Could we hide the Earth from alien visitors ?

[UM-Bot]

What if it were possible to hide from a hostile alien civilization by 'cloaking' the entire planet ?

https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/346149/could-we-hide-the-earth-from-alien-visitors

[Seti42]

The best way to 'cloak' earth is also what needs to be done to fix climate change.
Reduce harmful emissions back down to pre-industrial revolution levels.

[Dreamer screamer]

You can't hide this plane and simualtion because we are the greatest show in the entire Galaxy atm.   Trying to hide this plane is liken to trying to hide a pregnancy from yourself.  

[jethrofloyd]

Isn't Earth already hidden by dint of increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, mainly from human activities?

 

[tortugabob]

Of all the lame-brain ideas this has to be one of the lamest.  It's like believing the story line in the movie like "independence Day."   Signals have been speeding away from Earth since the invention of radio.  Those very first transmissions are still expanding throughout the vastness of the universe.  They cannot be hidden.  Truth be known any civilization receiving those signals probably wouldn't want to interact with us anyway.. 

Edited April 17, 2021 by tortugabob

[Hankenhunter]

2 hours ago, Seti42 said:

The best way to 'cloak' earth is also what needs to be done to fix climate change.
Reduce harmful emissions back down to pre-industrial revolution levels.

Logic at its finest. Well stated, my friend. Get rid of the evidence of industrialization. Easier to say, than do unfortunately. And way to late. They're already here.

Hank

 

[Hankenhunter]

2 hours ago, jethrofloyd said:

Isn't Earth already hidden by dint of increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, mainly from human activities?

 

Truth. The op is wishful, and late thinking. That cat was let out of the bag long ago. Unfortunately, to rectify it means mankind needs to disappear for a few hundred years to clear the atmosphere. Our own worst enemy.

Our trademark, so to speak stands out boldly, and says, "Here we are, come find us".

Edited April 17, 2021 by Hankenhunter

[Nosy.Matters]

Thanks for the post, i recall some authors put forth this very idea w various spins/angles, could be its already implemented by dominant life.
 

Edited April 18, 2021 by Nosy.Matters
turns out implementated can be misspelled

[the13bats]

7 hours ago, Dreamer screamer said:

You can't hide this plane and simualtion because we are the greatest show in the entire Galaxy atm.   Trying to hide this plane is liken to trying to hide a pregnancy from yourself.  

But you can unscrew a lightbulb.

[the13bats]

6 hours ago, tortugabob said:

Of all the lame-brain ideas this has to be one of the lamest.  It's like believing the story line in the movie like "independence Day."   Signals have been speeding away from Earth since the invention of radio.  Those very first transmissions are still expanding throughout the vastness of the universe.  They cannot be hidden.  Truth be known any civilization receiving those signals probably wouldn't want to interact with us anyway.. 

So humor me, my covid vax kicked my butt.

This idea of aliens grabbing our radio transmissions, whew, so then i realize it would take an alien race with similar interests but why haven we caught their version of 3s company or carter country, leave it to beaver or i love lucy?

[Dreamer screamer]

20 minutes ago, the13bats said:

But you can unscrew a lightbulb.

I wouldn't do that, I will get into trouble with the light bulb police.

[Timothy]

14 hours ago, Dreamer screamer said:

You can't hide this plane and simualtion because we are the greatest show in the entire Galaxy atm.   Trying to hide this plane is liken to trying to hide a pregnancy from yourself.  

Not that hard for some:  cryptic pregnancy.

[Dreamer screamer]

3 hours ago, Timothy said:

Not that hard for some:  cryptic pregnancy.

I was being rhetorical?

[Tom1200]

16 hours ago, tortugabob said:

Of all the lame-brain ideas this has to be one of the lamest.

Absolutely!  The practicalities are horrendous, to anyone who has actually thought about the logistics.  Which apparently excludes NASA, if they're prepared to lend their name to that article:

It turns out that hiding planets from the transit method would be surprisingly easy, so easy that we earthlings could do it right now, if we chose. Since transits appear as a brightness decrease of a distant star, our hypothetical cloak simply produces the opposite brightness increase.

A laser cloak capable of hiding the Earth from an alien version of NASA's Kepler Mission would require 30 megawatts of power at peak intensity, approximately equivalent to 10 wind turbines worth of power output.

The Sun is not a particularly large star, but it's still a million times the size of Earth.  It radiates 3.8 x 10²⁶ W, of which Earth receives 174 x 10¹⁵ W.  That's how much sunlight the Earth occludes, not the spurious 30 megawatts from the article.  It's actually close to one 30 MW laser per person on Earth., or roughly ten thousand times the output of all the Earth's power stations combined.

Lasers produce a single frequency.  This beam of light would have to replicate the Sun's spectrum, so a single laser could not work alone.  So let's say 100 different lasers to cover the full range of EM radiations?  The radiowave and gamma ray emitters could be relatively weak but the visible ones would have to be very powerful:

 (Sun's spectrum: relative intensity against wavelength.)

This would need to be located at the point on the Earth's surface furthest from the Sun... but the Earth is constantly rotating.  So one array of lasers at one spot would not work.  We would need a laser bundle every X km.  Say... every 100 km so each beam covers approximately 1 steradian of the sky?  400 laser arrays every 100 km around the equator is conceivable (ignoring the difficulties of terrain and oceans and clouds and stuff).  

But actually that wouldn't work because the Earth's axis is tilted by 23^o, so across the year every point between the two tropics is 'furthest point from the Sun' twice.  Our laser defence shield array would have to stretch out to these lines too, covering a surface area of approximately 200 million km².  

So NOW we need 20,000 laser stations every 100 km of the Earth's surface between Cancer and Capricorn, each with access to a power supply 10,000 times that currently available globally, most of which will be switched on for a few minutes or so twice a year.  And someone purportedly from NASA claims this would be "surprisingly easy"?  Good luck with that!

[jmccr8]

Why bother, they came, they saw, they shook their heads and left.

jmccr8

[Tatetopa]

On 4/18/2021 at 8:26 AM, Tom1200 said:

So NOW we need 20,000 laser stations every 100 km of the Earth's surface between Cancer and Capricorn, each with access to a power supply 10,000 times that currently available globally, most of which will be switched on for a few minutes or so twice a year.  And someone purportedly from NASA claims this would be "surprisingly easy"?  Good luck with that!

How about a couple of dozen satellite platforms in geosynchronous orbit that only turn on pointing away from the sun when they transit earth nightside? Seems like when somebody's telescope is good enough to detect gravitational effects in planetary orbits then even invisible earth might give itself away.

[Tom1200]

On 4/23/2021 at 6:21 AM, Tatetopa said:

How about a couple of dozen satellite platforms in geosynchronous orbit that only turn on pointing away from the sun when they transit earth nightside? Seems like when somebody's telescope is good enough to detect gravitational effects in planetary orbits then even invisible earth might give itself away.

That's a much better idea than mine.  If I had a hat I would doff it to you.  

There's still the issue of power supply to replace the 0.17 exawatts required to impersonate the Sun.  One thing we could do is cover the entire planet in 100% efficient solar cells - so at any one time half of them are collecting light.  Or if perhaps some of our more colourful contributors could perfect their Pyramid Power Station designs - I reckon we'd only need one or two per satellite...  

[Dejarma]

On 4/17/2021 at 4:14 PM, UM-Bot said:

What if it were possible to hide from a hostile alien civilization by 'cloaking' the entire planet ?

how would we know if a civilisation on it's way here is hostile?