Earth is 12700 km in diameter, so such an image would be 688 pixels across.
Basically you won't be reading license plates but you'd see enough to identify evidence of very large scale construction, and with multiple images over time I bet you could draw even more conclusions.
This requires sending something to at least about 548 AU and then effect falls off from there but anything you send that far will be going at a velocity that would keep it going. You would be in effective range for some time but basically you'd need to keep sending satellites to that distance in order to keep using the technique. You'd also want to send them into different directions in order to image different parts of the sky.
It’s basically imaging one exoplanet per satellite. Would be good to figure out a way to slow down at 500 AU. In order to maximize the time for observation.
It would be most likely a whole solar system. Consider that new horizons only had hours during its flyby to collect all the telemetry that it did. Imagine having 600 pixels of resolution for an exo planet for up to 15 years. Plus all the other telemetry you'll be collecting about the galactic space near us.
With a Jupiter/solar oberth boost we can at best do around 20 AU per year, so best case scenario it would take atleast 25 years to get there, which honestly isn’t bad at all. For comparison voyager does around 3.6 AU/year.
A series of permanent stations near the vicinity of the oberth burns at Jupiter and the sun could add a lot of Delta V by firing a laser at the probe and the probe could fire one back. Even more so if it was a series of laser boosters strategically placed around the solar system. The numbers start to get really crazy.
I wonder about all the extraterrestrial AI swarms that have already imaged earth.
Surely it has happened. They must have all spotted our planet millions of years ago and must be watching us with a continuous high-resolution feed. They've seen our dinosaurs. Their interest will really be piqued when they finally see us invent electricity, though that might be some time in the future for them.
Perhaps even gravitational lensing is primitive to them. Perhaps they're able to break and manipulate physics and peer directly into our light cone, breaking the speed of light. Perhaps through direct wormholes they're already here - computronium in the very oxygen atoms that surround us. In rock silicates, in the air you breathe, in your hemes, in your brain. Calculating.
But perhaps we're the only intelligent species in the entire universe. That is also a possibility. Some big names in astrophysics, such as David Kipping, suggest strongly that we should not rule out that hypothesis. I find his suggestions haunting and beautiful at the same time. You need to watch his videos, and this is a good start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqEmYU8Y_rI
And finally, it may be that we're all just a historical simulation. Or maybe that's ascribing too much importance to ourselves. Maybe we're just a slop simulation on some AI's plaything, existing for no reason at all. Background NPCs with self-importance, ephemeral existences. But procedural generation at scale isn't really all too different from the laws of the physical universe itself.
The scale of the universe fills me with awe. Every time I think about it, my worries about random algo-rage and clickbait fades away to nothing. It deeply contextualizes our short time here.
This comment encapsulates how poorly we humans are at accepting unknowns. For me, that explains a lot of our belief systems. The fact we can’t just take the unknown but instead have to fill in the blanks with what ifs. and create a narrative like we know anything about the unknown thing. It helps us feel like we understand it more. That’s literally how religions and a lot of other things get created, it’s a pattern, then the logical person sees the patterns and say it’s a simulation. A quite predictable filling of another blank.
>But perhaps we're the only intelligent species in the entire universe. That is also a possibility. Some big names in astrophysics, such as David Kipping, suggest strongly that we should not rule out that hypothesis
They may be planted by alien AI to lull us into false sense of security.
As Lynn Margulis reminded us we are not the main show. Our individual intelligence is highly over rated. The brain itself is kludge upon kludge accumulating over thousands of years, to solve problems that keep changing with time and environmental changes. Its quite a piece of crap actually if you tabulate all the accumulated junk. We arent as interesting as we think we are.
Some of the tech and knowledge generated might be interesting. But compare it with to photosynthesis or butterfly metamorphosis or the fact that microbes can double their population in a few hours, all of which is happening without needing any human intelligence. So they may very well be watching but are more curious about a rose or a redwood tree than all the random and superficial activity the chimp brain produces.
Cynical atheists never cease to make me laugh. Life is miraculous on every level. Sentience even more so. Calling our brain a piece of junk is just baffling.
Artifical solar capture systems exist. Synthetic biology also bridges that gap as well and the genetic basis is known and has been manipulated. Granted, coming up with more efficient photosynthesis is very hard, but I don't share your "we humans are stupid" opinion here at all whatsoever.
> or butterfly metamorphosis
Nothing fascinating here. It is just a genetic program. Viruses have similar programs too - yes, no metamorphosis, but take retroviruses and the syncytium. Mammals only reproduce thanks to retroviruses (not 100% correct, but look at this here: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0707873105)
> or the fact that microbes can double their population in a few hours
Wow, we humans surely do not have cells that double. Oh wait ... nevermind. Humans consist of cells. Who would have thought...
Yes, microbes are much faster, but they don't have to coordinate as much as humans do in 3D, not even in a bacterial biofilm. And we have to double a lot more DNA than bacteria do, so of course they are faster.
> about a rose or a redwood tree than all the random and superficial activity the chimp brain produces
That comparison is weird. A rose is thinking as much as a chimp brain?
The human brain is special. Chimps are very clever too but humans have very solid abstract thinking. Animals have this too, to some extent (predator hunting prey, chimps have hunting strategies) but e. g. look at mathematics - animals don't waste their time coming up with higher order theorems.
There is no "building" such a thing. All we could do right now is send the "telescope probe" >500AU away, on the opposite side of the sun from the observation target, then hope it still works 80 years later or so when it gets there.
Edit: My point is that you can't "build" such a thing and later point it somewhere-- you have to fly the camera part of the "telescope" about 3 times as far as voyager 1 went, exactly opposite of your observation target, and it is not gonna stay there for too long either.
As long as we improve rapidly at both drone-building and exoplanet target selection, it is not really gonna be worthwhile because both the drone hardware and the target will be hopelessly obsolete before we even get halfway to the observation point.
Well, there is a way to do it slowly, the probe(s) just need to be in a 500AU circular orbit. At that distance power and thrust are an issue, and RTGs seem like a better choice than solar. Certainly, takes longer to get to orbit than fly through a point for a pic, but you would get a lot more pics.
First: Orbital period out there is over 10000 years.
And if you circularize (which is expensive to do in delta-v), you minimize the time window you have for observation (because you're basically pointing your speed vector straight to outside of your observation cone).
The orbital velocity at this distance is around 1 km/s, so you can fairly trivially (compared to anything else) zero it out. Then you can just hover in place, the solar gravity acceleration at this range is in _microns_ per second squared.
For all intents and purposes, you'll be in the interstellar space.
In order to get something there fast enough it would be traveling out very fast. Getting something there to orbit I think is not realistic for us any time soon.
> so it's not too different to "get there" and "orbit there".
But to "get there" within any reasonable timespan requires going really fast - which is currently highly impractical. And then once you get there, you have to them cancel pretty much all of that velocity which is not just a "few percent more delta V".
We can do 7-8 AU per year right now using tech we have. Voy 1 and Voy 2 are moving at 3.59 and 3.25. A starship sized rocket could also possibly get a small payload that separates to 15 AU. This is all using conventual propellent. If you consider using nuclear explosive as a prepulsion technique the math starts to change substantially and you can achieve even 25 AU / year.
A kilometer scale telescope contract would exercise all the right pipelines for massive orbital buildout like in-situ assembly, multi-lift cadences, and big-old infra. And it'd look cool as hell in the night sky during assembly.
According to AI, an equivalent would be roughly when Google maps shows you 10mi/20km reference scale.
Turning off the labels, aliens would probably assume that the world is naturally full of green stuff that is dealing with some strange grey infestation.
> aliens would probably assume that the world is naturally full of green stuff that is dealing with some strange grey infestation.
I think they would draw the correct conclusion, actually. I know it's popular to compare humans to mold or cancer or whatever these days, but this kind of thing is both unrealistic and insulting to the aliens, who by the definition of the scenario are at least as smart as we are, quite probably more.
Our nighttime view of the planet has dramatically changed in the past 100 years and is increasing. They would instantly see us using electricity and could possibly see our satellites.
An even more ridiculous dream of mine: I hope that aliens build a similarly amazing telescope, point it at Earth, and share the images with us, so that we can _see_ our Earth in the distant past.
The wild thing is that, if I understand it correctly, if you were floating in a spacesuit at the same spot you'd also see that resolution (likely highly distorted) with the naked eye.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOLIMAN
https://toliman.space/
They’re building one for stars within 10 parsecs of the sun ( and more specifically for Alpha Centauri) which should launch in the next year
Alternative to resolving an image via Einstein ring lensing?
There's a project that's going well from NASA for this. Still a moonshot but they've progressed through the early stages well so far.
https://www.nasa.gov/general/direct-multipixel-imaging-and-s...
What would a 25km resolution of earth look like
This is the Earth last Wednesday at 0.25º resolution (roughly 28 km per pixel at the equator): https://neo.gsfc.nasa.gov/servlet/RenderData?si=2050444&cs=r...
It's dead.
Yeah, it seems it's not permanent. You can go here: https://neo.gsfc.nasa.gov/view.php?datasetId=VIIRS_543D&date... and then click on the right side "0.25 degrees 1440 x 720".
Uploaded for the lazy: https://imgur.com/a/0I8f8DG
What a shame. I had expected the Earth to last a bit longer.
Earth is 12700 km in diameter, so such an image would be 688 pixels across.
Basically you won't be reading license plates but you'd see enough to identify evidence of very large scale construction, and with multiple images over time I bet you could draw even more conclusions.
We could make a license plate big enough that aliens could see it and know we are sophisticated.
Nah, let's just put a big sign "Kilroy was here", so they don't bother with the "mostly harmless" planet.
That's phenomenal. This would bring us so much fascinating information.
Enough to see cities
A more cautious civilization might take measures to prevent emissions. There's potentially great value in remaining unnoticed.
[dead]
Great in depth youtube video on this project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go-50Dpzs20
This requires sending something to at least about 548 AU and then effect falls off from there but anything you send that far will be going at a velocity that would keep it going. You would be in effective range for some time but basically you'd need to keep sending satellites to that distance in order to keep using the technique. You'd also want to send them into different directions in order to image different parts of the sky.
It’s basically imaging one exoplanet per satellite. Would be good to figure out a way to slow down at 500 AU. In order to maximize the time for observation.
It would be most likely a whole solar system. Consider that new horizons only had hours during its flyby to collect all the telemetry that it did. Imagine having 600 pixels of resolution for an exo planet for up to 15 years. Plus all the other telemetry you'll be collecting about the galactic space near us.
With a Jupiter/solar oberth boost we can at best do around 20 AU per year, so best case scenario it would take atleast 25 years to get there, which honestly isn’t bad at all. For comparison voyager does around 3.6 AU/year.
A series of permanent stations near the vicinity of the oberth burns at Jupiter and the sun could add a lot of Delta V by firing a laser at the probe and the probe could fire one back. Even more so if it was a series of laser boosters strategically placed around the solar system. The numbers start to get really crazy.
Wow. 25km resolution of the exoplanet's surface.
Of course, getting the telescope into place, steering it, etc. - that's the hard part.
I wonder about all the extraterrestrial AI swarms that have already imaged earth.
Surely it has happened. They must have all spotted our planet millions of years ago and must be watching us with a continuous high-resolution feed. They've seen our dinosaurs. Their interest will really be piqued when they finally see us invent electricity, though that might be some time in the future for them.
Perhaps even gravitational lensing is primitive to them. Perhaps they're able to break and manipulate physics and peer directly into our light cone, breaking the speed of light. Perhaps through direct wormholes they're already here - computronium in the very oxygen atoms that surround us. In rock silicates, in the air you breathe, in your hemes, in your brain. Calculating.
But perhaps we're the only intelligent species in the entire universe. That is also a possibility. Some big names in astrophysics, such as David Kipping, suggest strongly that we should not rule out that hypothesis. I find his suggestions haunting and beautiful at the same time. You need to watch his videos, and this is a good start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqEmYU8Y_rI
And finally, it may be that we're all just a historical simulation. Or maybe that's ascribing too much importance to ourselves. Maybe we're just a slop simulation on some AI's plaything, existing for no reason at all. Background NPCs with self-importance, ephemeral existences. But procedural generation at scale isn't really all too different from the laws of the physical universe itself.
The scale of the universe fills me with awe. Every time I think about it, my worries about random algo-rage and clickbait fades away to nothing. It deeply contextualizes our short time here.
This comment encapsulates how poorly we humans are at accepting unknowns. For me, that explains a lot of our belief systems. The fact we can’t just take the unknown but instead have to fill in the blanks with what ifs. and create a narrative like we know anything about the unknown thing. It helps us feel like we understand it more. That’s literally how religions and a lot of other things get created, it’s a pattern, then the logical person sees the patterns and say it’s a simulation. A quite predictable filling of another blank.
"dunno" is just a really unsatisfying answer to anything
Currently we don't know a lot of things - but without trying out new ideas how are you ever going to know?
Trying is fine. Saying you don’t know or don’t understand something is not mutually exclusive with trying to learn more
> and create a narrative like we know anything about the unknown thing. It helps us feel like we understand it more.
In fairness, this very often helps us understand the unknown thing more.
It’s how science and discoveries are done too…
who made you the Pope of deciding what can and cannot be known?
That would be me.
Abdication syndrome.
>But perhaps we're the only intelligent species in the entire universe. That is also a possibility. Some big names in astrophysics, such as David Kipping, suggest strongly that we should not rule out that hypothesis
They may be planted by alien AI to lull us into false sense of security.
As Lynn Margulis reminded us we are not the main show. Our individual intelligence is highly over rated. The brain itself is kludge upon kludge accumulating over thousands of years, to solve problems that keep changing with time and environmental changes. Its quite a piece of crap actually if you tabulate all the accumulated junk. We arent as interesting as we think we are. Some of the tech and knowledge generated might be interesting. But compare it with to photosynthesis or butterfly metamorphosis or the fact that microbes can double their population in a few hours, all of which is happening without needing any human intelligence. So they may very well be watching but are more curious about a rose or a redwood tree than all the random and superficial activity the chimp brain produces.
Cynical atheists never cease to make me laugh. Life is miraculous on every level. Sentience even more so. Calling our brain a piece of junk is just baffling.
I'd be impressed if those microbes or butterflies visited the moon and came back to tell about it.
> But compare it with to photosynthesis
Artifical solar capture systems exist. Synthetic biology also bridges that gap as well and the genetic basis is known and has been manipulated. Granted, coming up with more efficient photosynthesis is very hard, but I don't share your "we humans are stupid" opinion here at all whatsoever.
> or butterfly metamorphosis
Nothing fascinating here. It is just a genetic program. Viruses have similar programs too - yes, no metamorphosis, but take retroviruses and the syncytium. Mammals only reproduce thanks to retroviruses (not 100% correct, but look at this here: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0707873105)
> or the fact that microbes can double their population in a few hours
Wow, we humans surely do not have cells that double. Oh wait ... nevermind. Humans consist of cells. Who would have thought...
Yes, microbes are much faster, but they don't have to coordinate as much as humans do in 3D, not even in a bacterial biofilm. And we have to double a lot more DNA than bacteria do, so of course they are faster.
> about a rose or a redwood tree than all the random and superficial activity the chimp brain produces
That comparison is weird. A rose is thinking as much as a chimp brain?
The human brain is special. Chimps are very clever too but humans have very solid abstract thinking. Animals have this too, to some extent (predator hunting prey, chimps have hunting strategies) but e. g. look at mathematics - animals don't waste their time coming up with higher order theorems.
I doubt any new physics will be needed, just computational imaging, meta-optics, very long baselines (multi AU, or even light years).
If they let me watch the videos of our dinosaurs, I would happily let them use my hemes for their calculations.
There is no "building" such a thing. All we could do right now is send the "telescope probe" >500AU away, on the opposite side of the sun from the observation target, then hope it still works 80 years later or so when it gets there.
Edit: My point is that you can't "build" such a thing and later point it somewhere-- you have to fly the camera part of the "telescope" about 3 times as far as voyager 1 went, exactly opposite of your observation target, and it is not gonna stay there for too long either.
As long as we improve rapidly at both drone-building and exoplanet target selection, it is not really gonna be worthwhile because both the drone hardware and the target will be hopelessly obsolete before we even get halfway to the observation point.
Well, there is a way to do it slowly, the probe(s) just need to be in a 500AU circular orbit. At that distance power and thrust are an issue, and RTGs seem like a better choice than solar. Certainly, takes longer to get to orbit than fly through a point for a pic, but you would get a lot more pics.
First: Orbital period out there is over 10000 years.
And if you circularize (which is expensive to do in delta-v), you minimize the time window you have for observation (because you're basically pointing your speed vector straight to outside of your observation cone).
The orbital velocity at this distance is around 1 km/s, so you can fairly trivially (compared to anything else) zero it out. Then you can just hover in place, the solar gravity acceleration at this range is in _microns_ per second squared.
For all intents and purposes, you'll be in the interstellar space.
In order to get something there fast enough it would be traveling out very fast. Getting something there to orbit I think is not realistic for us any time soon.
I guess the point he's making is that the orbital velocity is pretty slow, so it's not too different to "get there" and "orbit there".
Of course, the rocket equation often makes "just add a few percent more delta V" pretty hard ;)
If time is no object, sure.
> so it's not too different to "get there" and "orbit there".
But to "get there" within any reasonable timespan requires going really fast - which is currently highly impractical. And then once you get there, you have to them cancel pretty much all of that velocity which is not just a "few percent more delta V".
We can do 7-8 AU per year right now using tech we have. Voy 1 and Voy 2 are moving at 3.59 and 3.25. A starship sized rocket could also possibly get a small payload that separates to 15 AU. This is all using conventual propellent. If you consider using nuclear explosive as a prepulsion technique the math starts to change substantially and you can achieve even 25 AU / year.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20140013260/downloads/20...
an ort cloud of eye peices comes to mind
A kilometer scale telescope contract would exercise all the right pipelines for massive orbital buildout like in-situ assembly, multi-lift cadences, and big-old infra. And it'd look cool as hell in the night sky during assembly.
In theory we can then get 100 meter resolution on alien worlds. That would be insane.
According to AI, an equivalent would be roughly when Google maps shows you 10mi/20km reference scale.
Turning off the labels, aliens would probably assume that the world is naturally full of green stuff that is dealing with some strange grey infestation.
> aliens would probably assume that the world is naturally full of green stuff that is dealing with some strange grey infestation.
I think they would draw the correct conclusion, actually. I know it's popular to compare humans to mold or cancer or whatever these days, but this kind of thing is both unrealistic and insulting to the aliens, who by the definition of the scenario are at least as smart as we are, quite probably more.
Our nighttime view of the planet has dramatically changed in the past 100 years and is increasing. They would instantly see us using electricity and could possibly see our satellites.
Turning off what labels?
Even on that scale, major roads and agricultural grids are clearly visible. The mark of abstract intelligence is unmistakeable.
This reminds of me canali : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_canals#Interpretation_...
> According to AI
But what is the actual source?
Spectral analysis at that resolution would be much more telling.
On that scale, we really do look like mold.
[dead]
An even more ridiculous dream of mine: I hope that aliens build a similarly amazing telescope, point it at Earth, and share the images with us, so that we can _see_ our Earth in the distant past.
> I hope that aliens build a similarly amazing telescope
I hope they did that eons ago so that I have a chance to see those images in my lifetime!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQFqDKRAROI
The wild thing is that, if I understand it correctly, if you were floating in a spacesuit at the same spot you'd also see that resolution (likely highly distorted) with the naked eye.
> if you were floating in a spacesuit at the same spot you'd also see that resolution (likely highly distorted) with the naked eye
…would you? The lensing would occur right at the apparent surface of the sun.
You would still need the sun shield in place obv.