EUROPE: The search for extraterrestrial intelligence elsewhere in the universe has leaped to prominence once again, with the announcement of the Breakthrough Listen initiative.
Announced this week and funded to the tune of US$100 million by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, it will be a high-risk, high-reward program searching for signals from intelligent aliens — definitive proof that we are not alone.
The idea that we might not be alone in the universe is not a new one. It has passed in and out of vogue for at least the last few centuries with past astronomers speculating on advanced life on our neighboring planets.
Could Mars have been home to a dying civilization, transporting water from polar ice caps to the warmer regions near the planet’s equator? Could a thriving biosphere have lurked beneath the clouds that cause Venus to shine so brightly in our night sky?
Astronomers eventually revealed planets that were far from the oases they might otherwise have been. Rather than a verdant tropical planet, Venus turned out to be a hellish, pressure-cooker world with a surface hot enough to melt lead. And Mars is a cold, arid, husk of a world, poorly suited to complex life.
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