Airports Could Help Aliens Find Earth
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
Radar systems used by civilian airports and military operations may be unintentionally revealing our planet's existence to potential "extraterrestrial observers."
This is the conclusion of a study presented today at the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS)'s National Astronomy Meeting 2025 in Durham, England.
The researchers calculated that global aviation hubs like New York City's JFK International Airport and London, England's Heathrow and Gatwick could be serving as "technosignatures"—or clues to our existence—for alien life.
The "unintentional electromagnetic leakage" from airport radars and military radar systems could be "detectable across interstellar distances," the researchers note.
Study lead and astrophysicist Ramiro Saide of the University of Manchester said in a statement: "Our findings suggest that radar signals—produced unintentionally by any planet with advanced technology and complex aviation system—could act as a universal sign of intelligent life."
An image of London's Heathrow Airport, with an inset stock image of an alien. Radar systems used by civilian airports (like this at Heathrow) and military operations are inadvertently revealing our existence to potential advanced...
An image of London's Heathrow Airport, with an inset stock image of an alien. Radar systems used by civilian airports (like this at Heathrow) and military operations are inadvertently revealing our existence to potential advanced alien civilizations because of the hidden electromagnetic leakage they emit. More
Mick Lobb / Radar scanner - Heathrow / CC BY-SA 2.0; Getty
In their study, the team at how electromagnetic leakage might appear to extraterrestrials that are up to 200 light-years from Earth, if they had state-of-the-art radio telescopes such as our own.
(In theory, this would also indicate how far we would be able to look to spot aliens who have evolved to use a similar level of technology.)
The researchers observed how visible these radar signals would be from nearby stars, such as Barnard's Star and AU Microscopii, by simulating how the signals spread out from Earth over time and space.
At less than 6 light-year away, Barnard's Star is "the closest single star to our sun and the most fast moving," while AU Microscopii is set less than 32 light-years from Earth and is among the youngest planetary systems ever observed by astronomers, according to NASA.
The researchers calculated that airport radar systems, which monitor the skies for airplanes, send out a combined radio signal of 2x1015 (two followed by 15 zeros) watts, which is enough to be picked up as far as 200 light-years away by telescopes comparable to the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.
Putting this distance into context, the closest potentially habitable world beyond our solar system is Proxima Centauri b, which is four light-years away and would still take a spacecraft using current technology thousands of years to get there.
Military radar systems—which are more focused and directional and create unique patterns, such as a lighthouse beam sweeping the sky—have an accumulated peak emission reaching about 1x1014 (one followed by 15 zeros) watts in a given field-of-view of the observer.
This would look "clearly artificial to anyone watching from interstellar distances with powerful radio telescopes," noted Caisse Saide.
"In fact, these military signals can appear up to a hundred times stronger from certain points in space, depending on where an observer is located," he added.
Saide noted that the findings of the latest study also enhance our understanding of how human technology may be observed from space.
"By learning how our signals travel through space, we gain valuable insights into how to protect the radio spectrum for communications and design future radar systems," added paper co-author and Manchester astronomer professor Michael Garrett.
"The methods developed for modelling and detecting these weak signals can also be used in astronomy, planetary defense, and even in monitoring the impact of human technology on our space environment."
Saide concluded: "In this way, our work supports both the scientific quest to answer the question 'Are we alone?' and practical efforts to manage the influence of technology on our world and beyond."
Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about aliens? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.
Reference
Ramiro Saide. (2025). Examining Airport Civilian and Military Radar Leakage as a Detectable Marker for Extraterrestrial Civilizations. National Astronomy Meeting 2025. https://conference.astro.dur.ac.uk/event/7/contributions/245/
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Whitehead, Graham F. Peaslee (2024) Presence of Perfluorohexanoic Acid in Fluoroelastomer Watch Bands, American Chemical Society Environmental Science & Technology Letters Vol 12/Issue 1.
