The truth is out there… and Stephen Hawking plans to find it! “Or do our lights wander a lifeless universe?” The search will be “100 times better than any previous search for intelligent life in the universe”, said Geoff Marcy, chairman of the SETI Institute, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.
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He went on: “To understand these lights you must know about life, about minds”.
The financial support promised has turned the venture into the biggest search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) ever undertaken. With the funding, scientists can gain access to two of the world’s most powerful radio telescopes, including the Green Bank Telescope in the United States, and the Parkes Telescope in Australia. The Bay Area has always been ground zero in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Hawking said humanity must be committed to finding out whether extra-terrestrial lifeforms exist. Hawking, who was portrayed by Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything, believes that now is the time to look for answers about if there’s life beyond earth.
Christened as the “Breakthrough Initiatives”, the project will focus on a two-fold scientific search.
However, the possibility of finding life had effectively risen a billionfold through the identification of billions of Earth-like planets in the Milky Way, he said. “And Breakthrough Listen is giving it a huge lift”.
Milner is the founder of Mail.ru Group and DST Global, a fund that has invested in companies like Facebook, Twitter, Alibaba and Airbnb. Apart from this alien search program, there will also be a $1 million reward for the “Breakthrough Message” for the discovery of a method for possible communication with an advanced alien civilization. Its scope will include a million nearby stars, the galactic center, 100 nearby galaxies and the entire plane of the Milky Way.
There is no commitment to send any messages into space, and the project should spark discussion about whether humans should be sending messages at all out into the void.
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He said: “Thanks to Kepler mission it is now estimated that there are billions of potential habitable planets in our galaxy alone”. The grant for project Breakthrough Listen is the biggest chunk of cash ever proffered for the so far fruitless quest for intelligent alien life.
