Professor Stephen Hawking has helped to launch a major new effort to answer the question of whether there is life elsewhere in space.
The Breakthrough Initiatives venture is said to be the biggest yet in support of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
The $100 million, 10-year effort - dubbed 'Breakthrough Listen' - will listen for broadcast signals from a million of the stars closest to Earth.
It will utilise two of the world's most powerful telescopes - the Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia and Robert C Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, USA.
The team behind the project say they will search 10 times more of the sky than previous projects, and will scan at least five times more of the radio spectrum.
Professor Hawking - who launched the project alongside technology investor Yuri Milner and a number of prominent scientists working on the search for extraterrestrial life - explained the importance of the venture:
A 'Breakthrough Message' competition will also be launched, encouraging members of the public to submit digital messages to "represent humanity and planet Earth". There will be a prize pool worth $1,000,000.
Frank Drake - one of the pioneers of the SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) movement - said, “right now there could be messages from the stars flying right through the room, through us all. That still sends a shiver down my spine. The search for intelligent life is a great adventure. And Breakthrough Listen is giving it a huge lift.
“We’ve learned a lot in the last fifty years about how to look for signals from space. With the Breakthrough Initiatives, the learning curve is likely to bend upward significantly," he added.
