Earth Detecting Earth: At What Distance Could Earth’s Constellation of Technosignatures Be Detected with Present-day Technology?
The field of Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) searches for “technosignatures” could provide the first detection of life beyond Earth through the technology that an extraterrestrial intelligence may have created. Any given SETI survey, if no technosignatures are detected, should set up...
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| Format: | Article |
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IOP Publishing
2025-01-01
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| Series: | The Astronomical Journal |
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ada3c7 |
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| author | Sofia Z. Sheikh Macy J. Huston Pinchen Fan Jason T. Wright Thomas Beatty Connor Martini Ravi Kopparapu Adam Frank |
| author_facet | Sofia Z. Sheikh Macy J. Huston Pinchen Fan Jason T. Wright Thomas Beatty Connor Martini Ravi Kopparapu Adam Frank |
| author_sort | Sofia Z. Sheikh |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The field of Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) searches for “technosignatures” could provide the first detection of life beyond Earth through the technology that an extraterrestrial intelligence may have created. Any given SETI survey, if no technosignatures are detected, should set upper limits based on the kinds of technosignatures it should have been able to detect; the sensitivity of many SETI searches requires that their target sources (e.g., Dyson spheres or Kardashev II/III level radio transmitters) emit with power far exceeding the kinds of technology humans have developed. In this paper, we instead turn our gaze Earthward, minimizing the axis of extrapolation by only considering transmission and detection methods commensurate with an Earth 2024 level. We evaluate the maximum distance of detectability for various present-day Earth technosignatures—radio transmissions, atmospheric technosignatures, optical and infrared signatures, and objects in space or on planetary surfaces—using only present-day Earth instruments, providing one of the first fully cross-wavelength comparisons of the growing toolbox of SETI techniques. In this framework, we find that Earth’s space-detectable signatures span 13 orders of magnitude in detectability, with intermittent, celestially targeted radio transmission (i.e., planetary radar) beating out its nearest nonradio competitor by a factor of 10 ^3 in detection distance. This work highlights the growing range of ways that exoplanet technosignatures may be expressed, the growing complexity and visibility of the human impact upon our planet, and the continued importance of the radio frequencies in SETI. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-210117e3287e4aa28363247a664a48e3 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 1538-3881 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-01-01 |
| publisher | IOP Publishing |
| record_format | Article |
| series | The Astronomical Journal |
| spelling | doaj-art-210117e3287e4aa28363247a664a48e32025-02-03T15:34:33ZengIOP PublishingThe Astronomical Journal1538-38812025-01-01169211810.3847/1538-3881/ada3c7Earth Detecting Earth: At What Distance Could Earth’s Constellation of Technosignatures Be Detected with Present-day Technology?Sofia Z. Sheikh0https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7057-4999Macy J. Huston1https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4591-3201Pinchen Fan2https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3988-9022Jason T. Wright3https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6160-5888Thomas Beatty4https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9539-4203Connor Martini5https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9790-7554Ravi Kopparapu6https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5893-2471Adam Frank7https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4948-7820SETI Institute , 339 Bernardo Avenue Suite 200, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA ; ssheikh@berkeley.edu; Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center, The Pennsylvania State University , University Park, PA 16802, USA; Breakthrough Listen, University of California , Berkeley, 501 Campbell Hall 3411, Berkeley, CA 94720, USAPenn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center, The Pennsylvania State University , University Park, PA 16802, USA; Astronomy Department, University of California , Berkeley, CA 94720, USAPenn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center, The Pennsylvania State University , University Park, PA 16802, USA; Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The Pennsylvania State University , University Park, PA 16802, USA; Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, The Pennsylvania State University , University Park, PA 16802, USAPenn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center, The Pennsylvania State University , University Park, PA 16802, USA; Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The Pennsylvania State University , University Park, PA 16802, USA; Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, The Pennsylvania State University , University Park, PA 16802, USADepartment of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin–Madison , Madison, WI, USADepartment of Religion, Columbia University , New York, NY, USANASA Goddard Space Flight Center, USADepartment of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester , USAThe field of Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) searches for “technosignatures” could provide the first detection of life beyond Earth through the technology that an extraterrestrial intelligence may have created. Any given SETI survey, if no technosignatures are detected, should set upper limits based on the kinds of technosignatures it should have been able to detect; the sensitivity of many SETI searches requires that their target sources (e.g., Dyson spheres or Kardashev II/III level radio transmitters) emit with power far exceeding the kinds of technology humans have developed. In this paper, we instead turn our gaze Earthward, minimizing the axis of extrapolation by only considering transmission and detection methods commensurate with an Earth 2024 level. We evaluate the maximum distance of detectability for various present-day Earth technosignatures—radio transmissions, atmospheric technosignatures, optical and infrared signatures, and objects in space or on planetary surfaces—using only present-day Earth instruments, providing one of the first fully cross-wavelength comparisons of the growing toolbox of SETI techniques. In this framework, we find that Earth’s space-detectable signatures span 13 orders of magnitude in detectability, with intermittent, celestially targeted radio transmission (i.e., planetary radar) beating out its nearest nonradio competitor by a factor of 10 ^3 in detection distance. This work highlights the growing range of ways that exoplanet technosignatures may be expressed, the growing complexity and visibility of the human impact upon our planet, and the continued importance of the radio frequencies in SETI.https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ada3c7Earth (planet)TechnosignaturesSearch for extraterrestrial intelligence |
| spellingShingle | Sofia Z. Sheikh Macy J. Huston Pinchen Fan Jason T. Wright Thomas Beatty Connor Martini Ravi Kopparapu Adam Frank Earth Detecting Earth: At What Distance Could Earth’s Constellation of Technosignatures Be Detected with Present-day Technology? The Astronomical Journal Earth (planet) Technosignatures Search for extraterrestrial intelligence |
| title | Earth Detecting Earth: At What Distance Could Earth’s Constellation of Technosignatures Be Detected with Present-day Technology? |
| title_full | Earth Detecting Earth: At What Distance Could Earth’s Constellation of Technosignatures Be Detected with Present-day Technology? |
| title_fullStr | Earth Detecting Earth: At What Distance Could Earth’s Constellation of Technosignatures Be Detected with Present-day Technology? |
| title_full_unstemmed | Earth Detecting Earth: At What Distance Could Earth’s Constellation of Technosignatures Be Detected with Present-day Technology? |
| title_short | Earth Detecting Earth: At What Distance Could Earth’s Constellation of Technosignatures Be Detected with Present-day Technology? |
| title_sort | earth detecting earth at what distance could earth s constellation of technosignatures be detected with present day technology |
| topic | Earth (planet) Technosignatures Search for extraterrestrial intelligence |
| url | https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ada3c7 |
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