how many star systems have been reached by the first ever speed of light TV broadcast from this planet?

Question

Lets say the first broadcast being July 1, 1941, although there were earlier broadcasts these were concidered experimental. Lets also presume the signal radiated sphericaly and would have travelled 66 light years.

Answer 1

I realize that this question is all hypothetical, but...

TV Signals are broadcast using antennas designed to maximize their radiation in a donut sort of radiation pattern, not in a beam toward outer space such as you would need to reach out to the stars. Yes, I saw your note about signal radiation in a sphere pattern...That situation is also far less than satisfactory because of the wasted energy lost going in all directions except the special few directions you desire. All of the energy radiated towards the horizon, for example, is wasted for your special effort. This results in a much weaker signal at some distant location.

Early television signals were transmitted on the lower TV frequencies which are near the VHF region. Those frequencies are not the most suitable for extremely long range communications, and signals broadcast there would probably not reach destinations several light years away.

For long, long range communications you need antennas with super high gain and steerability. That is not "normaly" possible in the VHF region due to element length. Moving up above UHF into the near microwave, or microwave region, however, element lengths become very short and construction of a suitable super high gain antenna system is well within reason and small enough to be steered in any given direction and angle of altitude.

In short, my response to your question is that none of the star systems "received" early television broadcasts from Earth. Please note that, here on Earth, we are lucky to get useable television signals from distances over 200 miles. The nearest star (other than our Sun) is roughly 4 light years away. That is several thousand millions of times the distance for suitable reception on Earth (about 200 miles max.). I grant you the point that the curvature of the Earth has a lot to do with the 200 mile max situation, and would not apply to stars.

Also, please note that the signal intensity in volts, millivolts, microvolts, or whatever measurement you wish to use...
decreases with the square of distance from the radiating point. That is why it is essential to have extremely high gain antennas which focus all of the available energy towards a specified target.

In closing, let me suggest to you that an Earth bound antenna system does not radiate out into space to all possible azimuth and all possible elevations. Nothing at all would be radiated outward below the horizon, and down around under your feet, and up to the other horizon. So it would only be possible to transmit into outer space within the arc and elevations that you can see with your unaided eye. China residents, or Austrailian residents, for example, see a totally different star map from the one seen from the Northern Hemisphere. That reduces the number of viable targets in your question, but still leaves a huge number of star systems which cannot easily be counted and named here in yahoo if it were possible for faint signals to have reached that far. As a result, most of the answers you receive will be false because the reference tables used to retrieve answers by Answerers were not filtered for a particular sky view from the transmitting site. Almost all tables of this type list all stars, everywhere, at all possible azimuths and elevations considering the Earth as a pinpoint and not a sphere (which blocks our view of major portions of the sky). To better understand this point look at any star charts you can find. You will clearly see the charts labeled "Northern Hemisphere", and "Southern Hemisphere", etc., etc. So all of this depends upon where you are standing.

Now, with tongue in cheek, I ask you, do you suppose the TV Sets on that distant star system are Sony's or RCA's, and do you suppose that they have exactly the same worldwide frequency allocation system as we have? You know, Channel 2 here is Channel 2 way out there also???

Answer 2

My Celestia star browser lists 500 stars within 46 LY. You would at least double that for 66. Most of the stars are red dwarfs which are small and relatively cool, but some of them could have planets. How many you would consider "star systems" is hard to say.
Your probable reason for asking, though, is missing a factor which can only be guessed at: what is the average volume of space per intelligent civilization? Alas, we don't have a clue.
Is it possible that we might get a reply during our lifetimes? Sure. We could get one tomorrow from a civilization that is 33 LY away, (in your model). Only keep in mind, we have been listening for such signals, deliberately sent or not, for over 30 years, and haven't heard anything yet.

Note: the list on the web site given by wrflyer2001 only gives the stars visible to the naked eye, which is only a small fraction of them. In fact, we can't see any stars the same brightness as the sun more than about 20 LY away.

Answer 3

Star systems? Possibly, in the far future it may be necessary for our survival to leave Earth. Terraform a planet? No. Not unless we evolve patience, terraforming would take millions of years, we'd most likely forget about terraforming projects and move on.

Answer 4

Not sure about 66 light years volume but here's a site that lists them within 50 light years:

http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/50lys.html

Answer 5

PRobably 4 to 15 or so.

Wow, I had no idea there were that may stars that close! Looks like we have to up things to 60 or 100!

Answer 6

None. The transmissions were all eaten by the Great Dagroth.