The transit method has long been a common way to figure out where planets are. It identifies little blips that appear to move across the surface of a star, because those could be planets moving past the stars they orbit. But could aliens have identified us using the same method?
Of course, the conditions would have to be right for this to occur. With the transit method, only planets that can be seen passing a start from the angle of another planet can be identified, leaving many others unnoticed. Researchers recently conducted a study to determine when certain planets would be able to see us. They concluded that in the 10,000 year period ranging from 5,000 years ago to 5,000 into the future, planets orbiting over 2,000 nearby stars could potentially have identified Earth, should there be living organisms there. They also estimated that around 29 planets are habitable and could have picked up stray radio signals from us.
These planets are all in the Earth transit zone or the plane that is aligned with the Sun and Earth. These planets, if habited, could have seen us in the past, be looking at us now, or see us in the future. They could not only use radio waves that humans produce but, over the span of hundreds of thousands of years, see the composition of the atmosphere changing.
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