Auroral Kilometric Radiation and the Aliens
Referred to as the AKR, the Auroral Kilometric Radiation is a broadcast on the air for billions of years, called the mother of all earthly radio transmissions. With many space agencies saying it sounds like Fast-finger Freddie twisting the shortwave dial at a few hundred RPM, is has a wavelength of an emission typically kilometers long generated when fast-moving particles boil off the sun, gushing into space, and then getting manhandled by the magnetic field of Earth.
Similar to the Aurora Borealis, the AKR has become more noticeable lately, with many experts feeling it could be the type of signal informing anyone from outer space of our existence—a radio fingerprint with enough power involved to be measured in millions of watts. The only problem is that Earth is not the only planet sending off signals from their magnetic fields, with many stronger than that of Earth, such as the Sun and Jupiter. Other planets are Mercury, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune which are members of the “magnetic field chorus” signing their space songs.
With all of these signals being sent off into space, the aliens would be required to have high-technology to discern one planet from another, which we on Earth do not have—yet. Our best high-technical low-frequency radio telescopes could not find an alien Earth’s AKR emission at this time. But radio astronomers are still hoping to find something through the detection of static from the “hot Jupiters” around nearby stars, showered by charged particles. Once these special particles get embroiled in the planet’s magnetic field, they produce more signals thousands of times more powerful than the AKR signals of Earth.
With the AKR in mind, the SETI experiments are still necessary, as deliberate transmissions are tightly beamed which waste less energy than one which mainly dissipates into an empty space. Also, an intentional radio pin might be narrow-band. Lacking in a degree of electrical engineering, Mother Nature produces radio signals considered “wastefully” wide-band. Nature’s radio transmissions are spread all over the dial of a pseudo radio signal—from quasars to pulsars to AKR.
If an alien were to hear this, benefitting from more advanced technology than ours, they could build a transmitter capable of corralling lots of energy into a very narrow band, producing a signal that is much easier to detect than nature’s splatter of broadcasting. At light-years distance from us, AKR is extremely harder to find then the most modest radar installation. As our own telescopes improve with continuous high-technical developments this is an area that will be a primary study—a deliberate, carefully engineered signal able to stand head and shoulders above a noise background in space, revealing the presence of high-tech alien live.
This entry was posted on Saturday, July 12th, 2008 at 5:13 am and is filed under Mars News, Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
