Russian funding ET mission to visit City

Days after announcing a $100-million fund to look for the extra terrestrials (ETs) in the depths of the universe, Russian internet investor Yuri Milner is likely to arrive in Bengaluru, presumably to inspire young Indian astronomers to join the search.

Milner, who set up the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, is likely to be in Bengaluru on August 5 or 6, sources told Deccan Herald. He may be accompanied by Pete Worden, chairman of the foundation and former director of Nasa Ames Research Centre.

His detailed programme is under the wraps. But in all likelihood, there would be an opportunity for Milner and Worden to talk to Indian researchers and encourage them to join the search. The duo heads the world’s biggest privately-funded initiative to search for extra terrestrial intelligence (SETI).

A week ago, the foundation committed $100 million over 10 years to the University of California, Berkeley and other institutions for Breakthrough Listen, the most comprehensive scientific SETI project yet.

A galaxy of top physicists like Stephen Hawking, Astronomer Royal Martin Rees, SETI research pioneer Frank Drake, former SETI institute director Jill Tartar and Caltech’s heavyweight Kip Thorne are associated with the initiative.

The foundation has already contracted with two of the world’s largest radio telescopes — the 100-metre Robert C Byrd Green Bank telescope in West Virginia and the 64-metre Parkes telescope in New South Wales, Australia — to devote major telescope time to searching for signals from other civilisations. The funding will also allow the Automated Planet Finder at the Lick Observatory near San Jose to search for optical laser signals from other planets.

“More telescopes may join the project in future,” said a statement from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia that owns the Parkes telescope.

In its early days, India’s own Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope (GMRT), located near Pune, had a project on the ET search under the pioneer astrophysicist Govind Swarup.

“But it didn't take off,” said a scientist from the National Centre on Radio Astrophysics, which runs the GMRT.

The $100 million, which Milner committed, would be spent on three fronts: To obtain more telescope time in these telescopes; development of better receiver technology and hiring of new scientists.

“Our search will be about a hundred times better than anything we’ve done before. This is beyond my wildest dreams,” said Dan Werthimer, who heads the world’s longest-running SETI project at the University of California, Berkley.

Werthimer predicts that dedicated telescope time will make SETI searches 50 times more sensitive and cover 10 times more sky, while new signal processors will be able to analyse five times the number of radio wavelengths, 100 times faster.