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Stephen Hawking launches
biggest-ever search for alien life
BRITISH cosmologist Stephen Hawking has
launched the biggest-ever search for intelligent ex-
traterrestrial life in a 10-year, $135 million 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 extraterrestrial intelligent life. Professor Matthew Bailes, from Melbourne’s Swin-
“In an infinite universe, there must be other occur-
rences of life,” Mr. 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 ques-
tion. It’s time to commit to finding the answer, to search he said.
for life beyond Earth. We must know.”
The project will use some of the biggest telescopes
on Earth, searching far deeper into the universe than
before for radio spectrum and laser signals.
“We are launching the most comprehensive search
program ever,” Mr Milner said. The scan would col-
lect more data in one day than a year of any previous
search, tracking the million closest stars, the center of
the Milky Way and the 100 closest galaxies.
A signal from Andromeda, the nearest major galaxy,
would need only the power of two times the Three
Gorges Dam in China to reach Earth.
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Australia will play a crucial role in the project, with
the Parkes Observatory in New South Wales signing a
multi-million-dollar contract to scan radio waves for
life in the cosmos.
The CSIRO will contract a quarter of the telescope’s
time for five years to scan for potential radio signals
from galaxies beyond our reach.
burne University, will be the project’s lead investiga-
tor at the Parkes Telescope. “Radio waves are a very
efficient way of transmitting information and it’s likely
that aliens, if they’re into interstellar communication
at all, would be using the radio part of the spectrum,”
Cosmologist Professor Paul Davies from Arizona State
University has spent his career studying the question
of “what else is out there?” and is also excited by the
project. But he said there would be a number of big
questions to ask if the project did find intelligent life. It will scan at least five times more of the radio spec-
“Should we respond? Who gets to speak for us? What
do we do next?” he said.
“There are no easy answers to these but if we’re going
to engage in a dialogue with an alien civilization this is of the first manned Moon landing.
something that needs the consideration of everybody
on the planet.”
Possibility of finding aliens rises a billionfold
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.
The possibility of finding life had however effectively
risen a billionfold through the identification of billions
of Earth-like planets in the Milky Way, he said.
“Is there life out there? We may not answer it but this
gives a bigger chance that it may be answered in our
lifetime,” he said.
The program will be 50 times more sensitive than
previous searches, and cover 10 times more of the sky,
experts said.
trum, and 100 times faster, while in tandem undertake
the deepest and broadest-ever search for optical laser
transmissions.
The initiative was launched on the 46th anniversary
Wednesday, July 22 2015 - ARUBA TRAVELLER