Stephen Hawking and Russian Billionaire Start $100 Million Search For Aliens

An anonymous reader writes: Stephen Hawking is joining forces with Russian billionaire Yuri Milner to start a $100 million effort to search the skies for signs of alien life. The initiative is called Breakthrough Listen, which will pay for large amounts of access to the Green Bank Telescope and the Parkes Telescope to scan the skies for signals over the next 10 years. They say the search will be 50 times more sensitive than previous attempts, cover 10 times more of the sky, and scan a greater portion of the radio spectrum 100x faster. They add, "All data will be open to the public. This will likely constitute the largest amount of scientific data ever made available to the public. The Breakthrough Listen team will use and develop the most powerful software for sifting and searching this flood of data. All software will be open source." The project is also supported by Frank Drake, Ann Druyan, and Lord Martin Rees.

Comments

Awesome!

[aaaaaaargh!]

Finally some Russian billionaire who puts his money to good use. (No, I'm not joking.)

Futile search?

[Theovon]

My understanding has been that we should expect a civilization to use radio broadcasts that radiate out and which we can distinguish from noise for only maybe 100 or so years. Prior to that, they've not invented radio. After some point, all transmissions are compressed and/or encrypted so that they're harder to distingush from noise. And at some point, transmissions may be done via other media, such as point-to-point lasers and even things we haven't discovered yet. The likelihood is that all over civilizations have started at different points and progressed differently, so we've likely missed that window on all other civilizations.

Re:Futile search?

[Rei]

The speed of light also comes into play in the Fermi Paradox. It's quite possible that for a billion years there's been a vast galactic scale civilization in the universe emitting copious amounts of readily-identifiable radiation. But if that galaxy is more than a billion light years away, it would be physically impossible for us to see them.

There's lots of things about the universe that would make it hard for advanced lifeforms to spot each other unless they're close.

And I fully agree about our own solar system (although I personally think Mars is a terrible place to look and Europa is overrated). There's so many "worlds" in our solar system with fluids (including water, although I wouldn't be so bold as to say that it's a requirement for all life) and energy sources to harness. Organic chemicals seem very common too, even complex ones.

Of all of the bodies in the solar system, I think Enceladus has the best potential payoff in terms of "dollars vs. chance of finding evidence of life". Namely because you don't even have to land on it to do a sample return (but if you do want to land on it for better sample collection, it takes little energy to take off again). And because it emits its internal sea straight up into space. And its internal sea has interesting properties - namely, it's a hyperbasic sea caused by serpentinization of its rocky core, which is a process that also releases hydrogen, giving a potential fuel source to hydrogen-metabolizing life.

That said, my dream mission is still a Titan sample collection/return mission using an RTG-powered rotary nacelle craft to fly in hops all across the planet over the course of a year, recharging its flight batteries overnight on the surface and taking small samples from every potential terrain - dune fields, rivers, the various seas, cryovolcanoes, etc. It would then re-dock with its ascent stage (single solid stage similar to a small Pegasus stage), lift the ascent stage out of the atmosphere (to reduce drag) and as fast as possible until it's drained its flight batteries (which would happen quickly with the added load), ditch all unneeded weight and fire the ascent stage to re-dock with the ion-powered orbiter that got it there. The orbiter, having spent the past year skimming the outer layers of Titan's atmosphere for return propellant that doubles as an atmospheric sample return, would then return to Earth, possibly skimming Enceladus's plumes and Saturn's atmosphere on the way for more sample returns.

No question that would be a flagship mission, though, requiring two RTGs and three stages. An Enceladus-only return could probably be done on Discovery or New Frontiers budget (probably the latter).

Hope they fund Fast Radio Burst searches as well

[DumbSwede]

We currently have a list of 11 FRBs (Fast Radio Bursts), two of them are almost certainly from the same source, FRB 110220 and FRB 140514, as can be seen from their detected locations.

I posted in my journal we should be on the look out for a repeat on August 6, 2017 (if from an intelligent source), however it could be any integer fraction of 1179 days and 15 hours added to May 14, 2014 if we missed some pulses.

I also find it odd we haven’t nabbed any new pulses since 2014, when we are searching more closely for them.

Re:100 million quest to waste 100 million

[rubycodez]

No one with a brain would use microwaves, optical SETI is far more efficient and the logical choice. For a picosecond, a source can out shine the local star and transmit an obvious artificial pattern. The whole spectrum from infrared to ultraviolet can be monitored at once too

Hawking?

[jbmartin6]

At first I was going to ask the doubters why Hawking would be involved if the project was so dubious, but after RTFA it is very unclear what Hawking has to do with it. He is quoted making several comments about SETI in general but nothing specific about this project. He isn't listed as a project leader. The closes I found was this quote "I strongly support the Breakthrough Initiatives and the search for extraterrestrial life.". It seems like they stuck his name in the headline for the prestige effect.

Re:Hawking?

[wonkey_monkey]

He was on stage at the official launch, so at the very least he's happily lending his name of his own free will.

Mind you, we've only got that computer of his's word for it, and who knows when that became self-aware...

Re:Dumb idea

[sherr]

Listening to a radio telescope in no way helps aliens find us.

Re:100 million quest to waste 100 million

[Rei]

It's a serious point. Our own radio signals are probably indistinguishable from background noise from Alpha Centauri, and they're actually reducing with time, not increasing.

Rather than than looking for "stray radio communication" (you really think an advanced society is going to lose lots of energy to stray communications?), we should either be striving for extreme optical / UV resolution (satellite-based interferometer telescope) so that we can spatially resolve surface spectra on extrasolar planets in our area to look for signs of life; and in general look for signs of energy release that might be associated with interstellar travel, such as antimatter annihilation, directed thrust, solar sail reflection, etc.

IMHO.

I thought Hawking said we should avoid aliens...

[netsavior]

previous article...
'I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach. ... If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans.' Personally, I've always thought that the indigenous people of the world really had no chance to avoid contact here on such a small planet, but is hiding under our collective bed an option for humanity in the wider galaxy?" - Stephen Hawking