A Russian billionaire launches a science project of unprecedented scale in an attempt to identify extraterrestrial life signs.
Are we alone in the universe? This is the agonizing question that Russian millionaire Yuri Milner, 557th fortune the world according to Forbes in 2015, hopes to meet by dedicating $ 100 million (€ 92 million) of his fortune to a scientific project of an unprecedented scale. Presented Monday in London by famous British scientist Stephen Hawking, the “Breakthrough Listen” will mobilize over 10 years leading experts and best instruments to capture potential alien signals.
Experts believe that the improved sensitivity of the telescopes and their computing power would increase by 100 the tracking capabilities of the signals compared to 90 years before the drastic reduction of the US program means search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). These new resources are a cover of Heaven 10 times higher and a radio wave spectrum analysis five times what had been achieved so far, the daily The Times .
The considerable cost of this research is explained in particular by expenditures to book the telescopes. Two sites that are among the most sophisticated monitoring tools in the world have the characteristics required for this purpose: the observatory Parks Australia and the Astronomical Observatory of Virginia radio waves in the United States. The research plan is planning to spend their time of use to monitor extraterrestrial signals 2 days to 2 months per year on each of these telescopes.
“Humanity has a deep need to explore, to learn, to know. It is important for us to know if we are alone in the dark, “said Stephen Hawking during the presentation conference Monday project. The scientist does not preclude finding in other forms of extraterrestrial life the same violent tendencies as those of our species. “A civilization able to read our messages could be billions of years ahead of us. In this case, their supremacy could lead them to consider us as insignificant as bacteria, “he says.
Another scenario, civilization that we could receive the signals could be long extinct. Indeed, the gap between the emission and the arrival of a radio signal to the telescopes can go back several centuries to millennia. For example, light from the star Proxima Centauri, the closest to our solar system takes about 4 years to reach us. Similarly, an alien civilization might capture our signals in several thousands of years.
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