This Billionaire Pledges 100 Million US Dollars to Discover the Life in Space

 WWN - Is there life outside of Earth have long been a question in the minds of many people, including Yuri Milner, who on Monday (20/07/2015) announced that he plans to spend 100 million US dollars (or US $ 1.3 trillion) to find the answer.

By using radio telescopes in the world, a team of scientists who have been Milner will lead the initiative that he called Breakthrough Listen for the next 10 years to look for radio signals that may indicate the existence of intelligent life in space. 

"It is a question of technology most interesting for our generation," Milner said in an interview, when she reveal his interest in extraterrestrial life that began when she was 10 years old after reading the book Intelligent Life in the Universe works of Carl Sagan.
 

Funds to finance the project comes from its investments are wise to various companies, such as Facebook, in the early years of the company.

Milner motivation comes from his belief that civilizations beyond Earth might be able to teach people how to cope with various challenges, such as the allocation of natural resources.
 

The project is greater than most other similar projects. Around the world, just less than 2 million dollars per year is spent on the search for extraterrestrial life (SETI), according to Dan Werthimer, an adviser to the project Milner and astrophysicists who heads the SETI @ home project in collaboration with the University of California at Berkeley.

Scientists say, with increasingly sophisticated technology, including the computer and telescope, 100 million dollars will impact a lot more now than in the 1990s, when the last time SETI obtain large amounts of funds.

Advances in technology also allows scientists to monitor billions of radio frequencies at the same time.However, any signal that would be caught by scientists possibilities created many years ago, or even centuries-old culture and thousands of years ago.

It takes four years for a radio signal to move out of the earth and the closest star outside our solar system.In 10 years, with funding of 100 million is, Milner estimates that scientists can listen to the transmission in the Milky Way, and 100 nearby galaxies.

One of the biggest costs is to hire radio telescopes, including the Parkes Observatory in New South Wales, Australia, and the Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. Milner is planning to hire two months per year at each location. Scientists usually only got a chance two days of observation with a telescope.

This team, led by scientists such as Peter Worden, who earlier this year led the NASA Ames Research Center, will draw up radio signals that they found, released the data to the public, and examine the data to look for specific patterns.

The members of the research team will seek to understand these signals in determining whether they are sent by a life similar to humans and not from natural phenomena.Scientists say the fact that human beings create with radio signal transmission likely to make another life as well use it.

"It does not indicate anything about the civilization, but it shows that these civilizations exist," said Frank Drake, who along with Carl Sagan sends the first message into space in 1972 in flight Drake spacecraft Pioneer 10 became an adviser to the project's space Milner.

In addition to track the radio signals, Listen Breakthrough will also be looking for a signal light using the Lick Observatory telescope in California.

Milner announced this new initiative project in London accompanied by a number of leading scientists, including Stephen Hawking, who became an adviser to the project.
 

Milner who has a degree in physics to become a millionaire with another investor's interest in space, such as Space X executive Elon Musk, who said that someday he wanted to rule Mars.