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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: tejek who wrote (563919)5/6/2010 12:18:53 PM
From: TimF  Read Replies (2) of 1574885
 
As Combjelly points out, even though 35 light years is huge by any ordinary standard (a quick, and not very careful calculation gives me the result that it would take a million years for a space ship as fast as any that has ever carried a person in it to reach that distance), its small on the galactic scale.

Another issue is that many of our signals don't carry as far as you might think. Regular radio communication isn't directional, its broadcast out in all directions, as it goes out further its spread over a greater area of space. Picture an expanding "bubble" of the radio communication, after one second the bubble is almost as large as the moon's orbit (ignoring the fact that the earth itself is blocking the waves in the direction through the earth), after 8 minutes its almost as big as the earth's orbit around the sun (but spherical, again ignoring the part blocked by the earth), after 35 years that same amount of broadcast energy is spread very thin indeed. Then remember there is interference from other sources, so no matter how sensitive your equipment at some point the signal is lost in the noise.

A deliberate message, a powerful and directional broadcast, would be another story, but interstellar detection/communication from omni-directional broadcasts is rather problematic once you get beyond the nearest stars.
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