Proxima Centauri: The Closest Star.
Credit & Copyright: David Malin, UK Schmidt Telescope, DSS, AAO
Credit & Copyright: David Malin, UK Schmidt Telescope, DSS, AAO
It's a staple of Science Fiction, and an unquestioned fact of our modern age, that aliens could be listening to our radio and watching our TV broadcasts, as our signals race across the galaxy at the speed of light. They could be studying our weaknesses, preparing their attack! But really, is that possible?
I have long been fascinated by the
possibility of finding life beyond our solar system, or of aliens finding
us. But rather than wishful thinking,
scaremongering or falling for alien abduction tales, I'm far more interested in
the realistic prospects of such a discovery.
So when Prof. Brian Cox threw down the gauntlet for listeners to BBC
Radio 4's The Infinite Monkey Cage to carry out a fundamental but accessible
calculation to illustrate the real likelihood of one form of contact, I was
fascinated.
Episode 5 of Series 12 was broadcast on 3
August 2015, and I heard it several weeks later via the show's podcast
feed. The previous week's episode
focussed on extra-terrestrial life and alien contact, but Episode 5
concentrated on speed, including land speed record attempts as well as the
fundamental barrier in physics that is the speed of light.
If you want to download and listen to the
episode yourself, at 38m 38s, presenter Robin Ince asks about radio signals
leaking into space and Professor Danielle George, of University of Manchester,
describes broadcast transmissions degrading in power with the inverse square
law. Then Robin asks Brian Cox to calculate how far away through space their
own radio broadcast would be detectable. Prof. Cox ad lib ponders the problem and then
defines the listeners' challenge, which I summarise here:
"Suppose a 200kW transmitter broadcasts for 1 second at 198kHz, find the distance at which there remains one photon per square metre."
Now, we can argue the merits of this
threshold, whether one photon per second per square metre is easy or unduly
difficult for advanced aliens to detect, (and I shall return to this
question). But for now, let's solve the
problem.
First, we need to know how many photons of radio energy are transmitted in one second. Then we need to find the distance at which all these photons are spread out to one per square metre.
So let's do it... First, let's define some parameters and
constants:
Transmitted power, P = 200kW
Frequency, f
= 198kHz
Planck's constant, h = 6.6x10-34Js
As Prof. Cox helpfully reminded us, the
energy of a photon is given by its frequency multiplied by Planck's constant,
so
Photon energy, E = hf
So each photon at 198kHz carries 198x103
x 6.6x10-34 = 1.3x10-28J of energy.
And since a power of 200kW delivers precisely
200kJ of energy per second, in one second the transmitter delivers 200kJ of
energy.
So we divide the energy transmitted by the
energy per photon to find the number of photons transmitted.
Number of photons, N = 200x103 / 1.3x10-28
= 1.25x1033 photons.
That's an awful lot of photons! So now we need to spread these photons out
over a sphere to the point where there's one square metre of area on the sphere
for each photon.
The area of a sphere, A = 4πr2 m2,
where r is the radius of the sphere.
So, a sphere with an area of 1.25x1033
is given by the equation 1.25x1033 = 4πr2.
Rearranging this to find r gives, r = √( 1.25x1033
/ 4π ) = 1.0x1016 metres.
That's an unfeasibly large distance by human
standards, but on the astronomical distance scale, it's almost exactly one
light year!
So once the Radio 4 long wave signal
broadcasting The Infinite Monkey Cage gets to a light year from Earth, it will
comprise only one photon per square metre, per second. And by Brian Cox's criterion, it will have
degraded to the point of undetectability.
Now bear in mind that the nearest extra-solar
star, pictured above, is Proxima Centauri which is 4.2 light years away. And if that was conducive to intelligent
life, which it is not, our signal would not make it a quarter of the way there. So by this criterion, which is not unreasonable
at all, we are to all intents and purposes radio silent to any alien life out
there, as far as commercial broadcast transmissions are concerned.
=====
So now, how reasonable is this as a
limit? Can we find an argument which
breaks this?
One
photon per square metre per second seems like an arbitrary limit, why can't
advanced aliens detect those? Well, as advanced
as aliens might be, there has to be a signal to receive. The bandwidth of an audio signal is a few
kHz, which means that you'd need at least
5,000 samples per second to reconstruct the transmitted signal. And that's not a technological limit, which advanced
civilizations could surpass, it's a fundamental information limit. Worse still, one photon carries no amplitude
information, so unless the reconstruction is to be distorted beyond use, they
would need to detect many photons per sample. A good signal would use several hundred
amplitude levels, but you could get away with perhaps 20 or so. So now, to reconstruct a useful signal, you'd need 100,000
photons per second. At just one light
year, that would require a receiving antenna with an area of 100,000m2,
or a perfect dish with a diameter of 350
metres (1,200 feet).
But
aliens have limitless capabilities, because... well, aliens! So they could
build a 350 metre dish.
Well, perhaps. But now consider
that signal power drops with the square of distance, and dish area increases with
the square of diameter. So double the
distance, double the dish diameter.
There are plenty of stars nearby, but to find one which can possibly be
inhabited by life which could evolve to sufficient intelligence, we need to
look tens of light years away. Say fifty light years. So now they need a dish fifty times bigger,
that's 18km (11 miles) across. And to
search their neighbourhood to a fifty light year radius, they'd need to steer
that, and keep it adequately parabolic too.
Consider too that fifty light years is on the extreme edge of optimism
for reasonable numbers to plug into the Drake Equation, and the probability of
another technologically advanced lifeform existing within 50 light years from
us is not zero, but it must be very, very low.
So
what about higher powered transmitters? The 200kW BBC Radio 4 long wave transmitter is
fairly typical for its waveband. The
Europe 1 transmitter in Germany is about the most powerful long wave
transmitter on the planet, pushing out 2000kW at 183kHz. That'll increase range by about three times,
to 3 light years. In terms of astronomy,
that half an order of magnitude and makes
little difference to the feasibility of being heard. It increases Brian Cox's limit from a light
year to three, still well short of Proxima Centauri.
How
about other wavebands?
Our atmosphere only allows through certain wavebands. Long wave will get through, short wave will
not. Above that, VHF radio and UHF TV
transmissions can get through, but as frequency increases, so does the energy
in each photon. So at higher
frequencies, the number of photons for the same power is proportionately less,
and so the range to receive sufficient photons to reconstruct the transmitted
signal reduces too. The upshot is, signals
at frequencies above long wave will be undetectable closer rather than farther
out.
You've
only considered omni-directional signals, how about directed beams? Well, yeah.
If you're talking SETI listening to the equivalent of Arecibo, then
that's a different question entirely.
What I'm talking about is our routine commercial broadcast
transmissions. Many of those are
vaguely directed, particularly the higher frequency transmissions. And those already suffer from worse propagation
issues than long wave. But it's true
that a directed transmission is more powerful than an omni-directional one,
(one which transmits equal power in all directions). And although the power density increases in the transmitted direction, the area of
sky covered reduces, reducing the likelihood of any receiver within range
detecting the signal. So directed
broadcast transmissions don't help us.
=====
Finally, let me be clear: I'm not saying that
it's impossible for our transmissions
to be detected by alien civilisations, if they exist. But what I am saying is that the above is a
reasoned argument supported by calculation that it's very, very
improbable that there could be any within receiving range. It's just not as easy as
E.T. sitting on a planet orbiting, say, Tau Ceti with his transistor radio,
listening to Hancock's Half Hour or I Love Lucy. If we're going to make contact with
technological civilisations, we'll need a highly funded, planned and directed
effort. Trusting on radio broadcasts leaking into
space isn't going to cut it.