1962: Nuclear Radio Blast from Earth to the Stars: 10 billion times more powerful than the message from Arecibo for ET!


Did anyone hear us?

Just the calculations: https://www.academia.edu/127055674/Arecibo_vs_Tsar_Bomba

In 1974, the strongest intentional radio signal ever was sent into space by humans. It’s strength was an impressive 20 trillion watts. This is enough electricity to power 1.4 million homes for a year (Ref. 1). The Arecibo signal’s objective was to contact ET.

However, 12 years earlier, a considerably stronger radio signal was sent from Earth. The nuclear Russian Tsar Bomba burst in 1962 delivered 5.3 yotta watts of energy. (That bomb was not intended to contact ET, but rather to intimidate the United States).

We know that five percent of a nuclear explosion’s energy is discharged as radio waves – the Tsar Bomba therefore fired 13.25 billion times more energy than the Arecibo broadcast.

Atmospheric Effects
In a nuclear explosion at a height of approximately 3,962.4 meters, like the Tsar Bomba, a significant portion of electromagnetic radiation, including gamma rays, X-rays, and ultraviolet rays, would be released into space. The exact percentage can vary, but it is estimated that about 70-80% of the electromagnetic radiation would escape into space, as the atmosphere at this altitude is thin enough to allow much of the radiation to pass through.

Taking an average of 75% as a guide, the Tsar Bomba radio blast was approximately 10 billion times stronger than the Arecibo message. A difference of 10 orders of magnitude.

But ARECIBO send a targeted message towards Hercules
Now let’s take into account that the Arecibo dish sent out a concentrated radio signal, not just showering the sky at random with radio waves like a nuclear explosion does. The radio power from Arecibo was directed towards the region of Hercules.

The Hercules cluster is quite expansive and covers about 3% of the visible sky and this is the same as the total sky. If we adjust the power output from the Tsar Bomba to 3% we get the following result:

10 billion x 0.03 = 300 million
So, all in all, the Tsar Bomba emitted 300 million times more radio power towards Hercules than Arecibo. Now, let’s consider for one second that the Earth nuclear explosion sprayed the entire sky with a radio signal 300 million times more powerful than Arecibo… everywhere!

Any ET with a radio is much more likely to hear Earth’s nuclear detonations, before the Arecibo SETI signal—12 years before, to be exact. But the Arecibo message was actually never meant to provide a realistic chance of contacting ETi, right? It was just a technology demonstration: (Ref.: Wikipedia: Arecibo message.)


What do nuclear explosions tell ET about Earth?

Nuclear explosions are fairly drastic events. The radio signatures of nuclear explosions are distinct. They speak of intelligence and stupidity at the same time.

Worldwide, more than 2,000 nuclear bombs have detonated since 1945. This madness ended in 1962, with the biggest explosion of them all, the Tsar Bomba.

TRIANGLE

Nuclear Trinity Test site, alleged Roswell UAP crash site, Air Base of nuclear bomber Enola Gay
Google maps

I am intrigued by the close proximity of these three sites to each other:
The first nuclear explosion at the Trinity test site occurred in 1945 approximately 62 miles from the reported 1947 Roswell UFO crash site in New Mexico.

Roswell was the home of the Walker Air Force base for the Enola Gay bomber, which delivered the first nuclear payload used in war to Hiroshima in 1945. The base was close to the alleged Roswell UFO crash site.

The Roswell UFO crash is not something I “believe” in on a regular basis.


Time moves backward

Let’s suppose there exist advanced extraterrestrials that have discovered a way to travel faster than light. Most physicists agree that this is impossible. Because according to Einstein’s theory of relativity, travelling faster than light means that time moves backward.

What if, at this very moment, extraterrestrials residing on a star 62 light-years away from Earth received the Tsar bomb’s electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and chose to determine its source?

They construct an FTL ship and direct it toward the area where Earth was 62 years ago in space.

They arrive in 1962 and learn about Earth’s history, and decide to go back even further in time, to 1945, to prevent the nuclear holocaust in Japan.

The Trinity test site, the site of the first nuclear explosion on Earth, and Walker Air Force Base, the airfield from where the Enola Gay bomber aircraft launched its first run, were both selected as their target locations.

But their mission failed, and they crash-landed in 1947, too late to change history. Temporal space calculations are inherently tricky, it seems. And maybe the past can’t be changed to make a substantial difference.

I’m not saying that we should set off nuclear bombs to attract the attention of ET. Earth has already done that.

Do you think ET sees these explosions as a threat? Or that they interpreted these as humanities appeals for help, like shipwrecked sailors setting off flares in the night?

I think the latter is the case.


WHO IS THERE?
Today, in 2025, 63 years have passed since the detonation of the Tsar Bomba. The EMP signal has travelled outward from Earth at the speed of light since then. Since then, it has reached and passed by over 1500 stars. In a 63 light-year radius, we find hundreds of systems that have Earthlike planets. Within 32.6 light-years alone, there are 104 exoplanets listed, as confirmed by the NASA Exoplanet Archive.

“We should find extraterrestrial life within 60 light-years, if Earth is average, professor claims”
https://phys.org/news/2023-09-extraterrestrial-life-light-years-earth-average.html

We should not be astonished if someone comes to check us out; it is a possibility.


Calculations
PDF & Equations: https://www.academia.edu/127055674/Arecibo_message_power_vs_Tsar_Bomba_Calculation


References:

Ref. 1: Duke Energy, What can you do with one terawatt hour?
https://news.duke-energy.com/releases/duke-energy-customers-surpass-1-terawatt-of-energy-savings-through-my-home-energy-report-program

Data Science Lab, Tsar Bomba Strength
https://dlab.epfl.ch/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/t/Tsar_Bomba.htm

Effects of Nuclear Explosion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions

SETI ORG Arecibo Message
https://www.seti.org/seti-institute/project/details/arecibo-message

Yotta Watt converter
https://www.convertunits.com/from/yottawatt/to/terawatt

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