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Your Local Airport Might Be Attracting Alien Attention

Your Local Airport Might Be Attracting Alien Attention

Yahoo5 days ago
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The SETI Institute's goal is to lead a science-based mission to find evidence of intelligent life beyond our own planet.
A new study shows what aliens within 200 light-years might see if they trained their own powerful radio telescopes on our planet.
It turns out the aviation radar—both civilian and military—would create a repeatable Effective Isotropic Radiated Power (EIRP) pattern due to the distribution of radar equipment across the Earth's surface.
Professional outfits like the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute scan the skies with radio telescopes for any sign of extraterrestrial life. They're especially tuned in to potential presence of technosignatures—electromagnetic radiation emitted by an advanced society's technology. While that effort has produced some exciting close calls, humanity most likely has yet to find any sign of alien life.
Of course, there's another way to look at this problem. If an alien civilization in our galactic neighbor also had their own SETI-esque programs—similarly probing the skies in search for an answer to that ever-elusive 'Are we alone?' question—could they hear us?
Well, as it turns out, the answer is an emphatic 'yes'—not, however, because we're purposefully shooting some kind of high-powered radio beam into the cosmos that's acting like a galactic flare gun. No, aliens could hear us just from our everyday airport and military radar systems.
In a new study—the preliminary results of which were revealed at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting 2025 in Durham, U.K.—lead researcher Ramiro Caisse Saide from the University of Manchester concluded that an alien civilization within 200 light-years of Earth could likely spot our planet's radar signals using an advanced radio telescope similar to the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. The study concluded that worldwide airport radar alone outputs a radio signal of roughly 2×10¹⁵ watts, while military radar outputs distinctive directional radio beams up to 1×10¹⁴ watts.
At first, 200 light-years may not seem like a lot—after all, the Milky Way stretches some 100,000 light-years across. But even a distance this short (at cosmic scales, at least) includes some 120,000 stars, which very likely host plenty of candidates capable of sustaining life.
'This would look clearly artificial to anyone watching from interstellar distances with powerful radio telescopes,' Caisse Saide said in a press statement. '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.'
The authors looked at this 'hidden electromagnetic leakage' from the perspective of six stellar systems: Barnard star (6 light-years away), HD 48948 (55 light-years away), HD 40307 (42 light-years away), HD 216520 (64 light-years away), LHS 475 (40 light-years away), and AU Microscopii (32 light-years away).
To help others understand what the 'leakage' might look like, the researchers published a video showing the mean distribution of Earth's Effective Isotropic Radiated Power (EIRP) over a 24-hour period as it would appear on AU Microscopii. A distinct pattern emerges based on the distribution of radio equipment across the planet. So, if some alien civilization took a keen interest in a particular rocky planet located in the Origin-Cygnus arm of the galaxy, this clearly artificial EIRP signature might just raise an eyebrow (or whatever aliens would do to show confusion).
'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,' Caisse Saide said in a press statement. '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.'
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Hidden threats YR4 was detected by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS telescope, in Río Hurtado, Chile, two days after the asteroid had already made its closest pass by Earth, hidden by the bright glare of the sun as it approached our planet. The same thing occurred when an asteroid measuring roughly 20 meters (about 65 feet) across hit the atmosphere and exploded above Chelyabinsk, Russia, on February 15, 2013, damaging thousands of buildings, according to the European Space Agency. While no one died, about 1,500 people were injured when the windows in homes and businesses blew out due to the shock wave. Trying to observe asteroids is challenging for many reasons, Rivkin said. Asteroids are incredibly faint and hard to see because rather than emitting their own light, they only reflect sunlight. And because of their relatively tiny size, interpreting observations is not a clear-cut process like looking through a telescope at a planet such as Mars or Jupiter. 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Of those newly detected space rocks, seven were near-Earth objects. A near-Earth object is an asteroid or comet on an orbit that brings it within 120 million miles (about 190 million kilometers) of the sun, which means it has the potential to pass near Earth, according to NASA. None of the new ones detected by Rubin were determined to pose a threat to our planet. Rubin will act as a great asteroid hunter, de Wit said, while telescopes such as Webb could be a tracker that follow up on Rubin's discoveries. A proposal by Rivkin and de Wit to use Webb to observe YR4 in the spring of 2026 has just been approved. Webb is the only telescope with a chance of glimpsing the asteroid before 2028. 'This newly approved program will buy decision makers two extra years to prepare — though most likely to relax, as there is an 80% chance of ruling out impact — while providing key experience-based lessons for handling future potential impactors to be discovered by Vera Rubin,' de Wit said. And because of the twists and turns of YR4's tale thus far, asteroids that have potential to affect the moon could become objects of even more intense study in the future. 'If this really is a thing that we only have to worry about every 5,000 years or something, then maybe that's less pressing,' Rivkin said. 'But even just asking what would we do if we did see something that was going to hit the moon is at least something that we can now start thinking about.'

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