0 reactions
I visualized every human radio signal ever sent, our bubble is 240 light-years wide but effectively invisible to anyone inside it
Right now a sphere of electromagnetic radiation is expanding from Earth at the speed of light.
It has been growing since the 1930s when our signals first became powerful enough to escape the ionosphere.
I plotted it using real stellar positions from the HIPPARCOS catalogue nearby stars at their
actual distances, with concentric rings marking key broadcast milestones.
Key numbers:
→ Bubble diameter: \~240 light-years
→ Proxima Centauri: It received our first signals around 1904
→ Vega (25 LY): the star from Contact has been receiving us since 1925
→ Pleiades (440 LY) won't know we exist for another 314 years
→ Voyager 1 at 170 AU is still inside the innermost shell
The sobering part: by the time a 1980s TV broadcast reaches a star 50 light-years away,
it's indistinguishable from background cosmic noise. A receiver roughly 900km in diameter
would be needed to detect Earth's leakage from just 1 light-year away.
We're not broadcasting. We're whispering.
Full post with methodology, stellar data, and the Arecibo Message breakdown:
https://www.thescientificdrop.com/2026/05/earths-radio-bubble-every-signal-weve.html
Tool: Python (matplotlib, numpy)
Data: HIPPARCOS Star Catalogue, NASA
#education
source
Right now a sphere of electromagnetic radiation is expanding from Earth at the speed of light.
It has been growing since the 1930s when our signals first became powerful enough to escape the ionosphere.
I plotted it using real stellar positions from the HIPPARCOS catalogue nearby stars at their
actual distances, with concentric rings marking key broadcast milestones.
Key numbers:
→ Bubble diameter: \~240 light-years
→ Proxima Centauri: It received our first signals around 1904
→ Vega (25 LY): the star from Contact has been receiving us since 1925
→ Pleiades (440 LY) won't know we exist for another 314 years
→ Voyager 1 at 170 AU is still inside the innermost shell
The sobering part: by the time a 1980s TV broadcast reaches a star 50 light-years away,
it's indistinguishable from background cosmic noise. A receiver roughly 900km in diameter
would be needed to detect Earth's leakage from just 1 light-year away.
We're not broadcasting. We're whispering.
Full post with methodology, stellar data, and the Arecibo Message breakdown:
https://www.thescientificdrop.com/2026/05/earths-radio-bubble-every-signal-weve.html
Tool: Python (matplotlib, numpy)
Data: HIPPARCOS Star Catalogue, NASA
#education
source
| 3,000 mlx | |
| 4 | |
| 0 |