Billionaire’s Huge New Alien-Hunting Project To Scan Stars For Life Next Year
A Russian billionaire has spent $100 million on the project
In the next few months, alien-hunters will begin scanning distant stars for signals of life - in the biggest new initiative in the hunt for E.T. in years.
After years of low funding, the SETI researchers (Search For Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) have been backed with $100 million by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner.
Dan Werthimer, one of the founders of the famous SETI@Home experiment - which allowed home users to use PCs to search for life, is behind the new Breakthrough Listen project.
Werthimer says, ‘NASA recently decided that they will no longer fund SETI experiments. So we are very fortunate.’
From February, the researchers will ‘listen’ using the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.
The researchers also aim to observe the skies using radio telescopes at Australia’s Parkes Observatory.
Werthimer says, ‘There’s a huge amount of money going to the development of instrumentation that we bring to these telescopes.’
