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by myth_buster 3986 days ago
Didn't we lose that battle when we sent the Voyager with the Golden Record [1] that carries the exact coordinates [0] (with respect to nearest stars) to the origin of the spacecraft.

  Voyager 1 and 2 both carry with them a 12-inch golden phonograph record 
  that contains pictures and sounds of Earth along with symbolic directions 
  on the cover for playing the record and data detailing the location of 
  our planet. The record is intended as a combination of a time capsule 
  and an interstellar message to any civilization, alien or far-future 
  human that may recover either of the Voyager craft. The contents of this 
  record were selected by a committee that included Timothy Ferris and 
  was chaired by Carl Sagan.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program#/media/File:Vo...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program#Voyager_Golden...

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Edit:

Voyager has on board antennas and a sufficiently intelligent civilization would be quite interested in intercepting a spacecraft which seems to be on a mission to somewhere carrying <creator>-knows-what.

4 comments

Wouldn't worry, that's not going anywhere interesting for thousands of years. Any aliens near enough to intercept that aren't going to need the return address to find us. Our radios signals will give us away long before that probe.
By the time Voyager reaches another star we'll have advanced sufficiently to have beat it there.
It is actually far more likely than an alien civilization would detect our radio and tv broadcast signals than our space probes. Those broadcast signals have been sent out in all directions from earth pretty much continously for almost a century now, and they travel at light speed, so they cover alot more distance much faster.
No, I'm pretty sure we lost it well before that when we started spewing radio signals. Voyager is a minuscule speck travelling in a single direction at a snail's pace, while those radio signals are racing across enormous swaths of space at the speed of light.
How about nuclear tests and explosions? Would that be drawing curiosity?
I wouldn't think those would be noticeable unless you were already closely observing the earth.

I'm not a physicist, but I assume there isn't any detectable, unique signature of an explosion that can be detected from space. Stories I've read about test-ban treaties and non-proliferation efforts give the main mechanism for detecting tests are the seismic effects they have.

What sort of signals do (human scale) nuclear explosions give off that are detectable from light-years away?