Under surveillance

[Ivan Tuzikov]

Hello everybody! Please, pay no attention to my bad English, because I’m non-native speaker. Just try to see the point.

 

 

 

 

I had a debate with my acquaintance concerning the following issue: Is there any physical possibility that humans are under surveillance of extraterrestrials? By surveillance I mean observing individual people by means of optics with great magnification. Well, I believe it doesn’t happen. Here is my little analysis of this matter.

 

Let’s imagine any possible ways of such surveillance and fantasize about them: 1. Optical telescopes in space (like spy satellites). Such telescopes need big aperture of main mirror to be able to discern individual people in high resolution. In such case they would have been detected by NORAD, Space surveillance network or possibly even tracked by ISS. 2. ET agents residing Earth. People, animals, etc. who are actually robots, used for surveillance. This is possible in theory but there are two problems: a. they can be figured out by other species of their kind (other people/animals) because of their suspicious behavior. b. Nobody has ever found such constructions.

 

c. How do they transmit data back to their owners? Earth’s atmosphere is transparent only to visible light and radio waves. And there should be a receiver in space for radio signals. It can’t be ET’s satellite or spaceship (see clause 1). Besides, transmission of radio signals of unknown nature would have been promptly detected by scientists or military. 3. It can be alien UAV’s but in such case they shall be constructed to be invisible in the whole range of electromagnetic spectrum, which is impossible. Besides, they have to fly back and forth to space and Earth and would have been detected in such case (see clause 1). So, this is it. If anyone has any comments or suggestions to this little essay you are welcome to give feedback in which I am very interested.

 

Thanks for your time.

 

 

[Widdekind]

 

Let’s imagine any possible ways of such surveillance and fantasize about them: 1. Optical telescopes in space (like spy satellites). Such telescopes need big aperture of main mirror to be able to discern individual people in high resolution. In such case they would have been detected by NORAD, Space surveillance network or possibly even tracked by ISS.

 

Humans cannot resolve dwarf planets, in our own star system, e.g. pluto; any planets, in any other star systems, i.e. exo-planets; or stars, beyond our local stellar neighborhood, i.e. in our galaxy, or others. Er go, hypothetical planet-sized, or even star-sized, space telescopes, far far away in space, are beyond human capability to detect. To develop & deploy such systems, would require billions to trillions of dollars.

[Klaynos]

A challenge, work out the mirror diameter required for a telescope at plutos orbit to resolve a 1m square on earth.

[imatfaal]

Literally back of an envelope and huge approximation I make it around 2 *10^6 metres

 

for very small angles [math]\sin\theta[/math] is almost same as [math]\theta[/math]

 

[math] \theta \approx \frac{\lambda}{D} [/math]

 

[math] \frac{1}{5*10^{12}}= \frac{5*10^{-7}}{D} [/math]

 

[math] D= (5*10^{-7})(5*10^{12}) [/math]

[Ivan Tuzikov]

Humans cannot resolve dwarf planets, in our own star system, e.g. pluto; any planets, in any other star systems, i.e. exo-planets; or stars, beyond our local stellar neighborhood, i.e. in our galaxy, or others. Er go, hypothetical planet-sized, or even star-sized, space telescopes, far far away in space, are beyond human capability to detect. To develop & deploy such systems, would require billions to trillions of dollars.

 

Telescopes that have sizes of planets or stars will reflect light of stars (like moon, but much greater) and will be detected by our space telescopes because their brightness will vary.

Besides, take into account speed of light. What's the purpose for ET's to get image from the Earth after, for example a million years.

 

And the last: The sun is much brighter than the Earth so will it be really possible to get weak light reflected from the ground objects? Any suggestions?

[JustinW]

My first thoughts on this are two things. First why would they have to have their own satellites when they could just as easily use our own. And second, If they are from a planet outside of our solar system how would they even know that we have satellites. Like Ivan touched on above, you have to take into account the speed of light, and how fast information can travel over that long of a distance. Unless they had a much faster way to send and recieve information it would take thousands of years to even be aware that we were capable of satellite techknowledgy.

[Widdekind]

Telescopes that have sizes of planets or stars will reflect light of stars (like moon, but much greater) and will be detected by our space telescopes because their brightness will vary.

 

from earth, humans cannot directly detect, i.e. observe, exo-planets & exo-moons. Er go, hypothetical world-sized telescopes could exist, in our nearest neighboring star systems, and we would not know. We do not have "good glasses" in space.

[Klaynos]

from earth, humans cannot directly detect, i.e. observe, exo-planets & exo-moons. Er go, hypothetical world-sized telescopes could exist, in our nearest neighboring star systems, and we would not know. We do not have "good glasses" in space.

 

As calculated above, you need a planet (all be it a small one) sized telescope to resolve 1m square on earth from inside our own solar system. You are greatly underestimating just the size of aperture you need.

[Widdekind]

As calculated above, you need a planet (all be it a small one) sized telescope to resolve 1m square on earth from inside our own solar system. You are greatly underestimating just the size of aperture you need.

 

First, that assumes surveillance, at optical frequencies. Our universe is most transparent, at radio frequencies, near 1-50cm in wave-length.

 

And, hypothetical star-sized; or star-system sized telescopes; or, arrays of telescopes; would still be no more luminous, than our own asteroid belt, Kuiper belt, or Oort cloud, which we cannot directly detect, i.e. "'big' need not mean 'bright'". Therefore, hypothetical vast "arrays", of asteroid-sized telescopes, are already invisible to humans, at trans-stellar ranges, i.e. Oort cloud. Er go, hypothetical aliens, in nearby star systems, could have deployed vast "artificial Oort cloud" space telescope arrays; and humans would know nothing "from next door".

 

We do not have "good glasses" for space.

[John Cuthber]

First, that assumes surveillance, at optical frequencies. Our universe is most transparent, at radio frequencies, near 1-50cm in wave-length.

 

We do not have "good glasses" for space.

Indeed, so you just made the problem 20,000 to 1,000,000 times worse by using radio waves.

 

You now need a mirror 1,000,000,000,000 metres across to "see" the earth with a 1 m resolution from Pluto using 50cm radio waves.

And Pluto is a lot closer than most of us might expect to find any little green men.

 

Essentially the numbers get silly here because the resolution is comparable with the wavelength- so the size of the mirror has to be comparable with the distance.

Can we go back to visible light please?

 

For visible light- say half a micron, and a resolution of 1 metre the ratio of the (Earth to "ET with a telescope") distance to the "size of his telescope" is something like 2,000,000

 

If he's a kilometre away he needs a telescope with an aperture of about a 2millionth of a kilometre to resolve a 1 metre object. - about half a millimetre aperture. Our eyes have pupils something like 10 times that so we should theoretically be just about able to see a 1 metre object at 10Km. Sounds like roughly the right order of magnitude- perhaps a bit optimistic but our eyes are not perfect.

 

If Mr ET is near alpha centauri he would need a 'scope with a mirror about 4X10^10 metres across. And he would need to make it the right shape to an accuracy of better than about 0.5 of a micron across that whole surface.

 

That's quite a challenge.

[Temporocitor]

By surveillance I mean observing individual people by means of optics with great magnification.

 

 

Certainly not. An ET would be working with technology that observed through methods we have yet to achieve. Imagine an approached singularity within each and every atom in existence. If one could tunnel in and read so much as the internal capture of an atom say in a coat of paint, he could translate it all to a human readable deveice, i.e. a screen. If ET's can get here to begin with, they likely could see us through hyperspace/hypospace long prior to wasting energy to get here.

[Airbrush]

I don't believe they would use telescopes from far away. I think they would, instead, mimick Earth-craft, such as airplanes and helicopters, or tiny drones that resemble birds or insects, coming and going from their bases underground, on the sea floor, or inside of abandoned buildings, or houses. Or maybe they fly around in flying saucers that use cloaking devices with impunity. Maybe some UFOs are actually slealthy and they are occasionally spotted by people before they activate their cloaking device. That would explain why they are so hard to track.

Edited February 12, 2012 by Airbrush

[John Cuthber]

Reliably pointing a telescope in the right direction would also be a bit tricky.

[Ivan Tuzikov]

I performed some rough calculations and came to conclusion that a telescope at the distance of say 1 l.y. from the Solar System shall have an aperture of 10 Suns in order to be able to observe the Earth surface equivalently to observation from a height of 100 m above ground.

 

So, will it be correct to say that taking into account our knowledge of astronomy (and space observation data) that there are no gigantic telescopes [capable of resolving humans on Earth] in the diameter of say 100 l.y. from the Earth (or Sun)?

[John Cuthber]

It would be difficult to make such a telescope, but the real problem would be pointing it in the right direction. You would need to track the earth as it moves round the sun (not to mention spinning at 1000 miles an hour at the equator.)

[Ivan Tuzikov]

I don't believe they would use telescopes from far away. I think they would, instead, mimick Earth-craft, such as airplanes and helicopters, or tiny drones that resemble birds or insects, coming and going from their bases underground, on the sea floor, or inside of abandoned buildings, or houses.

 

But how to make all these agents (crawling/flying?) and hidden bases totally invisible and undetectable (from our satellites, spy planes, just ordinary people). Besides, there is no evidence that someone has ever encountered such devices (and there are 7 bln people nowadays).

 

Can someone, please, share some thoughts concerning these disguised agents?

 

Thanks.

[mertol]

Why do you think there is anyone watching us at all? We are on an insignificant system and only started broadcasting radio waves recently so a very small number of stars could have any evidence that there is someone here.

[Ivan Tuzikov]

Why do you think there is anyone watching us at all? We are on an insignificant system and only started broadcasting radio waves recently so a very small number of stars could have any evidence that there is someone here.

 

First of all, as I wrote in first post: I had a debate with my acquaintance concerning the following issue: Is there any physical possibility that humans are under surveillance of extraterrestrials?

 

Secondly: There are some evidence that ET's had already visited our planet in the past. (Erich von Deniken movies and books, Ancient Aliens series). May be some information they present is incorrect but some is very interesting.

 

 

With respect.

[Airbrush]

But how to make all these agents (crawling/flying?) and hidden bases totally invisible and undetectable (from our satellites, spy planes, just ordinary people). Besides, there is no evidence that someone has ever encountered such devices (and there are 7 bln people nowadays).....

 

If they are here in hiding, then they have probably been here hundreds or thousands of years. It was a lot easier to establish bases and spy on humans thousands of years ago. They would have been studying our progress and had plenty of time to conceal themselves from our technology. If humans can spy on other humans successfully, then ETs would have much more technological advantage, and easly evade our best detection devices.

[Ophiolite]

There is still a great deal of wilderness on the planet and more than 2/3 is covered with water. Hiding several secret bases would not be a challenge.

 

Current Earth technology is producing bug sized flying 'spys'. A civilisation capable of interstellar flight should have no difficulty creating fly sized probes to survey us. Or they could piggyback the technology onto unwitting animals, or - indeed - humans.

 

You might almost say that evidence that this is occuring is that we have no evidence that it is occuring.

[JohnStu]

Under surveillance by the government? Yes. I have my satellites looking at you right now. No, don't exit the room to look up, look for the missing dark pixel on your monitor, I have a camera there.

 

 

 

[Widdekind]

Indeed, so you just made the problem 20,000 to 1,000,000 times worse by using radio waves.

 

You now need a mirror 1,000,000,000,000 metres across to "see" the earth with a 1 m resolution from Pluto using 50cm radio waves...

 

Essentially the numbers get silly here because the resolution is comparable with the wavelength- so the size of the mirror has to be comparable with the distance.

 

What about synthetic aperture arrays, that can mimic ultra-long baselines ([math]D[/math]), for resolution ([math]\theta[/math]), at the cost of some sensitivity ?

[Xittenn]

So just for discussion purposes what about Gamma rays emitted by K-40 or even the highly improbable neutrino emission?

 

Gamma roughs to ~0.5 - 500m, I don't know what frequency of gamma. . . .

 

I would assume we are already using gamma telescopy to search for life . . . .

 

or have at least proposed it!

[JohnStu]

So just for discussion purposes what about Gamma rays emitted by K-40 or even the highly improbable neutrino emission?

 

Gamma roughs to ~0.5 - 500m, I don't know what frequency of gamma. . . .

 

I would assume we are already using gamma telescopy to search for life . . . .

 

or have at least proposed it!

 

They aren't using any sensors to search for life directly, like seeing their "capital city". But rather searching for signs of life. They can tell some planets might have life by knowing that the outer layer atmosphere has high level of oxygen and ozone.

[Xittenn]

That was the idea yes. I was just thinking that it might be possible to resolve gamma emissions over a few elements known to be incorporated into our own biological systems near surface. I don't know how readily this could be done, but I would imagine being able to do so might actually gain us some insight into said capital city. I thought MILDI was orbit to surface gamma spectroscopy but apparently not. I suspect with a large enough array it might be possible to gain some intel. on far away planets, but then again maybe not, I know very little about this sort of thing.