HUMANS have been searching for aliens for decades – but all this time intelligent extraterrestrial life could have found us, according to a new study.
Heathrow Airport has been acting as a sort of homing beacon to find us, experts at the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2025) in Durham revealed.
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But it’s not just Heathrow – the largest and busiest airport in the UK, but Gatwick and New York’s JFK International Airport, too.
All civilian airports and military bases that use radar systems have been inadvertently revealing our existence to potential advanced alien civilisations, new research suggests.
If aliens are equipped with state-of-the-art radio telescopes like our own – they would be able to spot hidden electromagnetic leakage from these Earth sites up to 200 light-years away.
The study also suggests that 200 light-years is just how far humans would be able to look to spot aliens who have evolved to use a similar level of technology.
As airport radar systems sweep the skies for airplanes, they send out a combined radio signal of 2×1015 watts, the researchers said.
That’s enough power to be picked up as far as 200 light-years away by telescopes as strong as the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, the world’s biggest fully steerable radio telescope.
For context, the nearest potentially habitable world beyond our solar system is Proxima Centauri b, which is 4 light-years away.
And while it would take thousands of years to get there with today’s technology, there are a number of potentially habitable worlds in that distance.
Lead researcher Ramiro Caisse Saide, of the University of Manchester, said these signals would look “clearly artificial to anyone watching from interstellar distances with powerful radio telescopes.”
The Ph.D student added: “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.
“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.”
By simulating how these radar signals emit from Earth over time and space, the researchers looked at how visible they would be from nearby stars.
The research may help guide other scientists on identifying promising technosignatures emitted by alien worlds, Saide explained.
Co-researcher, Professor Michael Garrett, of the University of Manchester, added: “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.
“The methods developed for modeling and detecting these weak signals can also be used in astronomy, planetary defence, and even in monitoring the impact of human technology on our space environment.”
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All you need to know about planets in our solar system
Our solar system is made up of nine planets with Earth the third closest to the Sun. But each planet has its own quirks, so find out more about them all…
- How old is Earth? Plus other facts on our planet
- How many moons does Mercury have?
- What colour is Venus?
- How far away is Mars to Earth? And other facts on the red planet
- How big is Jupiter?
- How many moons does Saturn have?
- Does Uranus have rings?
- How many moons does Neptune have?
- How big is Pluto?
- How hot is the Sun?
