Our television transmitters leak out from the Earth. And actually, there's a sphere surrounding the Earth from the earliest television signals, maybe 70 years ago, that's going out one light year per year. But it's really weak.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Television is ephemeral, a fact that some will find reassuring. But earthlings will continue to pump the kilowatts into the ether. And eventually, when those signals have washed over a few hundred thousand star systems, someone may notice.
Satellite communications connect television screens in Japan with television cameras in England, and the distance of half a world loses its meaning.
Even on television, the wavelengths that you use, they have to be distributed between countries.
Give consideration to the fact that alien astronomers could have scrutinized Earth for more than 4 billion years without detecting any radio signals, despite the fact that our world is the poster child for habitability.
There's not a lot of light on television.
Devices are getting smarter - your television, your car - and that means more data spread around. There needs to be a fabric that connects all these devices. That's what we do.
Television, as you know, can kind of jettison you into a whole new world.
For three or four decades, we've been sitting here in front of this TV consuming a one-way medium that we had no control over.
The strongest signals leaking off our planet are radar transmissions, not television or radio. The most powerful radars, such as the one mounted on the Arecibo telescope (used to study the ionosphere and map asteroids) could be detected with a similarly sized antenna at a distance of nearly 1,000 light-years.
Ever since the Second World War, television signals (as well as FM radio and radar) have served as Homo sapiens' emissaries into deep space. High-frequency, high-power broadcasts have filled an Earth-centered bubble more than 60 light-years in radius with signals.