One of the pioneering Breakthrough Initiatives, Breakthrough Listen, recently announced a collaboration with the MeerKAT Observatory in South Africa that will drastically expand the search for alien civilizations.
The man behind the Breakthrough Initiatives is Israeli billionaire Yuri Milner. A tech investor and Giving Pledge signatory, Yuri Milner backs various projects that champion scientific discoveries and the work of top scientists. His 2021 short book, Eureka Manifesto, is a stirring call to action, arguing that humanity should embrace its mission “to explore and understand the Universe.”
The Truth Is Out There
Are we alone in the cosmos? The truth is out there — and while the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) hasn’t always had the funding or credibility it deserved, things have changed since Yuri Milner and Stephen Hawking launched Breakthrough Listen in 2015.
Listen is a $100 million research project that leads the search for evidence of technological life in the Universe. The project uses cutting-edge equipment and powerful telescopes, like the Green Bank Telescope in the U.S. and the Parkes Telescope in Australia, to listen for unusual radio signals from possible advanced alien civilizations.
Listen has now announced a partnership with MeerKAT — the biggest radio telescope in the Southern Hemisphere, with 64 individual dishes.
The partnership will increase the number of targets for Listen to search by 1,000 times. Dr. Cherry Ng, Breakthrough Listen’s Project Scientist for MeerKAT, expressed her excitement at the prospect of using one of the most sensitive telescopes in the world.
“It will take us just two years to search over one million nearby stars,” Ng explained. “MeerKAT will provide us with the ability to detect a transmitter akin to Earth’s brightest radio beacons out to a distance of 250 light-years in our routine observing mode.”
Yuri Milner’s Breakthrough Initiatives
Aside from Listen, there are four other Breakthrough Initiatives, each with a unique scope and mission:
Watch is a program searching for planets that could host alien life.
1. Starshot is a program working on the design of an interstellar nanocraft.
2. Discuss is a space science conference for academics.
3. Message is an international contest to devise memoranda that could help humanity communicate with an alien civilization.
The Breakthrough Initiatives receive funding through the Breakthrough Foundation, an organization that Yuri Milner and his wife Julia established to fulfill their Giving Pledge commitment.
Giving Pledge
Back in 2012, the Milners signed Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates’ Giving Pledge. The Giving Pledge is a way for the ultra-wealthy and influential to donate large personal sums to good causes.
For their Giving Pledge, the Milners chose to mainly give their support to areas of science philanthropy, which they offer through the Breakthrough Foundation and Initiatives.
Eureka Manifesto
In his book, Eureka Manifesto, Yuri Milner shares his views on humanity’s place in the Universe and highlights the importance of a common goal that could bring us together.
“Any organization that is serious about doing something significant has a mission,” he writes in Eureka Manifesto. “But human civilization, as a whole, has nothing resembling a shared mission. In the long term, that means we cannot thrive — or probably even survive.”
He suggests embracing a mission to explore and better understand our Universe. Part of that mission involves finding answers to some of science’s most pressing conundrums, including discovering whether humans are the sole intelligent beings in the vast cosmos. There’s no concrete answer yet, but Listening is on the job. Watch this space.
