Russian pledges $100M for alien search
Extending his idea of philanthropy beyond the earth and even the human species, Yuri Milner, the Russian Internet entrepreneur and founder of science giveaways, announced in London on Monday that he would spend at least $100 million in the next decade to search for signals from alien civilizations.
The money for Breakthrough Listen, as Milner calls the effort, is one of the biggest chunks of cash ever proffered for the so far fruitless quest for cosmic companionship known as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI. It will allow astronomers to see the kinds of radar used for air traffic control from any of the closest 1,000 stars, and to detect a laser with the power output of a common 100-watt light bulb from the distance of the nearest stars, some four light-years away, according to Milner’s team.
It also guarantees bounteous observing time on some of the world’s biggest radio telescopes — a rarity for SETI astronomers who are used to getting one night a year.
“It’s just a miracle,” said Frank Drake, an emeritus professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who joined Milner and others, including the cosmologist Stephen Hawking, in a news conference Monday at the Royal Society in London.
DanWerthimer, a longtime SETI researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, said, “This is beyond my wildest dreams.”
In a prepared statement at the announcement, Hawking said that atoms and the forces of nature and the dance of galaxies could explain the lights in the sky, but not the lights on Earth. “In an infinite universe there must be other occurrences of life,” he said. “Or do our lights wander a lifeless universe? Either way, there is no bigger question.”
Milner also announced a $1 million competition, called Breakthrough Message, to create messages that could be sent if we knew there was anybody out there to receive them.
U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez’s lawyers asked a federal judge Monday to throw out his corruption indictment, arguing that the Constitution protects the senator from being investigated for official actions and that some of the campaign contributions prosecutors call bribes have been deemed free speech by the Supreme Court.
Menendez and co-defendant Salomon Melgen also accuse prosecutors of misconduct for allegedly providing false testimony to the grand jury, and said grand jurors should have been screened for possible bias resulting from a “smear campaign” against the New Jersey senator in the year leading up to the indictment.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio rejected Uber’s calls to have a live debate about their differences Monday, saying he doesn’t debate private corporations.
The invitation from the San Francisco on-demand transportation company came after the New York City Council introduced a bill that would temporarily limit the number of new for-hire vehicle licenses the Taxi and Limousine Commission can issue.
If passed, the bill would effectively cap Uber’s and its competitors’ growth.