Breakthrough Listen

The Green Bank Telescope is one of the radio telescopes used by the project.

Breakthrough Listen is a project to search for intelligent extraterrestrial communications in the Universe.[1][2] With $100 million in funding and thousands of hours of dedicated telescope time on state-of-the-art facilities,[3] it is the most comprehensive search for alien communications to date.[1][2] The project began in January 2016, and is expected to continue for 10 years.[4] It is a component of Yuri Milner's Breakthrough Initiatives program. The science program for Breakthrough Listen is based at Berkeley SETI Research Center,[5][6] located in the Astronomy Department[7] at the University of California, Berkeley.

The project uses radio wave observations from the Green Bank Observatory and the Parkes Observatory, and visible light observations from the Automated Planet Finder.[8] Targets for the project include one million nearby stars and the centers of 100 galaxies. All data generated from the project are available to the public, and SETI@Home (BOINC) is used for some of the data analysis. The first results were published in April 2017, with further updates expected every 6 months.[6]

  1. ^ a b Merali, Zeeya (20 July 2015). "Search for extraterrestrial intelligence gets a $100-million boost. Russian billionaire Yuri Milner announces most comprehensive hunt for alien life". Nature. 523 (7561). Nature News: 392–3. Bibcode:2015Natur.523..392M. doi:10.1038/nature.2015.18016. PMID 26201576.
  2. ^ a b Rundle, Michael (20 July 2015). "$100m Breakthrough Listen is 'largest ever' search for alien civilisations". Wired. Retrieved 20 July 2015.
  3. ^ Chethan Kumar (August 31, 2017). "Breakthrough detects 15 radio bursts from dwarf galaxy; might be from 'alien' spacecraft". Times of India.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ "Berkeley SETI". seti.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 2017-09-21.
  6. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference :1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ "Breakthrough Listen Initiative – News from Department of Astronomy". astro.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 2017-09-21.
  8. ^ Sample, Ian (20 July 2015). "Anybody out there? $100m radio wave project to scan far regions for alien life". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 July 2015.