Stephen Hawking Announces Plan To Hunt For Alien Life

Stephen Hawking has held a news conference in London to announce his plans of investing $100 million into a project that aims to search for alien life.

The project, named Breakthrough Listen, will search for extraterrestrial life and will allow scientists to collect one year’s worth of data in just one day – in a move that Hawking hopes will speed up the search.

Washingtonpost.com reports:

“We believe that life arose spontaneously on Earth,” Hawking said at Monday’s news conference, “So in an infinite universe, there must be other occurrences of life.”

Geoffrey Marcy, a University of California, Berkeley, astronomer who found most of our first exoplanets, also spoke at the event as part of the group’s brain trust.

The universe is apparently bulging at the seams with the ingredients of biology,” Marcy explained. Indeed, Marcy and other scientists have found a surprising number of Earth-like exoplanets in recent years — rocky planets the right distance from their suns to support water — suggesting that life as we know it is at least possible, if not probable, all over the universe.

That being said, the group of esteemed scientists gathered on Monday didn’t make any bold claims about immediately hunting down intelligent life-forms — or ever finding them at all, for that matter. But the likelihood of success is about to shoot up exponentially, because right now we’re barely trying.

Read more:
http://yournewswire.com/stephen-hawking-announces-plan-to-hunt-for-alien-life/


interesting! I hope I hear news of something in my lifetime....

Seems to be a lot of uproar over the fact that Hawking also thinks advanced alien life could wipe us out pretty easily and would likely have incentive to do so. However, this project isn't sending anything out from Earth that would help an alien species find us -- and we already beam electromagnetic waves constantly into outer space.

How do you know all this.....? Are you a secret...............ALIEN?!!

eddie wrote:How do you know all this.....? Are you a secret...............ALIEN?!!

I just think it's funny, people criticising Hawking for looking for intelligent aliens -- "Don't let them find us!" -- when we constantly send radio signals into space, creating a 200-light-year-wide "bubble" of radio frequencies all around Earth.

However, that's not really very big compared to just our galaxy:



So just a tiny spot, but at the same time, we have never tried to hide from alien species

I hide all the time. Behind tin foil and egg boxes.
They haven't found me yet and don't you tell them!

I would love to se the day we actually can see other life somewhere. I bet they're all just human-looking and we will all go "Pffffff! Seen it all before mate!"

eddie wrote:I hide all the time. Behind tin foil and egg boxes.
They haven't found me yet and don't you tell them!

I would love to se the day we actually can see other life somewhere. I bet they're all just human-looking and we will all go "Pffffff! Seen it all before mate!"

I'm telling everyone back on Omicron Persei 8 as soon as I get this thing working:

That is.....awesome.

Ben_Reilly wrote:Seems to be a lot of uproar over the fact that Hawking also thinks advanced alien life could wipe us out pretty easily and would likely have incentive to do so. However, this project isn't sending anything out from Earth that would help an alien species find us -- and we already beam electromagnetic waves constantly into outer space.

there is actually earth related examples of just this happening

war of the worlds is also a good analogy

however i suspect any advanced alien life would not use radio wave for long distance communication (to slow)more likely something like a antitelephone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyonic_antitelephone

there is a school of thought that any advanced aliens would communicate using THOUGHT.

there are two possibilities which come to a similar conclusion

firstly that thought is a 4th order effect, existing outside of our 3 dimensional universe and not subject therfore to the effects of time

secondly that tought is a "zeroth" order effect which therfore exists in all times at all places (its everywhere and nowhere baby)

in either case since thought is by its nature immaterial and massless it can have the ridiculous property of infinite speed and at the same time NOT be subject to the distance squared "power loss associated with radio and other physical means of communication.


just a thought from the "hairy fringes of physics"

Hmmm. I reckon they all look like us and we will be well disappointed when they come over for a cup of tea and a few hob nobs.

"So...erm, John? What's it like on Planet Frogturd then?"

"It's erm...well my front room is slightly larger than yours mate, but it's pretty much the same"

"Oh. Right."

"Pass me a hob nob....please Dave"

eddie wrote:Hmmm. I reckon they all look like us and we will be well disappointed when they come over for a cup of tea and a few hob nobs.

"So...erm, John? What's it like on Planet Frogturd then?"

"It's erm...well my front room is slightly larger than yours mate, but it's pretty much the same"

"Oh. Right."

"Pass me a hob nob....please Dave"

"f**k off you green b'stard"

I am not green I'm a shade of lime!

Its ALWAYS about YOU innit

victorismyhero wrote:

Its ALWAYS about YOU innit      

Pas me a hobnob

eddie wrote:Hmmm. I reckon they all look like us and we will be well disappointed when they come over for a cup of tea and a few hob nobs.

"So...erm, John? What's it like on Planet Frogturd then?"

"It's erm...well my front room is slightly larger than yours mate, but it's pretty much the same"

"Oh. Right."

"Pass me a hob nob....please Dave"

only if there looking for a new engine

korban dallas wrote:

eddie wrote:Hmmm. I reckon they all look like us and we will be well disappointed when they come over for a cup of tea and a few hob nobs.

"So...erm, John? What's it like on Planet Frogturd then?"

"It's erm...well my front room is slightly larger than yours mate, but it's pretty much the same"

"Oh. Right."

"Pass me a hob nob....please Dave"

only if there looking for a new engine

Ben_Reilly wrote:Seems to be a lot of uproar over the fact that Hawking also thinks advanced alien life could wipe us out pretty easily and would likely have incentive to do so. However, this project isn't sending anything out from Earth that would help an alien species find us -- and we already beam electromagnetic waves constantly into outer space.

I don't know why
it's the most obvious thing ever
Life consumes life
literally this is what has happened every time any new species has arrived on a new Continent on earth

@ben

have you heard Ziltoid (deven townsend)

veya_victaous wrote:

Ben_Reilly wrote:Seems to be a lot of uproar over the fact that Hawking also thinks advanced alien life could wipe us out pretty easily and would likely have incentive to do so. However, this project isn't sending anything out from Earth that would help an alien species find us -- and we already beam electromagnetic waves constantly into outer space.

I don't know why
it's the most obvious thing ever
Life consumes life
literally this is what has happened every time any new species has arrived on a new Continent on earth

That was exactly my point VV although as my war of the worlds analogy shows ....it can work Both ways

veya_victaous wrote:@ben

have you heard Ziltoid (deven townsend)

A little theatrical, but I like how he makes the guitars sound like engines

Reminds me a little of this track, which incorporates music from the Total Recall remake -- I always thought it sounded like machinery:

veya_victaous wrote:

Ben_Reilly wrote:Seems to be a lot of uproar over the fact that Hawking also thinks advanced alien life could wipe us out pretty easily and would likely have incentive to do so. However, this project isn't sending anything out from Earth that would help an alien species find us -- and we already beam electromagnetic waves constantly into outer space.

I don't know why
it's the most obvious thing ever
Life consumes life
literally this is what has happened every time any new species has arrived on a new Continent on earth

I don't think his view on that is controversial, just that people know he thinks that and yet he's funding this search for ET life -- they think somehow he's inviting them by looking for them, I guess.

Ben_Reilly wrote:

veya_victaous wrote:

Ben_Reilly wrote:Seems to be a lot of uproar over the fact that Hawking also thinks advanced alien life could wipe us out pretty easily and would likely have incentive to do so. However, this project isn't sending anything out from Earth that would help an alien species find us -- and we already beam electromagnetic waves constantly into outer space.

I don't know why
it's the most obvious thing ever
Life consumes life
literally this is what has happened every time any new species has arrived on a new Continent on earth

I don't think his view on that is controversial, just that people know he thinks that and yet he's funding this search for ET life -- they think somehow he's inviting them by looking for them, I guess.

(not at you at people)
we are very noisy in our little corner of the galaxy.

eddie wrote:

victorismyhero wrote:

Its ALWAYS about YOU innit      

Pas me a hobnob

You know, it just occurred to me that any alien who came to Earth would be a ... foreigner.

So I urgently urge you to pull up the song "Urgent" by Foreigner. I love this part:

"It gets so urgent
So urgent
You know it's urgent
I wanna tell you it's the same for me
So oh oh urgent
Just you wait and see
How urgent our love can be
It's urgent"

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh????

I find that overtly sexual and very forward of you.

Stalker.