Aliens might find us through radio signals leaked by our mobile phone towers, says study

Anything with ‘aliens’ in its title these days most often tends to be more sensational than scientific. The topic has been on human civilisation's mind for centuries and as technology developed, we have focussed our scopes and antennae to find hints of alien life in far corners of space.

The reverse might also be true:An alien civilisation may be scouring the void in search of us. Popular culture has been very imaginative about what might happen if aliens come to Earth.

But now, a scientific study is saying that aliens might be able to find us using mobile tower signals. The study has reportedly been published in 'Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.'

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The study is titled “Simulation of the Earth’s radio-leakage from mobile towers as seen from selected nearby stellar systems.”

Mobile phones have become part of our lives as they have been that of millions of others in the world. Mobile phone networks need vast array of radio transmission towers.

Part of total volume of radio signals on Earth leaks out into space as well. According to Sciencealert, waves from military radar still form the major chunk of the radio leakage from Earth. But cell power networks have fast risen to the second spot.

Each cell tower reportedly emits radio signal with power of 100-200 Watts. Given large number of mobile towers on the planet, it can be said that radio signals amounting to few gigawatts are beamed into space.

Now if we assume that an alien civilisation has reasonably sophisticated radio astronomy capabilities, the radio leakage from the Earth can be detectable within a dozen light-years or so.

This sounds exciting and scary.

So will we get a random mobile call from an alien one fine day? It looks unlikely because the sheer volume of radio waves on Earth are likely to garble up any individual message for aliens to reach one particular person.

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