What happens if you don’t put your phone in airplane mode?

Interference from other devices and people flying has made it difficult to see signals. Beyond the range of visible light, radio waves as wide as houses carry important information. Your phone's signal is especially strong, which is why if you're looking at the sky, your phone will be visible from Jupiter. However, because of interference, many people are unable to see this with their ordinary eyes.

You see, the purpose of this setting is to safeguard everyone in your flight path, not to protect your flight. Radio waves, which are present in this region of the electromagnetic spectrum, are the electromagnetic waves that mobile devices use to transmit information to networks. Let's pretend that your unique eyes perceive the various wavelengths of these radio waves as different colors.

Your phone produces a radio wave signal when you place a call, which it sends to the closest cell tower. Your phone will use more battery life to transmit a stronger signal while you're far from a service provider in an effort to establish a connection. Once connected, this signal travels from cell tower to cell tower until it reaches the person you are calling. The cell towers handling the calls allocate each phone involved its own wavelength because your call isn't the only signal out here.

This particular color makes sure you don't answer other people's calls. In order to avoid interfering with the incoming signal, it is even somewhat different from the wavelength that your phone is receiving information on. However, the number of available colors is limited. And since Wi-Fi was introduced, there has been a sharp rise in demand for these wavelengths.

It gets harder and harder to prevent interference with so many signals in the air and so few colors available. Particularly during times when everyone is trying to use their phones, such as during local emergencies, when cell towers receive too many signals at once.

Customers are compelled to pay more for bandwidth as a result, which forces service providers to seize more radio spectrum and eventually launch more satellites into space. This feeds a vicious cycle that could eventually obliterate the stars. However, this system is posing a threat to human interaction with the cosmos even without these satellites.

In order to look far into space, radio telescopes used for astronomy rely on a certain band of wavelengths. Despite the fact that this range is allegedly safeguarded, the cutoffs are not followed. The Very Large Array, for instance, can detect signals between 1 and 50 GHz all throughout our solar system. However, if it tries to search for signals below 5 GHz, a sea of 5G network-connected phones may overwhelm its search.

Nowhere on Earth nowadays is completely radio silent. Radio waves from satellites transmitting signals around the world have covered the earth. However, there are a few locations with less dense population where radio telescopes can view far-off space. Here, we can glimpse the Milky Way's black hole and learn about galaxies that are up to 96 billion light years away. Well, as long as our vision is not obscured by signals coming from first-class phones.