LONDON (AP) – The search for extraterrestrial life received a major boost Monday with the launch of an ambitious $100 million program, backed by famed physicist Stephen Hawking and tech billionaire Yuri Milner.
Combining unprecedented computing capacity with the world's most powerful telescopes, Hawking and the Russian-born Milner seek to intensify the so far fruitless search for life beyond the planet Earth.It is a coordinated plan to use the latest scientific methods to solve one of mankind's enduring riddles: Are we alone?
"The scope of our search will be unprecedented: a million nearby stars, the galactic center, the entire plane of the Milky Way and 100 nearby galaxies," Milner told a packed press conference at the Royal Society in London.
Organizers say the "Breakthrough Initiatives" project, also endorsed by other prominent British scientists, is the biggest ever scientific search for alien life. It includes a "listening" program – the effort to analyze vast amounts of radio signals in search of signs of life – and a "messaging" program that will include $1 million in prizes for digital messages that best represent the planet Earth.
The messages will not be sent, however, in part because some scientists – including Hawking – fear messages sent into space could possibly spur aggressive actions by alien races.
Milner said the search will be entirely transparent and will rely on open-source software so findings can be shared throughout the world.
"Our approach to data will be open and taking advantage of the problem-solving power of social networks," he said.
The researchers say the focused computing power and the use of some of the world's most powerful telescopes will allow them to collect in one day the same amount of data that would have taken one year to collect before the program began.
more http://www.scientificamerican.com/a...iative-to-seek-extraterrestrial-intelligence/
Combining unprecedented computing capacity with the world's most powerful telescopes, Hawking and the Russian-born Milner seek to intensify the so far fruitless search for life beyond the planet Earth.It is a coordinated plan to use the latest scientific methods to solve one of mankind's enduring riddles: Are we alone?
"The scope of our search will be unprecedented: a million nearby stars, the galactic center, the entire plane of the Milky Way and 100 nearby galaxies," Milner told a packed press conference at the Royal Society in London.
Organizers say the "Breakthrough Initiatives" project, also endorsed by other prominent British scientists, is the biggest ever scientific search for alien life. It includes a "listening" program – the effort to analyze vast amounts of radio signals in search of signs of life – and a "messaging" program that will include $1 million in prizes for digital messages that best represent the planet Earth.
The messages will not be sent, however, in part because some scientists – including Hawking – fear messages sent into space could possibly spur aggressive actions by alien races.
Milner said the search will be entirely transparent and will rely on open-source software so findings can be shared throughout the world.
"Our approach to data will be open and taking advantage of the problem-solving power of social networks," he said.
The researchers say the focused computing power and the use of some of the world's most powerful telescopes will allow them to collect in one day the same amount of data that would have taken one year to collect before the program began.
more http://www.scientificamerican.com/a...iative-to-seek-extraterrestrial-intelligence/
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