Aliens Hanging Out in the Kuiper Belt? We Could See the Light from their Cities:

Is it possible for us to peer into space and spot artificially illuminated objects “out there?” According to a new study done by Abraham Loeb (Harvard), Edwin L. Turner (Princeton), the answer is yes.

When it comes to searching for ET, current efforts have been almost exclusively placed in picking up a radio signal – just a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Consider for a moment just how much lighting we here on Earth produce and how our “night side” might appear as viewed from a telescope on another planet. If we can assume that alternate civilizations would evolve enjoying their natural lighting, wouldn’t it be plausible to also assume they might develop artificial lighting sources as well?

For gathering light, the array of Earthly telescopes now at science’s disposal are able to confidently observe a light source comparable in overall brightness to a large city — up to a certain distance. Right now astronomers are able to measure the orbital parameters of Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) with the greatest of precision by their observed flux and computing their changing orbital distances.

Spotting this illumination difference in the optical band would be tricky but by calculating the observed flux from solar illumination on Kuiper Belt Objects with a typical albedo, the team is confident that existing telescopes and surveys could detect the artificial light from a reasonably brightly illuminated region, roughly the size of a terrestrial city, located on a KBO. Even though the light signature would be weaker, it would still carry the dead give-away – the spectral signature. However, we currently don’t expect there to be any civilizations thriving at the edge of our solar system, as it is dark and cold out there.

The team isn’t suggesting that any random light source detected where there should be darkness might be considered a sign of life, though. There are many factors which could contribute to illumination, such as viewing angle, backscattering, surface shadowing, outgassing, rotation, surface albedo variations and more. this is just a new suggestion and a new way of looking at things, as well as suggested exercises for future telescopes and studying exoplanets

Source: www.universetoday.com...

You have to admit that this theory and now practice makes perfect sense. IF you are looking for others similar to us and our make up etc.

However, the one part I bolded that indicated "it is too cold and dark out there (KBelt). That demostrates some ignorance or highlights the expectiations of the scientic field-of some anyway.

There could be life out there in the Dark and Cold... just not what we know as life. Be taht as it may...

The search for lighting of any type should be conducted in conjunction with the Sound searching. I think the sound searching is very limited, by todays standards.

Which brings up another good point..... Do the SETI devices record any sound of the reported UFO's coming and/or going. Any thing at all? I mean, they equipment is pointed upward. Are all the Alien/UFO's silent also?

Just doesn't make sense, when you look at the big picture.. We have all these listening devices on the ground, 30,000+ sats circling Earth and manned craft up there. Nothing yet...

And i was thinking, people critical of SETI often say that adanced civilizations mat not even use EM waves to communicate but no matter at what developmental stage a civilization is they will always create light to illuminate.

In answer to your first question, there is no "sound" in outer space, since it is a total vacuum.

The SETI dishes focus on pinpointed positions in space light years away and would not pick up any "stray" signals coming from our upper atmosphere, otherwise, it would be a gigantic background of white noise from all the radio antennas and such that pollute our atmosphere in terms of radio bands.

The question concerning "seeing" the light from planets is interesting, I was under the assumption we can only calculate the existence of rocky or terrestrial exoplanets based on their gravitaic effect on their surrounding star. If we could "see" light from a large city, we would certainly at thsi point be able to capture an image of these planets, correct? I've only seen a couple images of suspected exoplanets which were gaseous giants, hundreds of times bigger than Jupiter and Saturn, and even them were literally one pixel, sometimes four.

Also, since all we can see are the gas giants, we porbably wouldnt be able to see through the massive layer of gases, etc on the planets even if there were some sort of artificial light source below it.

There could be life out there in the Dark and Cold

If there was it would have evolved in the dark and cold and probably wouldn't have artificial lights anyway.

Why didn't someone think of this earlier?

SnF

I don't really believe we're likely to see any aliens at all unless they want us to.

Us stupid humans have stealth technology and you'll not often see that unless the pilot wants us to or doesn't care.

Any technology that brought them here would be stealthier than anything we can imagine.

If they exist then we would be able to see the non natural gases in their atmospheres. At least we will be able to in a few years. The spectra doesn't lie. I have read that we can detect a 60 watt light bulb on Pluto. So if there were some source of artificial light in the KB we'd know about it now.

Oh this is so interesting and thought provoking, even if it ends up being some natural phenomenon instead of alien life. S&F!

The rumor is that there are HUGE ships hanging out in the Kuiper Belt , and that the `Illuminati ` have been trying to communicate with them , but get no response.
And , also , that they are very worried as to whom these beings may be.
Thats the rumor that has been been spreading for the last few years anyway , and the search for artificial objects in the Kuiper Belt has been going on for a while now , that much is true.


transcurve.net...

Very nice thread OP. The fact is, everything that was stated in that article is possible. Aliens evolving certain ways, nonconventional ways on Earth, has always interested me. WE evolved a certain way because of our Earth and its componets, ET can evolve other ways giving the essentials on their planet ie darkness, water, heat, gravity ect ect. Great thread!

S&F

-SAP-

It is not really all that suprising that we hear nothing on the radio channels, only 100 years after starting on it ourselves are we seeing a natural progression of moving away from it onto another form of communication.

We are dumping the analogue and going towards digital. This would be a little more accurate for searching though because nature doesn't like to give off signals in the digital format so any discovery there would be an immediate red flag for further scrutiny... but given the silence on digital we still hear nothing. No doubt they will have moved on from that on to something we do not yet use or know about.

reply to post by ProjectVRD


I agree with you on that. If we do find a great potential life planet such as say Kelper 22b, we can beam as many radio signals as we want for next 1,000 Earth years, but that doesn't mean the race of people there can understand that signal or they have moved past that technologically.

To me the radio signal beaming seems to be a little played out and old. They need to rely more on Kepler's efforts and find something that is, not only more efficent but prolly cheaper to keep it running longer. SETI has been having funding issues. Just a thought though.

-SAP-

reply to post by SloAnPainful


Great responses. I agree with you but I think the next level of "listening/looking" needs to be done off the planet.

From a craft/base. Maybe we can slip one by the Aliens and build something on the moon without them knowing about it.... then one day they will be nearing earth and the commander will say, already to run Silent.... Alarm Alarm.. Alarm... We have just been detected by Earthlings.... from the Moon... "well I'll be....".

reply to post by anon72


I like the idea. Craft based would actually be pretty smart move. However it would be very expensive and since NASA had its funding cut we would have rely on, dare I say it, the Russians or Chinese to get it done. We could put a orbitor up there and monitor, but we have to fund it first.

-SAP-

Originally posted by dtrock78
In answer to your first question, there is no "sound" in outer space, since it is a total vacuum.
...

This is not entirely true. Space is not a total vacuum. Also, there are sounds in space in certain areas but you will never hear them. For example, at the termination shock there is plasma vibration which is essentially sound.

www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu...

Originally posted by anon72
Great responses. I agree with you but I think the next level of "listening/looking" needs to be done off the planet.

Signals From Space
Laser Like Signal from Tucanae




Email from Dr Bhathal

Hi Ron

Thanks for your email. I think a couple of people from the European press made a mistake and associated my work with the work on extra-solar planets. I am carrying out a search for ETI in the optical spectrum. We are looking for laser pulse signals from outer space.

The signal we detected came from the southern constellation Tucanae. Please find attached the signal for your use in your publications.

We are still in the process of trying to figure out whether it is an ETI signal.

Cheers.

Ragbir

Laser like Signal

Originally posted by SloAnPainful
I agree with you on that. If we do find a great potential life planet such as say Kelper 22b, we can beam as many radio signals as we want for next 1,000 Earth years, but that doesn't mean the race of people there can understand that signal or they have moved past that technologically.

Silly Lemmings...

IF Aliens are flitting about out there with warp drives or other FTL type crafts, they would NOT rely on radio waves to communicate, as radio waves travel at the speed of light.

So any message back home could take centuries.

They would need something like we envisioned on Star Trek in the 60's Subspace Radio Remember when they went back into the past the first time? They had to reprogram their equipment to pick up normal Earth radio transmissions

We only started broadcasting about 100 years ago. Those early broadcasts were very weak and the modulation on the signal would not travel very far and still be understandable.

So if any alien is monitoring our broadcast they would have to be within about 50 light years to hear anything

What if they're nocturnal?

I know MY abduction was at night-time...

The interesting thing about the light we're projecting is that it isn't desirable. It's considered "light trespass". Part of the current green movement is to cut down on light trespass, in new commercial construction we have to spec light fixtures with full cutoff shields that project the light downward only and keep it within the site's property lines. All light that is projected upward is wasted energy and I anticipate that in the next 30 or 40 years it will be all but eliminated. So the interesting thing about lighting is we've only been projecting a bunch of light off the planet's surface for maybe 60 years, and in another 40 years we'll likely go dark again (when viewed from space) due to higher efficiency lighting. So there's about a 100 year window where we could be located by other planets due to a light signature. Even though we've been here for thousands of years, any telescope trained on us wouldn't have seen a thing until around 60 years ago (relative to our timeline), and therefore if they're farther away than 60 light-years they STILL don't see anything from us.

It seems like a long shot to look for aliens via excess light- if they're primitive, or live underground, or do not allow light trespass of their own, or have no need for lighting (two suns/ better night vision/ etc.) then we'll never locate them that way. Radio signal still seems like where we should focus those efforts.