MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF.: Nielsen may have vastly undercounted the number of households disenfranchised in last week’s DTV transition. A senior astronomer at the SETI Institute writes that there may be “zillions of viewers who might not have a converter box or a digital-ready TV--namely, the aliens.” Seth Shostak works for the nonprofit organization focused on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence by way of radio frequency transmissions. The project uses, among other resources, one of the world’s largest supercomputer comprised of more than 5 million individually volunteered PCs, to monitor for RF activity from outerspace.
Conversely, the RF emissions generated by TV and radio signals are considered a sort of collective ping directed at the far reaches of the Galaxy. The switch to digital broadcasting could leave our space neighbors watching intergalactic snow on their “wall-size plasmas,” Shostak writes at Space.com.
“That’s right--extraterrestrials who might be picking up our analog broadcasts could miss out. 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. If there are any aliens nearby, they would have been hard-pressed to find trilobites, dinosaurs, or even the Greeks and Romans. But, thanks to ‘I Love Lucy,’ they could find you--or at least your parents.”