Telescopes 'could detect' alien output
Scientists claim telescopes could pick up on alien output from the early universe
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Thursday, 26, Oct 2006 12:24
Radio telescopes designed to study the early universe may be able to pick up radio output from alien civilisations, it has been claimed today.
The most powerful emissions from Earth come from military radar, TV and FM radio.
Harvard scientists claim that if extraterrestrial civilisations are producing similar emissions, then telescopes being built today would be able to detect the spikes they would cause in the radio spectrum.
Writing in the New Scientist magazine, Harvard researcher Abraham Loeb said: "By a happy accident the telescopes will be sensitive to just the kind of radio emission that our civilisation is leaking into space."
According to Dr Loeb and his Harvard colleague Matias Zaldarriaga, the new telescopes would pick up radio leakage from alien civilisations within about 1,000 light years of Earth.
Estimates claim that within this boundary there could be as many as 100 million stars with planets.
But Dr Loeb admitted that it is "very difficult to quantify" how many of these planets could potentially have civilisations that are at roughly the same stage of development as ours.
A further challenge facing the researchers is that the telescopes will also encounter "enormous terrestrial interference".
Seth Shostak of the Seti institute in California, which researches the universe, said that sorting this interference out would be "a substantial challenge".