$100m hunt for aliens

According to global media, the search will be 50 times more sensitive, and cover 10 times more sky, than previous hunts for alien life and leading researchers have secured time on two of the world’s most powerful telescopes in the United States and Australia to scan the Milky Way and neighbouring galaxies for radio emissions that betray the existence of life elsewhere.

Backed by Stephen Hawking, Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner is splashing $100 million on the search for extraterrestrial life among the cosmos, the largest sum of money ever allocated to the effort.

During the conference, Prof Hawking said: “Somewhere in the cosmos, perhaps, intelligent life may be watching these lights of ours, aware of what they mean”.

Among those involved in the search is Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal.

So much data will be collected that cutting-edge computer technology is being developed to sift through the background noise for an intelligent signal.

The telescope in Parkes, NSW, will be used in the Breakthrough Initiatives project. “When? That’s the big question”, Barbree said. However, with a project of this magnitude underway, who knows what we will discover.

Scientists said the project dwarfs anything else in the field, known as the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence.

Frank Drake – one of the pioneers of the SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) movement – said, “right now there could be messages from the stars flying right through the room, through us all”. So in an infinite universe there must be other occurrences of life.

“Our approach to data will be open and taking advantage of the problem-solving power of social networks”, he said. Many scientists reasoned that it is very possible that there are many other planets that support life, just like how Earth supports life under its atmosphere.

Milner says the search for life outside Earth is especially timely now. “It will not prove that we are alone, but will narrow the possibilities”. Radio signals take four years simply to travel between Earth and the nearest star outside our solar system. Yes, we are. In some of our minds I am sure “aliens” still look like those green light bulb-looking figures you see in movies.