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BRITISH cosmologist Stephen Hawking on Monday launched the biggest-ever search for intelligent extraterrestrial life in a US$100-million, 10-year project to scan the heavens.
Russian Silicon Valley entrepreneur Yuri Milner, who is funding the Breakthrough Listen initiative, said it would be the most intensive scientific search ever undertaken for signs of alien civilization.
“In an infinite universe, there must be other occurrences of life,” Hawking said at the launch event at the Royal Society science academy in London.
“Somewhere in the cosmos, perhaps, intelligent life may be watching.
“Either way, there is no bigger question. It’s time to commit to finding the answer, to search for life beyond Earth.
“It is important for us to know if we are alone in the dark.”
The project will use some of the biggest telescopes on Earth, searching far deeper into the universe than before for radio and laser signals.
“Breakthrough Listen takes the search for intelligent life in the universe to a completely new level,” said Milner, a former physicist.
He said the scan would collect more data in one day than a year of any previous search, tracking the million closest stars, the center of our Milky Way galaxy and the 100 closest galaxies.
Earth’s telescopes would be able to detect a signal from similarly-advanced technology sent from the center of the Milky Way.
“We don’t need to assume that civilization is way more developed than we are,” Milner said.
Martin Rees, Britain’s astronomer royal and one of the project leaders, said modern technology allowed much more sensitive searches than ever before, though he cautioned against expectations of finding intelligent alien life.
“It’s a huge gamble, of course, but the pay-off would be so colossal... even if the chance of success is small,” the astrophysicist said.
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.(SD-Agencies)
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