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last mo.

Airport and Military Radar Emissions Identified as Earth’s Technosignatures

Peer-reviewed simulations reveal that unintentional radar leakage could guide extraterrestrial searches.

Airport Radar
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.
Alien civilizations hundreds of light years away may be able to lock in on Earth's radar systems
Aliens Up To 200 Light-Years Away Could Find Earth Thanks To Our Airports

Overview

  • University of Manchester researchers presented at the Royal Astronomical Society meeting that global airport radars emit a combined 2×10^15 watts detectable up to 200 light-years by Green Bank Telescope-class instruments.
  • Military radar installations produce directional signals peaking at 1×10^14 watts in a lighthouse-like pattern that would appear clearly artificial to distant observers.
  • Simulations modeled how radar leakage propagates through space and varies over time when viewed from nearby star systems such as Barnard’s Star and AU Microscopii.
  • SETI practitioners are incorporating these unintentional technosignature profiles into search strategies to complement traditional beacon-focused surveys.
  • The modeling techniques also inform spectrum-protection efforts and offer guidance for designing future radar and communication systems to control inadvertent interstellar broadcasts.