Follow the space junk to find aliens

• Autores: Leah Crane
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3169, 2018, pág. 16
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Hector Socas-Navarro at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands in Spain calculated that it may be possible to find civilised--but not extraordinarily advanced - worlds by looking for the satellites that orbit them. Many satellites work best in geosynchronous orbits, where the satellite matches the planet's rotation so it stays over the same general location on the surface and will serve as a key for surveillance and telecommunications satellites, these orbits are all at about the same altitude--on Earth, around 35,800 kilometres up. So, geosynchronous satellites form a ring around the planet, known as the Clarke belt. Socas-Navarro calculated that the opacity of Earth's Clarke belt has increased exponentially over the past 15 years. He found that if this trend continues, it will be observable from nearby alien worlds around the year 2200