Earth Detecting Earth: At what distance could Earth's constellation of technosignatures be detected with present-day technology? · HackerPapers discussionshttps://hackerpaper.kaipfister.de/p/2502.02614/Collected HN comments and submissions linking this paper.enMon, 02 Nov 2026 11:16:22 GMTEarth Detecting Earth: At what distance could Earth's constellation of technosignatures be detected with present-day technology? — mentioned by antonvshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47743905urn:hackerpapers:mention:2502.02614:47743905Sun, 12 Apr 2026 20:08:41 GMT<p>&gt; It’s a logical extrapolation if you think life is a natural phenomenon. No, it really isn&#x27;t. Taking life on Earth as an example, almost all of our technological signatures are effectively undetectable as little as 5 light years away. See e.g. the paper &quot;Earth Detecting Earth&quot; (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.02614). The maximum detectable distance for unintentional signal leakage is 4 light years - about the distance to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star. So if we&#x27;re looking for that kind of signal, we have a population of exactly one star system that we might be able to detect something from…</p><p><a href="https://hackerpaper.kaipfister.de/p/2502.02614/">Paper and discussion history</a>. A mention is not an endorsement.</p>astro-ph.IM