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Re: New WWW link

At 10:21 AM 7/19/96, Kevin 'Tex' Houston wrote:
>> Zenon Wrote:
>> >Add to LIT links the following one:
>> >
>> >  http://www.obspm.fr/departement/darc/planets/encycl.html
>> >  Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia
>> >
>> >-- Zenon
>
>I followed the link you gave Zenon, and found a more graphics intensive page.
>http://www.empire.net/~whatmoug/Extrasolar/extrasolar_visions.html
>
>It takes a while to load, but I think it's worth it.  it gives a better
>description
>of the pervailing conditions on each planet.  Perhaps we could switch our
>target
>to one of the Jupiter sized worlds orbiting in a water zone.  a high-speed
>flyby
>mission could return a lot of information.  we'd know the Orbital
>inclination, so we
>could do a polar fly-over.
>
>I wonder what such a probe would reveal about earth?  Assuming a .4 C
>fly-by and a
>favorable position (ie earth is seen from a distance equal to 60 to 120
>degrees of
>earth's orbit.) would a standard set of spectrographic instruments be able
>to detect
>Oxygen or Carbon Dioxide?  Would a wide band radio reciever be able to
>detect our
>television or satellite transmissions?  Would a good night-side photo show the
>rivers and seas of light that populate the north-american continet?
>
>In other words, if some other world sent a probe here,what is the minimum
>sensitivity
>required for it to return useful data? (ie. that the third rock from the
>sun is a
>life-bearing world)  Follow-up question, do we have the required technology?
>
>--
>Kevin "Tex" Houston 	http://umn.edu/~hous0042/index.html


I know we don't show up that well in the day visually.  But with a big
enough scope you can resolve down to any res you want.  We have designs
(well concepts) that could resolve objects down to a couple meters from a
few light years away.  The geometric structures of our roads, fields, and
agraculture would be a dead give away.  The geometric pattern of city
street lights, and trafic flows, at night would be an incredibly obvious
hint!!

In the radio and EM bands we are VERY bright.  We outshine the sun in some
EM bands.  Personally as an ET I'ld be a little suspicious of a planet
where whole continents were syncronized with a 60 cycle per secound hum
(I.E. our power grid).  I have no idea what the transmition rating for the
power grid is, but I'm sure you could detect it a few light years away.

The question isn't could they see us, but how closely would they be
looking.  We have no official programs looking, and few private ones.  Then
again, we'ld be pretty hard to overlook at close range!

Kelly


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Kelly Starks                       Internet: kgstar@most.fw.hac.com
Sr. Systems Engineer
Magnavox Electronic Systems Company
(Magnavox URL: http://www.fw.hac.com/external.html)

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