Milner hopes that his investment in the projects will assist scientists in discovery of alien transmissions from worlds that are “watery” and quite possibly habitable to aid in the search as well for earth-sized planets that could sustain human life if needed. As indicated by a report from CBC, Russian billionaire Yuri Milner is making a $100 million donation to the SETI Institute, an organization dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Researchers are hopeful to send a swift and confident message, if they pick up a signal or message from outer space.
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Milner has also granted a ten-year cumulative donation for the University of California- Berkeley’s Breakthrough Listen Project has contracts with two of the world’s largest radio telescopes. “The hardware and software used in the Listen project will be compatible with other telescopes around the world, enabling them to join the search for intelligent life”.
Scientists and wealthy speculative investors’ interest in finding alien life is on the increase, despite a warning from prominent scientist Stephen Hawking that inviting alien life to Earth would bring negative results for humans.
“I think it’s an important project for the whole humanity”. If we’re alone, we need to cherish what we have.
With dedicated telescope time, researchers will be able to target specific stars around which exoplanets have been discovered by various planet hunting teams, most notably NASA’s Kepler mission. UC Berkeley’s SERENDIP program still captures radio waves from wherever the Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico points, breaks the data into segments, and asks its SETI@home volunteers to use spare time on their computers to process the signals to look for unnatural and potentially purposeful patterns.
“Even if we don’t detect a signal from advanced life beyond Earth”, he added, “the detection limits obtained by the Breakthrough Listen searches will be the most rigorous ever achieved, and the technology developed will lay the groundwork for SETI searches for many decades to come”.
He said: “We believe that life arose spontaneously on Earth, so in an infinite universe there must be other occurrences of life”.
“Panels can change their positions through connected wires and parallel robots”.
“In searches such as this, the more eyes you can get on the prize the better”, says Todd Thibodeaux, president of the tech industry association CompTIA.
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On the other hand, China is building the world’s largest telescope in its Guizhou province, and this telescope with 500 meter reflector and 4,450 panels will be completed by 2016. “We can control their position with an accuracy of 1 mm”, Zheng Yuanpeng, chief engineer of the telescope’s panel project, told Xinhua.
