Stephen Hawking joins biggest ever search for alien life

Man has always wondered about its existence in the universe, and has sought far and wide for signs of life in outer space. 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.

The Breakthrough Listen project will be 50 times more sensitive than earlier searches and cover an area of sky ten times as large, according to organizers.

Funded by US-based tech billionaire Yuri Milner, the initiative, called “Breakthrough Listen”, will take a “Silicon Valley approach” to discovering aliens, using two powerful radio telescopes and leveraging the problem-solving power of social networks.

Stephen Hawking used to think that looking for aliens was a bad idea, as he reasoned that once they knew we exist, they might be prone to wiping us out. He said it will process five times more of the radio spectrum than has ever been scanned before.

Scientists are planning a massive venture to search for alien life, with a new project backed by Professor Stephen Hawking. The program will include a survey of the 1,000,000 closest stars to Earth and beyond the Milky Way, it will listen for messages from the 100 closest galaxies.

Other scientists endorsed the initiative, including Dr. Seth Shostak, senior astronomer and director of the Center for SETI Research in Mountain View, Calif.

The search initiative is part of the Breakthrough Message project, an global competition originally designed to create digital messages representing humanity.

What did Milner say about the Breakthrough Initiatives project?

Milner, 53, made his billions by betting on Internet companies – including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. – but has an interest in astronomy going back to childhood.

All data findings will be public record. “The chance of finding life has risen a billionfold when we realised that Earth-like planets are not rare, but there are literally billions of them, within our own Galaxy”. In 2013, Milner established the Breakthrough Prize with Sergey Brin, Anne Wojcicki and Mark Zuckerberg, awarding $3 million to researchers in the fields of fundamental physics, life sciences and mathematics.