Yuri Milner’s $100 Million Search for Alien Life!

Russia is renowned for plenty of things. Its top shelf vodka, its icy cold winters, its powerful politicians, its beautiful women and of course, its filthy rich billionaires. Yuri Milner is the latest entrepreneur to make global headlines with his $100 million investment in what’s been pegged as one of the boldest, brashest and most exciting scientific endeavours the world has ever seen. While iconic physicists such as Stephen Hawking have played an integral role in supporting the project, everyday humans can also join the hard hitting hunt for extra-terrestrial life. How? Simply whip out a smartphone, tablet or PC and start contributing data to the Breakthrough Listen project.

Telescopes and telephones

As part of the 10 year project a pair of the world’s most powerful telescopes will collect colossal amounts of data. The instruments are based in the USA and Australia, and will tap into the frequencies of one million stars suspended in the Milky Way. They’ll encompass five times more of the radio spectrum than previously achieved, and do it 100 times faster! This goes hand in hand with mammoth amounts of data which will be processed at BOINC, the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing. The collaborative processing platform is hugely popular with astrophysics, mathematics and medicine endeavours, and now it’s set to help space scientists determine whether or not we’re “alone” in the universe. However without the manpower to analyse this data it will be relatively useless.

Breakthrough Listen is calling on the public to download a purpose built Android app that connects devices to the collaborative computing process when connected to a charger and a Wi-Fi network. After all, Milner wouldn’t want to leave owners with dead batteries and maxed out data plans!

"Our approach to data will be open and taking advantage of the problem-solving power of social networks," says Milner.

Power to the people

Representatives have also confirmed that they plan to collaborate with the wide reaching SETI@home initiative which draws on the spare computing power of over three million members across the globe.

Todd Thibodeaux, president of the tech industry association CompTIA explains that the public will play an integral role in the success of Breakthrough Listen.  "In searches such as this, the more eyes you can get on the prize the better," he says. "Harnessing the personal interests of possibly hundreds of thousands of people makes sense and couldn't be accomplished cost effectively any other way."

As technology advances the scientific community is continually faced with the issue of how to process big data. ‘Tackling Big Data Challenges in Bioscience’ looks at the latest £7.5 million infrastructural investment from the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) which is intended to help organisations and businesses benefit from the ever-increasing availability of large and complex datasets.