Earth's Cries Recorded in Space

the highlander · Post by **the highlander** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 7:18 pm

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/200807...ecordedinspace

Earth emits an ear-piercing series of chirps and whistles that could be heard by any aliens who might be listening, astronomers have discovered.

The sound is awful, a new recording from space reveals.

Scientists have known about the radiation since the 1970s. It is created high above the planet, where charged particles from the solar wind collide with Earth's magnetic field. It is related to the phenomenon that generates the colorful aurora, or Northern Lights.

The radio waves are blocked by the ionosphere, a charged layer atop our atmosphere, so they do not reach Earth. That's good, because the out-of-this-world radio waves are 10,000 times stronger than even the strongest military signal, the researchers said, and they would overwhelm all radio stations on the planet.

Theorists had long figured the radio waves, which were not well studied, oozed into space in an ever-widening cone, like light from a torch.

But new data from the European Space Agency's Cluster mission, a group of four high-flying satellites, reveals the bursts of radio waves head off to the cosmos in beam-like fashion, instead.

This means they're more detectable to anyone who might be listening.

The Auroral Kilometric Radiation (AKR), as it is called, is beamed out in a narrow plane, as if someone had put a mask over a torch and left a slit for the radiation to escape.

This flat beam could be detected by aliens who've figured this process out, the researchers say. The knowledge could also be used by Earth's astronomers to detect planets around other stars, if they can build a new radio telescope big enough for the search. They could also learn more about Jupiter and Saturn by studying AKR, which should emit from the auroral activity on those worlds, too.

"Whenever you have aurora, you get AKR," said Robert Mutel, a University of Iowa researcher involved in the work.

The AKR bursts -- Mutel and colleagues studied 12,000 of them -- originate in spots the size of a large city a few thousand miles above Earth and above the region where the Northern Lights form.

"We can now determine exactly where the emission is coming from," Mutel said.

Our planet is also known to hum, a mysterious low-frequency sound thought to be caused by the churning ocean or the roiling atmosphere.

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Original Story: Earth's Cries Recorded in Space

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Kathy Ellen · Post by **Kathy Ellen** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 7:34 pm

Hello Highlander:-6

Good to see you posting again especially about Astronomy. This is all "good stuff" and so exciting. I bought myself a little telescope and go out quite often to scope the sky for comets and satellites...I love the NASA site.

Do you listen to the radio show called "coasttocoastam.com" It's a show that deals with all things scifi...brilliant show, I think....

Here's a link to the show... you can download it on the net....

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/

btw... If I may ask, do you believe in intelligent life in outer space ?

the highlander · Post by **the highlander** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 7:45 pm

sure do... i hope one day i own a telescope so i can see our universe

my teacher had on you used a car battery i saw saturn man it was cool

Kathy Ellen · Post by **Kathy Ellen** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 8:32 pm

the highlander;905849 wrote: sure do... i hope one day i own a telescope so i can see our universe

my teacher had on you used a car battery i saw saturn man it was cool

Hello Highlander,

May I ask how old you are....you seem very young, are you?

the highlander · Post by **the highlander** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 9:22 pm

i'm 43.. thanks for the complement for thinking i'm young

Post by **jones jones** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 10:45 pm

]The sound is awful, a new recording from space reveals.

maybe this is the reason why we haven't yet been contacted by aliens!

sort of like what your parents used to think of your choice of music when you

were a teenager!

the highlander · Post by **the highlander** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 5:24 am

jones jones;905881 wrote: ]The sound is awful, a new recording from space reveals.

maybe this is the reason why we haven't yet been contacted by aliens!

sort of like what your parents used to think of your choice of music when you

were a teenager!

:guitarist

:wah:

YZGI · Post by **YZGI** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 7:25 am

Are we sure its not just our huge populations methane gas escaping through the ozone hole? See sometimes there are simple answers to these questions of the universe.