Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, one of the first people to invest in Facebook and Twitter, has just announced plans to spend $100 million to “hunt” for extraterrestrial civilizations.
Bloomberg on July 20 reported that Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and cosmologist Stephen Hawking had just announced the “breakthrough listening” project, the largest scientific project to search for extraterrestrial life to date.
Mr. Milner, a 53-year-old billionaire, has made billions of dollars investing in internet companies, including billionaire Jack Ma’s Alibaba. But Mr. Milner always had an interest in astronomy.
“We are committed to bringing Silicon Valley approaches to the search for intelligent life in the universe,” said billionaire Milner. Our approach to data will be public and leverage the problem-solving strengths of social networks.”
Led by a team of researchers from the University of California, Berkeley (USA), the project will last 19 years and use two of the most modern telescopes in the world: the Green Bank telescope in the US. West Virginia (USA) and Parkes telescope in New South Wales (Australia).
The project involves surveying millions of stars close to Earth, 10 times the range of sky surveys of previous research programs. Leading the above program are scientists such as Martin Rees – British Royal Astronomer, Frank Drake – emeritus professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California.
In addition, billionaire Milner also announced a second project called “breakthrough message”. This project pledges $1 million to those who create digital messages that can send messages into space representing humanity and planet Earth.
