted by your local clear-channel AM radio station, and be fans of your local team, than to have even considered Voyager.


Nah. How would any civilization be able to distinguish it from any other tiny piece of material moving through space.

As far as radio waves go, no way.

Anything that we have sent out from Earth is indistinguishable from background noise of the universe.This propagation follows the inverse square law, which states that the intensity of the wave decreases as the square of the distance from the source increases. If you double the distance from the source, the intensity of the radio wave decreases by a factor of four. This means that the wave disperses and weakens as it travels away from its source. Its intensity diminishes according to the square of the distance.


Something like 99.99% of our own galaxy has no idea humans exist. Our radio signals haven't had time to reach that far. There's actually an interesting hypothesis that as a civilization progresses it is only radio emissions noisy for a brief period of time before technology advances and the radio signals effectively stop much like we see with our development here on Earth.

All that to say, no. Even if they were listening they'd not know we were here to begin with, at least yet.


What are the radio waves you think have stopped on Earth?


It’s all fun and games until V’Ger starts seeking the Creator




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: