Question by Gerri R: How can radio waves continue to travel for ever in outer space?
How can radio waves continue to travel for ever in outer space?
On earth the radio waves from your favorite radio or TV station will only go 100 miles or so at the very most, but NASA and Astronomers say that they will travel almost for ever, or at least Billions and Trillions of miles with out stopping.
How is that possible?
Best answer:
Answer by mike1942f
Radio waves on earth are either line of sight (FM or TV) or broadcast. The former can only be picked up when the earth has not curved out of their path. The latter in spreading soon become weak enough that the other signals being generated overwhelm them.
All of these signals, in theory, can go on forever in space, but in practice become so weak that they can not be detected. An indication of how far they can go is the very low wattage of the transmitters on the Mars orbiters and landers, which are sent and received with dish antennas with digital correction for lost bits. Harder to find is the wattage of the distant transmissions from the satellites that went beyond Neptune, which had to be received with very large dish antennas.
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