Our happy hour fact to amaze your drinking buddies with.

The phasing out of analog technology makes it less likely aliens will be able to spot our planet.

Not long ago, the upwardly directed signals from analog television and radio transmitters lit up the Earth with a 50-light-year shield of radiation. But now that next-generation digital transmissions are beamed from man-made satellites down to our homes, almost no radiation escapes our atmosphere.

This would make it more difficult for any far-away life-forms to be able to distinguish our planet from the trillions of unoccupied rocks in the universe.

In other words, a better TV picture also means the human race is less likely to be forced to work as slaves in a distant salt mine. Sounds like a win-win.