The famous British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking launched Monday, July 20 in London a program to observe the far reaches of space in search for extraterrestrial intelligent life. Supported by the Russian physicist and entrepreneur Yuri Milner, this ten-year project, called “Breakthrough Listen” and endowed with $ 100 million (€ 92 million), is presented as the most ambitious ever undertaken to find a sign of extraterrestrial intelligence.
“In an infinite universe, there must be evidence of life. Somewhere in the cosmos, perhaps, intelligent life looks “ said Stephen Hawking launch the program at the Royal Society Science Academy in London. “Either way, it is no greater question. It’s time to commit to finding the answer, to seek life beyond Earth. We need to know “, added the scientist, author of works on the expansion of the universe, black holes and the theory of relativity.
To carry out these research, the project will use the resources of the most powerful telescopes in an attempt to flush out the manifestation of an intelligent activity, such as a radio frequency or a laser beam. “Breakthrough Listen leads the search for intelligent life in the universe to a whole new level” , assured Yuri Milner, claiming that the project would collect more data in one day than previous searches in a year.
According to experts, the work area will be ten times higher than previous research, Listen and Breakthrough will detect a hundred times faster, at least five times more radio frequencies. Despite the resources committed, the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life, however, is “a huge gamble” , tempered one of the main leaders of the project, Professor Martin Rees of British astronomy.
Listen Breakthrough will be conducted in partnership with the project Message Breakthrough, an international competition to create messages allowing extraterrestrial intelligence to imagine what our humanity. At this stage, however, it is not expected to send messages into space, a topic that is debated among scientists.
“A civilization reading one of our messages could have billions of years ahead of us , said Stephen Hawking, aged 73. They would be far more powerful and could not give us more important than bacteria do for us. “ The astrophysicist had already emphasized earlier that human history provides many examples of tragic events for less advanced civilizations such as the Incas with the Spanish.
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