Hunters of extraterrestrial intelligence are celebrating! Russian billionaire Yuri Milner financed SETI with $ 100 million.
During an event at the Royal Society in London earlier today, Yuri Milner, along with physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, announced a new funding initiative for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, to help locate life throughout universe.
Although several agencies and big names have from time to time devoted time and resources to the monitoring of electromagnetic radiation in transmissions, today's news marks one of the largest fundings SETI has received in its history.
This money, and during ten years, will be used to consolidate access to telescope Parkes in Australia, and at the Green Bank Telescope located in West Virginia. This access is largely restricted to SETI scientists, as these radio telescopes are in high demand throughout the wider astronomical community. In fact, scientists will have thousands of additional hours each year to use the telescopes.
To help raise public awareness, the project will organize a competition search of a digital message that best represents life on Earth, with a prize of $1.000.000 for the winner.
Hawking, who will be an adviser to the ambitious project, said he believes life emerged "spontaneously" on Earth, so there must be "other appearances" of life in the infinite universe.
Yuri Milner, on the other hand, is known for his investments in high-profile technology companies such as Groupon, Facebook, Flipkart, Alibaba, and Xiaomi.
