Aliens have eyes on us

A team, comprisisng astronomers at the Instituto Astrofisica del Canarias, Spain, and Eric Ford of the University of Florida, has figured out some of the things that alien eyes might see using technologies being developed by Earth's astronomers.

They found that by their analysis, aliens could probably tell that our planet's surface is divided between oceans and continents, and learn a little bit about the dynamics of our weather systems.

The Daily Telegraph quoted Sara Seager at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as saying, ''Maybe somebody's looking at us right now, finding out what our rotation rate is - that is, the length of our day.'' The team did a detailed analysis of what astronomers here and on other worlds could learn about a planet using telescopes much more powerful than those currently available to Earth's astronomers.

The astronomers said ''hypothetical observers'' could measure Earth's 24-hour rotation period, leading to observations of oceans and the chance of life, by using powerful telescopes.

''They would only be able to see Earth as a single pixel, rather than resolving it to take a picture. But that could be enough for them to identify our planet as one that likely contains clouds and oceans of liquid water,'' Ford said.

Seager said, ''The goal of [our] project was to see how much information you can extract from this very limited data.''

-- (UNI) -- 22DF18.xml

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