Is there Intelligent Life on the Earth?

Standard Definitions

Escaping Radio Radiation as a manifestion of intelligence on the Earth:

The red dots (of course) show the distribution of the worlds 2200 TV transmission stations.

Only a small percentage of this broadcast TV is intercepted by an antenna on the earth, most of it escapes into space.

Similarly, only a small percentage of Military Radar transmissions is bounced back to a receiver --> most of that energy also escapes

Hence, intelligent life on the earth is announcing its presence directly via Television and Military Radar!

Over the last 40 years or so the radio power of the earth has been steadily growing

• By now approximately 1000 nearby stars have been illuminated.
• With this Telescope we could detect similar activity.
• But what`s the correct frequency to tune to?
• External observers only detect radio noise of these emissions, the images (e.g. I Love Lucy) fortunately, can't be re-assembled

Because of the non-uniform distribution of TV transmission towers (red dots in the masthead figure), the earth has an interesting spectral signature when observed from some nearby star, in this case Barnard's star located at a distance of 13 Light Years. This spectral signature potentially gives information about:

• Earth's rotation rate
• Distribution of continental land masses
• Growth of population on different continents over time

Our non-equilibrium growth is clearly manifested by our increasing radio leakage to the cosmos.

Detecting Intelligence:

• Try This Scale - whole earth
• SF Bay
• Pacific Northwest
• Tillamook Bay
• Brazil Deforestation
• Sweden
• Battle of the Bulge
• French Riveria
• Merry Old England
• Cradle of Civilization?
• Where's this?
• Find Civilization
• Civilization Under Water

As the above imaging excercise should suggest, it is very difficult to actually detect the artificial activities of man on a large scale.

Although we may think we are a creative species, we do not manifest that creativity on large scales. Indeed, the largest man-made object which can be seen from space is a linear device known as the Great Wall of China.

As we will discuss later, "intelligent" life on the earth principally manifests itself via escaping electromagnetic radiation principally in the form of Television Broadcasting and Military Radar. An exquisite combination to symbolize the collective intelligence of the planet.

Let's imagine that we live on a distant planet that has intercepted some of this stray radiation (and that we don't work for the NSA ). We decide to send an imaging spacecraft to the Earth to learn more about the source that has produced the signal.

Hypothetical Journey to earth to find intelligent life.

As we approach earth our imaging system begins to see features on the landscape - in this case Lake Michigan As we get closer to the earth and our picture resolution improves we begin to notice deviations from the natural landscape. These deviations are clustered on the land surface and have a morphology that is independent of the continental land mass upon which they are located. They appear as grid patterns .

The grid patterns do not respect continental boundaries, they are everywhere the same. This is a large scale manifestation of the erasure of culturual differences through Technology. As we zoom in the grid pattern becomes more pronounced until we see collections of rectangular plots laid out. Further zooming delineates discrete imobile structures.

Rectangular immobile structures are seen embedded in the overall grid pattern. This pattern is consistent from one grid pattern to another. Whatever has built these structures has done so in a uniform manner. But still no motion has been detected until we reach a resolution scale of about 10 -meters. On that scale the grid resolves into ordered motion which is laid out in rigidly constructed patterns. to guide the movements of the intelligent creatures

Check out this live view of San Francisco .

Other Live Cameras connected to the Web

Now we are done. We have a consistent picture of the nature of intelligence on the earth. It is uniform and rigid, always repeating the same pattern. Small, metallic mobile units function within the larger foundation if well-defined grid. But have we missed anything.

We descend closer and reach a resolution limit of 1-meter. We notice a large rectangular object (okay a bus) become immobile and a bunch of stuff pours out and moves in random and chaotic patterns. We conclude that the intelligent life on the earth must really do something about these parasites!

A Small Story about the End of Civilizatoin

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The Electronic Universe Project

e-mail: nuts@moo.uoregon.edu