Earth through the looking glass: how frequently are we detected by other civilisations through photometric microlensing?

TL;DR

This paper investigates how often Earth could be detected by extraterrestrial civilizations through photometric microlensing, defining the Earth Microlensing Zone (EMZ) and assessing its implications for SETI.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of the Earth Microlensing Zone (EMZ), maps its location using Gaia data, and evaluates Earth's detectability via microlensing by other civilizations.

Findings

Earth's microlensing signal is generally well approximated by a binary lens.

Earth is difficult to detect via microlensing with current technology, observable only tens of times per year.

EMZ overlaps with the Earth Transit Zone near the Galactic center, guiding future SETI efforts.

Abstract

Microlensing is proving to be one of the best techniques to detect distant, low-mass planets around the most common stars in the Galaxy. In principle, Earth's microlensing signal could offer the chance for other technological civilisations to find the Earth across Galactic distances. We consider the photometric microlensing signal of Earth to other potential technological civilisations and dub the regions of our Galaxy from which Earth's photometric microlensing signal is most readily observable as the "Earth Microlensing Zone" (EMZ). The EMZ can be thought of as the microlensing analogue of the Earth Transit Zone (ETZ) from where observers see Earth transit the Sun. Just as for the ETZ, the EMZ could represent a game-theoretic Schelling point for targeted searches for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI). To compute the EMZ, we use the Gaia DR2 catalogue with magnitude G<20 to generate Earth microlensing probability and detection rate maps to other observers. Whilst our Solar system is a multi-planet system, we show that Earth's photometric microlensing signature is almost always well approximated by a binary lens assumption. We then show that the Earth is in fact well-hidden to observers with technology comparable to our own. Specifically, even if observers are located around every Gaia DR2 star with G<20, we expect photometric microlensing signatures from the Earth to be observable on average only tens per year by any of them. In addition, the EMZs overlap with the ETZ near the Galactic centre which could be the main areas for future SETI searches.