How far, in distance (out into the universe), have humanity's radio waves gone so far?

Answer 1

well...we know that the universe is 156 billion light years...that means that it takes 156 billion years for light to get across. (ei) if a star at the very end of the universe exploded, 156 billion years from now, we would see it

Answer 2

Hmm, how long have we had radio? According to the Wikipedia, the first commercial radio broadcasts were in the 1920s, so say roughly 85 years ago. But I'm sure there were earlier radio signals. Marconi's first radio station was first operated in 1897, so let's go with that for the start -- and that's in pretty decent agreement with the previous poster, so we'll use the figure of 110 years.

Radio waves travel at the speed of light, so in 110 years, they will have travelled a distance of 110 light-years.

The speed of light is 299,792,458 meters per second, or 186,282.4 miles per second. So, in one year, light travels 9.46x10^12 kilometers, or 5.88x10^12 miles.

Thus, in 110 years, the leading edge of earth-emitted radio waves has travelled 6.47x10^14 miles, or 1.04x10^15 kilometers. These signals would be INCREDIBLY weak (power is inversely proprtional to the SQUARE of the distance),

Just for fun, I looked up the distances to a couple of nearby stars, and found this table:
http://www.astro-tom.com/technical_data/nearest_stars.htm

Based on that, the leading edge of our very first man-made radio signals would be well on its way to the Hyades star cluster (~152 light years from Earth).

Answer 3

Remember, radio waves are part of the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation and as such travel at the speed of light, which for discussion here is a constant. Light and radio waves travel at about 300,000 km/sec! Consider you drive at ~ 120 km/hour. So distance on this scale is defined often as light years, the distance light or radio waves travel in one solar year. That would be about 9.5 TRILLION km! So if the first radio waves were generated about 100 years ago, they have traveled 100 light years or about 950 TRILLION km which is really not that far. Our galaxy, the Milky Way is 150,000 light years in diameter alone, however our nearest star neighbor is only 4.24 light years away.

Answer 4

The first radio transmissions were made in the year 1887, since radio waves travel at light speed then they have travelled 119 light years in either direction from Earth, with a sphere of radio influence diameter of 238 light years.

Answer 5

Well, the first really powerful transmissions that have any chance of being received were the first television signals, and Germany broadcast the first test transmissions at their Olympics games in about 1942...something like that.

So that would be 2006 -1942 = 64 light years into space, far enough to go pass dozens of stars/planets in our 'neighborhood'.

Watch the movie 'Contact' (based on a book by Carl Sagan) for a more in-depth and thoroughly entertaining example of this.

Answer 6

When was the "radio" invented? Very, Very far, I think. Didn't the two space satellites (Voyager) send digital pictures of the outer planets back to earth by radio waves? Try this spot and check it out:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio#History_and_invention

Answer 7

In short, it is about 200 light years. A German named "Hertz" is credited with producing the first radio waves in 1886. A light year is 5,865,696,000,000 miles or 9,500,000,000,000 kilometers. So, the first radio wave is about 1,173,139,200,000,000 miles or 1,900,000,000,000,000 kilometers away.

I hope this helps.

Answer 8

Within the Earths atmosphere.

Answer 9

about a 110 light years