The elderly, hermits and people too cheap to get cable weren't the only victims of the recent transition to the digital airwaves. Apparently, the lack of an analog signal means that somewhere out there, an alien race that mankind has yet to discover will not know the winner of I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.
An astronomer from the SETI Institute has speculated that undiscovered alien races or other forms of intelligent life in the universe won't be able to watch Earth's television because of the switchover.
Seth Shostak wrote an article for Space.com on how the traditional television signals are often beamed to the distant corners of the universe, much like the ones that SETI beams out and picks up on a daily basis. That explains why they have refused to contact us. I wouldn't go near a planet that beams out The Superstars longer than half of an episode.
Of course, the odds of an alien race picking up a very strong signal in distant space are weak at best. Shostak said an alien would have to have an "antennae the size of Texas" to pick up a good signal. That means he'll also have to have aluminum foil the length of the Pacific coastline just to get the damn thing to work.
Basically, we didn't miss out on a chance to communicate with a whole new race of beings, but it's one less chance of making contact with extraterrestrial life. If this cost us the chance to adapt their technology so that we can have rocket boots and duty-free space whiskey, I demand a federal oversight investigation.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-26-2009 @ 6:20PM
bruce said...
Hopefully Lurr of Omicron Persei 8 won't come attack Earth because he can no longer watch his favorite TV shows.
Anyway, I've read quite often that it's a common misconception that radio and TV signals (which are relatively low-powered) continue to radiate away from the earth, at the speed of light, across the universe with no degradation such that someone 50 light years away could turn on a TV and watch a TV broadcast from earth 50 years ago. Apparently the signal dissipates due to cosmic dust and other stuff out there that it would be impossible to watch beyond only a few light years away from earth.
Assuming there is no intelligent life within only a few light years from earth, most likely no aliens would be able to watch earth TV shows.
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6-26-2009 @ 6:34PM
J Hayes said...
Are you kidding? Countless races are smacking their tentacles into their diamond-reinforced brain cases, screaming "Finally! I haven't been able to watch that for 50 years! What the krelmetz took so long?"
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6-26-2009 @ 7:07PM
AndrewNoNumbers said...
If they could build an analog receiver why couldn't they also build a digital one?
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6-26-2009 @ 7:29PM
Usama said...
Analog signals have an uneven power spread in the signal, causing a spike, which is detectable even from long distances. It's how we use our own giant radio receivers to listen on what's happening in deep space. One you find a spike you can adjust your receiver until you get the perfect signal. Think of it like back w/ analog signals and rabbit ears even if you weren't right on the frequency you could still see what was going on, sure the picture wasn't super clear, but you know, it was fine. Of course if they don't know what they're looking at, the aliens might have a problem with a not-so-clear picture and wouldn't really know if they were making the image cleaner or worse.
Digital signals are evenly spread across the spectrum, so no spike means its harder to find the signal from deep space. You can sort of see this when you begin to lose a digital signal, it starts to freeze/break up like a scratched up DVD does .. there's no way you can "sort of" get the signal, you either do or you don't, on or off, 0 or 1.
So it's still possible to catch the signal but it would require a huge antenna as pointed out by Danny, one the size of Texas is an example (though not sure if that's actually true or just in jest), because now it's like finding a needle in a haystack.
All of that wasn't the best of analogies, but I just wanted to point out that analog signals are "dirtier" and so easier to find in the whole mess of radio waves in space, whereas digital signals can get lost in that same mess of radio waves since they're so clean.
Finally I'd like to point out that our alien friends are probably many years behind us on television (limits of light speed travel applies to radio waves) so we should probably make sure they don't find out about the Oceanic 6 because they'd be pretty pissed.
6-27-2009 @ 8:56PM
Dan said...
Usuma, thanks for a lucid explanation of a topic difficult for non-scientists like myself!
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6-28-2009 @ 4:39PM
Ivan said...
There's this thing called the rest of the world, and from what I hear, most of it still has analog TV.
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