Aliens ‘spying on us’ using airplane radar signals from Heathrow and JFK airports

Boffins think that alien civilisations may be using signals from radar systems at major airports like Heathrow and JFK to keep tabs on us from their distant universes

Alien civilisation may be able to use airplane radar signals to spy on us, a new study has shown. Radar systems at large airports, such as London Heathrow or New York JFK, could be strong enough to be detected up to 200 light years away, the research found.

The nearest galaxy to Earth, the Andromeda Galaxy, is around 2.5 million light years away. The research showed that airports are firing out signals at a combined 2,000 trillion watts.

This would be sensitive enough for the world’s most sensitive telescope, the Green Bank Telescope, in West Virginia, to pick it up even if it was on an alien planet 200 light years away. Although estimates vary, there are certainly thousands of planets within 200 light years of Earth.

The signal does rise and fall over a 24-hour period due to the rotation of the Earth.

The study was led by Ramiro Caisse Saide, a PhD student at the University of Manchester.

Mr Caisse Saide told BBC Science Focus: “Our findings suggest that radar signals – produced unintentionally by any planet with advanced technology and complex aviation systems – could act as a universal sign of intelligent life.”

It comes after we reported how the mysterious interstellar object scientists say is cruising through our solar system is “generating its own light”, according to an expert. This latest revelation about the strange UFO – known as 3I/ATLAS – has raised fresh speculation that it may be a technologically-advanced mothership.

Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb has claimed the photo revealed by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on July 21 presents 3I/ATLAS in a way which is different to how comets typically reflect sunlight.

Loeb said 3I/ATLAS’s concentrated glow was similar to a “vehicle turning on its headlights” before adding it “could be a spacecraft powered by nuclear energy”.

Professor Loeb has been outspoken about his hypotheses – though many scientists have dismissed his ideas as preposterous. The theory about the “headlights” comes after the Harvard professor said 3I/ATLAS might be an alien probe designed to gauge our intellectual capabilities.

NASA’s primary theory hypothesis is that the object is a comet in our solar system, with the space agency maintaining the object won’t actually reach Earth.

Yet Loeb has put forth multiple theories suggesting the entity exists through “technological design”. In a recent blog entry, he delved into the possibility that extraterrestrials were behind its creation.

He penned: “It is well known to any interstellar traveller that there are plenty of icy rocks in planetary systems. These constitute the leftover building blocks from the construction process of the planets.”