- If you take the plane this summer, know that you participate in making the earth known in space.
- Indeed, airports emit noticeable signals beyond our atmosphere.
- A study made it possible to highlight that they can be captured up to 200 light years.
If you go on vacation this summer, know that by taking the plane, you are not just increasing your carbon footprint of the year. You can also make a “cuckoo” in space with small green men. More seriously, if the existence of extraterrestrial life remains to be demonstrated, airports emit well, for their part, very powerful signals perceptible in space! Indeed, these places of passage make the land “noisy” on a cosmic scale, note our colleagues of news.
A study on the effect of airport radars
In reality, it is the radars used by airports that emit that powerful signals perceptible in space. Intended to monitor air traffic in order to avoid any glitch, these devices, combined with each other, produce a signal capable of crossing the earth’s atmosphere. This is what researchers have highlighted in a study entitled “How airports like Heathrow and Gatwick could help extraterrestrials to locate the land”, unveiled during a conference of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2025.
Ramiro Caisse Saide, from the University of Manchester, is one of the researchers. He thus affirms, in a press release, that “The results suggest that radar signals – unintentionally by any planet with advanced technology and a complex aviation system – could act as a universal sign of intelligent life”
.
The press release making experts public research specifies that “The radar systems of airports, which sweep the sky in search of planes, send a combined radio signal of 2×10^15 watts, sufficient to be captured up to 200 light years, or 1.9 million billion kilometers, by telescopes comparable to the Green Bank telescope in Virginia-Western”
.
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That said, the researchers recall that “The potentially closest habitable world beyond our solar system is Proxima Centauri B, located on four light years”
. This is why, if we had to use our technologies, “However, it would take thousands of years to a spacecraft (…) to reach it”
. In other words, if the famous signals sent to the sky came to be perceived by an extraterrestrial intelligence, and that it were to decide to visit us in a period of time on a human scale, this would mean that it has a vertiginous technological advance.
But beyond the dream of discovering if we are alone in the universe, “The methods developed to model and detect these weak signals can also be used in astronomy, planetary defense and even in monitoring the impact of human technology on our spatial environment”
concludes Ramiro Caisse Saide.
