In the movie Contact, astronomers receive a radio signal from the star Vega. Buried within the signal is a broadcast of Hitler’s speech for the opening of the 1936 Olympic games. The television signal had made the 25 light year journey
In the movie Contact, astronomers receive a radio signal from the star Vega. Buried within the signal is a broadcast of Hitler’s speech for the opening of the 1936 Olympic games. The television signal had made the 25 light year journey to Vega, which let the aliens know we’re here. The idea that our television and radio signals are gradually reaching ever more distant stars is a popular one, but in reality things aren’t so simple.
The opening ceremony of the 1936 Olympics was the first major television signal at a frequency high enough to penetrate Earth’s ionosphere. From there you could calculate that any star within about 80 light years of Earth could detect our presence. There’s even a website that shows which TV shows might be reaching potentially habitable worlds. But the problem with this idea is that it isn’t good enough for the signal to reach a distant sta