We are here.

Circling one star among hundreds of billions, in one galaxy among a hundred billion more, in a Universe that is vast and expanding ever faster – perhaps toward infinity. In the granular details of daily life, it’s easy to forget that we live in a place of astonishing grandeur and mystery.

The Breakthrough Initiatives are a program of scientific and technological exploration, probing the big questions of life in the Universe: Are we alone? Are there habitable worlds in our galactic neighborhood? Can we make the great leap to the stars? And can we think and act together – as one world in the cosmos?
Where is everybody?

So wondered the great physicist Enrico Fermi. The Universe is ancient and immense. Life, he reasoned, has had plenty of time to get started – and get smart. But we see no evidence of anything alive or intelligent in space. In the last five years, we have discovered that planets in the habitable zone of stars are common. Based on the numbers discovered so far, there are estimated to be billions more in our galaxy alone. Yet we are still in the dark about life. Are we really alone? Or are there others out there?
It’s one of the biggest questions. And only science can answer it.


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SETI@Home

SETI@home has been in operation continuously since 1999, and has attracted millions of participants in that time. Volunteers can sign up to get involved by going to http://seti.berkeley.edu/participate. Users of this free software donate their spare computer processing power to help analyze the vast streams of data gathered by astronomical searches for intelligent life.

The addition of data from Green Bank more than doubles the area of sky currently available to SETI@home volunteers. The commencement of observations at Parkes Observatory in October, will give volunteers access to the entire sky. As Breakthrough Listen dramatically expands the scope of the search, members of the public, even those without technical training, can participate in the excitement as we attempt to answer the question: Are we alone in the Universe?


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Breakthrough Initiatives is a program founded in 2015 and funded by Yuri Milner to search for extraterrestrial intelligence over a span of at least 10 years. The program is divided into multiple projects.

• Breakthrough Listen will comprise an effort to search over 1,000,000 stars for artificial radio or laser signals.
  


• Breakthrough Message is an effort to create a message representative of humanity and planet Earth.
  


• Breakthrough Starshot aims to send a swarm of probes to the nearest star at about 20% the speed of light.
  


• Breakthrough Watch aims to identify and characterize Earth-sized, rocky planets around Alpha Centauri and other stars within 20 light years of Earth.
  

The US$100 million cash infusion is projected to mark up the pace of SETI research over the early 2000s rate, and will nearly double the rate NASA was spending on SETI research annually in approximately 1973–1993.


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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrXeRK2B6z8

The Breakthrough Initiatives, a $100 million, 10-year multi-disciplinary effort to dramatically accelerate the search for intelligent life in the Universe, were announced July 20, 2015, by Yuri Milner and Stephen Hawking. Project leaders include Martin Rees, Frank Drake, Geoff Marcy, Pete Worden, Ann Druyan, Dan Werthimer and Andrew Siemion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7PbXMErWnk


Astronomer Jared Head takes a look at Breakthrough Initiatives, a group funded by Russian billionaires Yuri Milner, that's hunting for extraterrestrial communications and interstellar travel.

Search for life in the universe gets a $100 million boost


Are we alone in the universe? A new project called the Breakthrough Initiative may help scientists like Stephen Hawking get closer to the answer. Tech investor Yuri Milner pledged $100 million to help survey one million of the closest stars to Earth for signals from other forms of intelligent life. Gwen Ifill discusses the project with Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center.

We are here.

Circling one star among hundreds of billions, in one galaxy among a hundred billion more, in a Universe that is vast and expanding ever faster – perhaps toward infinity. In the granular details of daily life, it’s easy to forget that we live in a place of astonishing grandeur and mystery.

The Breakthrough Initiatives are a program of scientific and technological exploration, probing the big questions of life in the Universe: Are we alone? Are there habitable worlds in our galactic neighborhood? Can we make the great leap to the stars? And can we think and act together – as one world in the cosmos?


More. . .

Alien messages? AI breakthrough as HUNDREDS of deep space bursts discovered


Artificial intelligence has helped scientists find mysterious signals from deep space and experts hope it could help decipher whether the signals are a result of extra-terrestrial technology.

Researchers working on Breakthrough Listen – a major project which is scanning the stars in search of intelligent life – has said new software has helped astronomers scan through data to find a previously-hidden 72 bursts.

The original data came from 2017, when astronomers thought they had found 21 signals when combing through 400 terabytes of data.