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Picture this: A hundred million years ago, an advanced civilization detects strange signatures of life on a blue-green planet not so far away from their home in the Milky Way. They try sending signals, but whatever's marching around on that unknown world isn't responding. So, the curious galactic explorers try something different. They send a robotic probe to a small, quiet space rock orbiting near the life-rich planet, just to keep an eye on things. https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science...c-rss_20191005
I think its unlikely too...mainly because the aliens are ALREADY here observing us, buzzing our skies frequently, they have shown up over military nuclear storage sites numerous times, and even disabled the systems temporarily.
Picture this: A hundred million years ago, an advanced civilization detects strange signatures of life on a blue-green planet not so far away from their home in the Milky Way. They try sending signals, but whatever's marching around on that unknown world isn't responding. So, the curious galactic explorers try something different. They send a robotic probe to a small, quiet space rock orbiting near the life-rich planet, just to keep an eye on things.
And? The idea that the solar system was visited in the distant past by beings that left evidence of their presence - and perhaps even the means to observe what's going on around Sol - is hardly new.
But why would they place a probe on a co-orbital? The probe could simply be place in co-orbit itself. But then, neither co-orbitals (such as 3753 Cruithne, apparently the object obliquely referenced in the linked article) nor a hypothesized co-orbital probe would be in orbits stable over a period as long as 100,000,000 years.
Besides, if one wanted to observe Earth, L4 and L5 would be far better locations. For one, they're much closer (the same distance as the Moon is to the Earth) than, for example, 3753 Cruithne - which never gets closer than about thirty times the Earth-Moon axis.
The reality is that if such an object ever existed (for which, it should be noted, not a shred of actual evidence exists) it would be near impossible for us to locate, either because it would have been destroyed in the interim or because it's lost out there about the trillions upon trillions of bits in the solar system.
The problem with co-orbital asteroids is that their orbits are unstable and they tend to wander off after a while, due to external gravitational influences. By contrast, the Moon isn't going anywhere. To observe the Earth from the Moon, you can place your technology in a lava tunnel to protect it from micrometeorite impacts. A smaller tunnel near the lunar limb that lines up with the Earth might be ideal. Perhaps it would dig down to create a heat engine for power? Or it may have mined He3 from a nearby maria to provide a long-term fusion source.
The problem with co-orbital asteroids is that their orbits are unstable and they tend to wander off after a while, due to external gravitational influences. By contrast, the Moon isn't going anywhere. To observe the Earth from the Moon, you can place your technology in a lava tunnel to protect it from micrometeorite impacts. A smaller tunnel near the lunar limb that lines up with the Earth might be ideal. Perhaps it would dig down to create a heat engine for power? Or it may have mined He3 from a nearby maria to provide a long-term fusion source.
I know. The point being that the Moon's orbit is considered stable, and is unlikely to be perturbed away from the Earth for many billions of years.
It was just a comment. In a way, relative to our perception of time, the Moon's orbit is sort of stable, but it does fluctuate. That's why I added, "It's not going anywhere anytime soon." It would be looking at about 50 billion years for the Moon to stop drifting out.
On the other hand, the Sun is expected to reach its maximum as a red giant in about 7.6 billion years, possibly consuming both the Earth and the Moon. In that case, it wouldn't really matter very much. Even if the Sun doesn't devour the Earth and Moon, they'd both be little more than charred celestial cinders. https://futurism.com/a-rocky-relatio...ving-the-earth
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