Under surveillance

[Schrödinger's hat]

Xitten:

Gamma rays can theoretically be resolved to a much better image, but the practicalities of building a telescope for them outweigh this.

You lose a large portion of your light, focusing it is hard and so on.

As far as I am aware we only use gamma telescopes for observing bright astronomical phenomena. They don't have a lens in the traditional sense, but work by having the light graze along the edge of a mirror.

 

Imatfaal and Klaynos:

Interferometry.

I know building things down to the wavelength at planetary distances may as well be considered impossible given our current technology, but then so is building a planet-sized individual telescope.

There's also exotic things like gravitational telescopes (use the field around a sun, neutron star, or black hole as your objective lens). I don't think they're ever any good for observing things smaller than a planet though. Something to do with the way the field bends light becoming a good approximation of a lens only at extremely long distances.

[Xittenn]

I was just thinking on the lines of signatures, the resolving matter was distinguishing the above surface from the surface and below. At any rate I'll take your word for it!

[imatfaal]

Xitten:

Gamma rays can theoretically be resolved to a much better image, but the practicalities of building a telescope for them outweigh this.

You lose a large portion of your light, focusing it is hard and so on.

As far as I am aware we only use gamma telescopes for observing bright astronomical phenomena. They don't have a lens in the traditional sense, but work by having the light graze along the edge of a mirror.

 

Imatfaal and Klaynos:

Interferometry.

I know building things down to the wavelength at planetary distances may as well be considered impossible given our current technology, but then so is building a planet-sized individual telescope.

There's also exotic things like gravitational telescopes (use the field around a sun, neutron star, or black hole as your objective lens). I don't think they're ever any good for observing things smaller than a planet though. Something to do with the way the field bends light becoming a good approximation of a lens only at extremely long distances.

 

Well we will soon hear if the square kilometre array will be built in Oz or Safrica - and that's gonna make a substantial leap forward. The Meerkat preliminary observatory (just built to show proof of ability/concept in Saf) has already gone on line and shown good results. I suppose we could envisage in the not too distant future a darkside of the moon array - shielded from all earth light, no atmospheric problems and just a minor logistical problem in getting there

[Ras72]

I'd say the most efficient way to conduct planetary exploration or surveillance would be through micro robots. The way to go would be through storms of more or less intelligent, cooperating, micro and nano bots.

 

Of course if aliens were studying us it is extremely likely that their technological level would be higher than ours. Once you assume that, then you have to admit they may have every kind of technology we consider remotely feasible and possibly beyond. In which case you can conclude that they could well be studying us right now by whatever means you can (not) imagine and we would have no way of finding out.

Go paranoia go!

[Airbrush]

I'd say the most efficient way to conduct planetary exploration or surveillance would be through micro robots. The way to go would be through storms of more or less intelligent, cooperating, micro and nano bots.

 

Of course if aliens were studying us it is extremely likely that their technological level would be higher than ours. Once you assume that, then you have to admit they may have every kind of technology we consider remotely feasible and possibly beyond. In which case you can conclude that they could well be studying us right now by whatever means you can (not) imagine and we would have no way of finding out.

Go paranoia go!

 

Yes, if they have been here for a while, they may know more about us than we know about ourselves! Maybe with their advanced technology they can learn more about us in a few years than we could learn about bacteria in centuries.

[space noob]

I'm thinking why would they? If earth found another planet with intelligent life then we would survey it just to weigh up possible risks, but it wouldn't take long to contact them, to beings in another system, earth would be facing towards the sun and have it's back to them so even finding earth would be hard when it's dark to them, possibly playing the Beatles out in to space may have attracted their attention though, I believe that at the point where humans are advanced like we are now is like going up on a chart, at the bottom you have your poop slinging monkeys, in the middle are your cave men and near the top is us, the very top of the graph would be a more advanced species, I don't think we can become highly advanced in a way that resembles sci fi super intelligence, so a species with the means to survey us seems unlikely to me, it could also drain a good bit of a planets resources to launch an operation of that extent, like I said at the beginning there isn't really a reason to, if they where wanting to attack earth from light years away and they had the technology to survey us like that then they could probably do it off their own planet

[einystieny]

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]

2 billion meters of mirror would be a major expenditure and would be a possibly an unecessary expense for a society when they could simply use cameras already in place.

[BearOfNH]

2 billion meters of mirror would be a major expenditure and would be a possibly an unecessary expense for a society when they could simply use cameras already in place.

 

I read it (D=2,500,000) as 2.5 million meters or 1550 miles. Yes, still a major expenditure. Fixing / correcting for meteorite impacts would present an interesting technical challenge.

[Mariner4]

The space rock at the time of the dinosaurs, wasn't just to kill off the dinosaurs, but also to increase earth's necessary elements for new
life. Us. In a time before telescopes, in a time when radar was un-known, they came.

 

They exist with us and have yet to disclose via any transmission so far, and thus none have been recorded. So far. Perhaps the informational data levels do not as yet warrant transmitting, from their interstellar minds point of view. With integration so finely tuned, and for so long, we would be unable to reasonably and seperately identify them, having grown along side them for so long now.

 

The complex brain that forwards our existence, is always looking for a complex structure when it encloses its-self. Beware.

 

They are here, but they is us ~also. All of us potential biological emitters and data makers, creators and storers of informational stuff, as well .

 

 

Kind regards

Edited February 11, 2013 by Mariner4

[Moontanman]

 

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.

 

Stealth technology, our stealth technology, can already hide such things as satellites why wouldn't advanced aliens be able to do this far better and easier?

 

 

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.

 

To be honest i would love for this stuff to be real but sadly little if any of this is in any way supported by anything but baseless assertions. I would suggest a new thread but this is an old post.

 

 

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.

 

They may live here already, freely orbiting space colonies, in places like the ort cloud could explain quite a few things and is falsifiable...

 

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.

 

I saw the other day that the British are deploying tiny flying robot cams with their ground troops to spy around corners and even inside buildings. Advanced aliens could do this almost certainly... I like that last...

 

The space rock at the time of the dinosaurs, wasn't just to kill off the dinosaurs, but also to increase earth's necessary elements for new

life. Us. In a time before telescopes, in a time when radar was un-known, they came.

 

They exist with us and have yet to disclose via any transmission so far, and thus none have been recorded. So far. Perhaps the informational data levels do not as yet warrant transmitting, from their interstellar minds point of view. With integration so finely tuned, and for so long, we would be unable to reasonably and seperately identify them, having grown along side them for so long now.

 

The complex brain that forwards our existence, is always looking for a complex structure when it encloses its-self. Beware.

 

They are here, but they is us ~also. All of us potential biological emitters and data makers, creators and storers of informational stuff, as well .

 

 

Kind regards

 

 

sigh...

[Arch2008]

FYI

"Sitting on Labeyrie's drawing board are plans for a hypertelescope, a new breed of space telescope that is capable of mapping distant cousins of Earth in exquisite detail... Malcolm Fridlund, project scientist for ESA's Darwin mission in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, is pragmatic. 'The costs would be really prohibitive,' he points out." (The hypertelescope: a zoom with a view. New Scientist, 23 February 2006)

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_interferometer

[Moontanman]

FYI

"Sitting on Labeyrie's drawing board are plans for a hypertelescope, a new breed of space telescope that is capable of mapping distant cousins of Earth in exquisite detail... Malcolm Fridlund, project scientist for ESA's Darwin mission in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, is pragmatic. 'The costs would be really prohibitive,' he points out." (The hypertelescope: a zoom with a view. New Scientist, 23 February 2006)

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_interferometer

 

 

I know I will not live long enough to see any interstellar travel but the idea of imaging other earths is very exhilarating to say the least... and I might at some get to see the pictures!!!

[Ophiolite]

I know you did not mean it this way, but recall that the Voyagers, the Pioneers and the New Horizons probes are all on interstellar trajectories, as well as the boosters of several of them. You have already lived to see interstellar travel.