Yuri Milner’s Breakthrough Listen Program Announces New Telescope to Join Search for Alien Life

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A search for extraterrestrial signals that uses the biggest radio telescope in the Southern Hemisphere is underway. Breakthrough Listen, one of Yuri Milner’s pioneering Breakthrough Initiatives, has partnered with the MeerKAT array in South Africa to observe over a million stars in hope of finding evidence of alien life.

A billionaire science investor who signed the Giving Pledge in 2012, Milner writes about the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) in his short book Eureka Manifesto. 

Here’s how the new partnership between Listen and MeerKAT will advance what Milner calls humanity’s mission: “to explore and understand our Universe.”

Are We Alone in the Universe?

Throughout human history, we have gazed at the stars and wondered: Are we alone? Whether the answer is yes or no, either would revolutionise our understanding of the Universe. Breakthrough Listen is attempting to find the answer.

There have been various SETI enterprises over the years, but Listen is the largest-ever scientific research programme searching for proof of civilisations beyond Earth. Launched in 2015 by Milner and Stephen Hawking, the programme includes a survey of the one million closest stars to Earth and one hundred of our closest galaxies.

Listen is surveying these stars and galaxies using the world’s most powerful telescopes (which are 50 times more sensitive than other SETI-dedicated telescopes) to detect “technosignatures” — radio signals that could indicate the existence of extraterrestrial life.

Listen recently added a new telescope to its toolkit in the form of the MeerKAT array, part of the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO). Located in the remote Karoo region of South Africa, MeerKAT expands Listen’s number of targets searched by a factor of 1,000.

How Listen Will Use the MeerKAT Array

It’s taken three years for Listen’s astronomers and engineers to develop digital instrumentation (the most powerful ever deployed in the hunt for technosignatures) and integrate the equipment into the MeerKAT systems. SARAO engineers helped complete the installation.

The new hardware will complement the programme’s ongoing searches using the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in the United States, the Parkes Telescope in Australia, and other telescopes across the planet. Listen’s programmes at these telescopes involve mechanically moving dishes, typically weighing over one thousand tonnes, to point at cosmic targets, like stars, across the sky.

MeerKAT is different: The array comprises 64 dishes, and each can point at a different target. So, Listen’s digital programme will rarely need to move the dishes. Together, the 64 dishes can see an area of the sky that is 50 times larger than the GBT can see at one time.

Breakthrough Listen Principal Investigator Dr. Andrew Siemion explained that such a large field of view could contain many stars (interesting technosignature targets for Listen). The project’s new supercomputer enables the team to combine signals from all 64 dishes, producing high-resolution scans of cosmic targets with exceptional accuracy.

Plus, Listen’s team can use the telescope without getting in the way of other astronomers who are using the array for research. This “commensal” method of operating allows Listen to access one of Earth’s most sensitive radio telescopes nearly 24/7. MeerKAT’s unique combination of sensitivity and survey speed makes it the ideal telescope for SETI.

Leading the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Being able to scan 64 targets at once within a main field of view improves Listen’s chances of counting out any interfering, man-made signals. The programme is careful not to confuse noise from human technology, such as Earth-orbiting satellites, with genuine extraterrestrial technosignatures.

Listen’s team developed sophisticated scheduling and targeting software to ensure they could meet the survey goals in the desired timeframe. They also engineered an automated data-processing pipeline that is capable of scanning the data in almost real time to find any interesting signals.

The project’s rigorous research standards have helped SETI gain credibility as a serious scientific field. The hunt for life in the Universe has become a major focus of international research in recent years, with Listen and the other Breakthrough Initiatives leading the way.

Listen and SARAO are also partnering to create research opportunities for African astronomers and data-processing experts. SARAO Chief Scientist Dr. Fernando Camilo has expressed his excitement at the idea of young South Africans getting the chance to join the cutting-edge programme at the forefront of SETI.

Using MeerKAT, it will take Listen just two years to search more than one million nearby stars. With the power of the South African array, Listen will be able to detect a transmitter that is equal to Earth’s brightest radio beacons up to 250 light years away. The Listen team looks forward to sharing the first results in the coming months.

The Breakthrough Initiatives

Amongst the first targets of the new search is Proxima Centauri, Earth’s nearest neighbouring star, located in the Alpha Centauri system. Two small, rocky planets appear to orbit Proxima Centauri inside the star’s habitable zone. The characteristics of these planets could make them good candidates for alien-inhabited worlds, so it’s logical to point MeerKAT’s dishes in their direction.

Breakthrough Watch, another of Milner’s Breakthrough Initiatives, is busy identifying and characterising similar “exo-Earths” around Alpha Centauri and other stars within 20 light years of Earth. Exo-Earths are rocky, Earth-sized planets basking in their stars’ habitable zones. Liquid water — and so perhaps life — could exist in these conditions.

Most stars have planets, and tens of billions of these exo-Earths exist in the Milky Way alone. If Watch finds any habitable planets, they could be great targets for Listen but also Breakthrough Starshot.

Co-founded by Milner, Hawking, and Mark Zuckerberg, Starshot plans to engineer and send miniature space probes to Alpha Centauri to capture images of the system’s planets. One day, such nanocraft might travel at approximately 20% of the speed of light, or up to 100 million miles an hour, attached to sails and propelled by beams of light.

Besides Listen, Watch, and Starshot, the other Breakthrough Initiatives are Breakthrough Message and Breakthrough Discuss. Message is a competition open to anyone to craft a message that aliens could understand. Discuss is an annual academic conference focused on novel ideas for space exploration and life in the Universe.

We Must Explore Our Universe

The Breakthrough Initiatives have sprung from a public promise that Yuri Milner and his wife Julia made in 2012 to donate to science. The Milners signed the Giving Pledge, a movement encouraging individuals to donate the majority of their wealth to good causes.

After signing Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge, the Milners established the Breakthrough Foundation. Through this organisation, the couple funds the Breakthrough Prize, the Breakthrough Junior Challenge, and the Breakthrough Initiatives.

In his Giving Pledge letter, Yuri Milner suggested that gaining a greater understanding of the Universe through scientific discoveries can fulfil our “human urge to know” and enrich us all. 

Nearly 10 years later, the science philanthropist published a book expanding his ideas about humanity and our place in the Universe. In Eureka Manifesto: The Mission for Our Civilisation, Milner argues that humanity lacks a unifying mission. Where do we turn to for a common goal that could bring Earth’s inhabitants together? To the stars, of course — those same stars that Listen is patiently observing.

Milner acknowledges that we can’t all be scientific geniuses or contribute millions of dollars to astronomy programmes. Still, everyone can advance the mission to explore and understand our Universe in their way.

Artists, writers, musicians, architects, technologists — anyone who contributes to the progress of civilisation or embraces the adventurous spirit of Eureka Manifesto — can help drive humanity to a brighter future.

About Yuri Milner

Yuri Milner is the founder of DST Global, a prominent investment company focused on internet technologies. The company’s portfolio has included Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Spotify, Airbnb, Snapchat, and Alibaba.

Through the Breakthrough Foundation, Milner and his wife support various projects that support leading researchers in science and mathematics, spread scientific ideas amongst younger generations, and invest in pioneering space programmes.

In 2012, the Milners partnered with Anne Wojcicki, Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan, and Mark Zuckerberg to establish the Breakthrough Prize. The world’s largest scientific award, the Breakthrough Prize honours important achievements in Fundamental Physics, Mathematics, and Life Sciences.

In 2015, Milner joined Stephen Hawking to launch the Breakthrough Initiatives, a suite of space science programmes that investigate the fundamental questions of life in our Universe. Thanks to an injection of $100 million in funding through the Breakthrough Foundation, Breakthrough Listen has reinvigorated SETI and produced extensive surveys of the sky.

In 2021, Milner published the short book Eureka Manifesto to share his views on humanity’s place in the Universe and our role in its future.