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posted by LaminatorX on Monday July 20 2015, @10:38PM   Printer-friendly
from the Stars-like-Dust dept.

Stephen Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner have announced Breakthrough Listen, a $100 million project that will increase the intensity of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (or their signals):

Speaking at the launch, Prof Hawking said: "Somewhere in the cosmos, perhaps, intelligent life may be watching these lights of ours, aware of what they mean. "Or do our lights wander a lifeless cosmos - unseen beacons, announcing that here, on one rock, the Universe discovered its existence. Either way, there is no bigger question. It's time to commit to finding the answer - to search for life beyond Earth. We are alive. We are intelligent. We must know."

Those behind the initiative claim it to be the biggest scientific search ever undertaken for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth. They plan to cover 10 times more of the sky than previous programmes and scan five times more of the radio spectrum, 100 times faster. It will involve access to two of the world's most powerful telescopes. - the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and the Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia.

Yuri Milner is known for his creation and funding of Breakthrough Prizes, which award $3 million to researchers for achievements in the life sciences, physics, and mathematics. Also reported at Washington Post, NPR, El Reg, and Scientific American.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @06:59AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @06:59AM (#211791)

    Because he doesn't see a need for it.

    He could be like my workmate, who feels that all money spent on space research is wasted while we still have starving people and other problems at home. A foolish position to take.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @01:15PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @01:15PM (#211889)

    I consider it a waste not be cause 'i dont see a need for it'.

    I consider it a waste as at this time we do not even know what a 'signal' would look like. Look I used to crunch seti as a background screen saver. I have thousands of credits towards it. But I stopped doing it. It was a waste of my power bill and a waste of my time. Once you dug into what was really going on. They were looking only in part of the sky. Then only at particular bands. Then only for particular types of signals. All three of which seemed to be randomly picked on a 'hunch'.

    I get 'we are upgrading our telescopes to see more stuff'. But when it becomes 'we are looking for aliens' well you are just being sensationalist.

    We assume they are using radio. But maybe they have something else they use? We assume they even pointed it at us? From their POV we would look like a jungle wasteland. Relativity is a bitch and so is SNR.