Yuri Milner’s Breakthrough Listen Initiative: The Search for Alien Civilizations

In the decades following the 20th-century space race, it seemed space exploration and the subject as a whole had lost some of its charm. Lack of interest from governments and private investors meant dwindling funds, and the once-bright lure of the cosmos seemed to burn low in the public consciousness. However, in the last few years, the tech investor and science philanthropist Yuri Milner has fanned the flames of the space science sector, reinvigorating the field with a much-needed injection of financing and insight. 

Breakthrough Listen, one of Milner's Breakthrough Initiatives and a project he co-founded with the late Stephen Hawking, has announced several partnerships with some of the world's biggest telescopes, across five continents, extending the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) into new stretches of the Universe and reframing the parameters for what the program hopes to find: extragalactic "technosignatures" proving the existence of alien civilizations.

The Spark

Growing up in the 1960s, Milner read Intelligent Life in the Universe by astronomers Carl Sagan and Iosif Shklovsky. The book sparked a lifelong passion for the subject that, along with some of science's other big questions, inspired Milner to study physics at the postgraduate level. After graduating in 1985 with an advanced degree in theoretical physics, the physicist went on to research quantum field theory but soon realized his talents lay elsewhere.

Milner put aside science and switched to business, moving to the U.S. to study at Philadelphia's Wharton School. The move paid off: Milner went on to found a successful internet company in 1999 and, after taking the firm public in 2010, he launched DST Global, hoping to focus on global internet investments. Sure enough, DST Global became one of the planet's leading tech investors, with an enviable portfolio of clients, including Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Spotify, Airbnb, and Alibaba.

The Giving Pledge and the Breakthrough Foundation

In 2012, Milner and his wife joined Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates' Giving Pledge, deciding to donate at least half of their wealth during their combined lifetime to mainly scientific causes. In his Giving Pledge Letter, Yuri Milner cites his belief that scientific brilliance is "under-capitalized" and explains that he joined the Giving Pledge to "invest in our leading minds and our shared future."

That same year, Milner and his wife founded the Breakthrough Foundation. The Breakthrough Foundation invests in pioneering space programs, supports leading researchers in the fields of fundamental science and mathematics, and hopes to inspire a love for science among younger generations. Here's how.

The Breakthrough Prize

The Milners launched the Breakthrough Prize in 2012, partnering with Sergey Brin, Anne Wojcicki, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg to provide funding through their foundations. As the world's biggest scientific awards, the Breakthrough Prizes honor important, recent achievements in mathematics, life sciences, and fundamental physics. Six prizes of $3 million, along with other awards, are up for grabs to researchers in these fields every year.

In his Giving Pledge letter, Milner asks "why shouldn't scientific superstars have the same power to inspire as their peers in art, media, and sport?" Not content with only offering financial rewards, part of Milner's vision is to provide scientists with cultural capital too, hence the Breakthrough Prize hosting and televising an annual gala award ceremony in Silicon Valley.

The Breakthrough Junior Challenge

The Breakthrough Foundation also organizes the Breakthrough Junior Challenge, a competition that invites high school students around the globe to create and submit videos explaining a challenging scientific concept in up to 90 seconds. The prizes are the stuff of dreams for young people and their schools: Winners receive a $250,000 scholarship for college, a new $100,000 science lab for their school, and $50,000 for their teacher.

The Breakthrough Initiatives

Over the years, the Breakthrough Foundation has financed several Breakthrough Initiatives propelling forward SETI and space exploration. These programs investigate the fundamental questions of life in the Universe, and two have the distinction of being co-founded by none other than Stephen Hawking.

In July 2015, Milner and Stephen Hawking launched the first Breakthrough Initiative, the $100 million Breakthrough Listen project, boosting the search for technological civilizations beyond Earth. In April 2016, Mark Zuckerberg joined Stephen Hawking and Milner in launching Breakthrough Starshot, a $100 million research and engineering program that looks to develop new technologies for uncrewed interstellar travel.

Another multimillion-dollar astronomical program, Breakthrough Watch, is searching for Earth-like planets in our neighboring galaxies and determining whether they host alien life.

Other Breakthrough Initiatives include Message, an international competition to create a message for an alien civilization, and Discuss, a yearly academic space science conference.

Intelligent Life in the Universe

The original Breakthrough Initiative, Listen, is searching the cosmos for signs of alien intelligence, partnering with major observatories in Europe, China, and South America to use some of the best telescopes on the planet.

Listen's plan seems simple enough: If its telescopes detect a verified "technosignature," a signal that differs from natural sources of radio waves and therefore suggests a technological origin from an advanced civilization, then we'll have proof that we're not alone in the Universe.

The main hitch is that the Universe is huge and there's a lot of it to scan. In a 2017 interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson, the former director of the SETI Institute Jill Tarter compared searching the Universe for alien life to searching the Earth's oceans for fish and, so far, the organization's 50-year search has resulted in surveying a sample size of one 12-ounce glass of ocean water. No wonder we haven't found anything yet.

The Heavens Have Opened

Milner's funding has accelerated SETI's pace, turning the glass into a "gushing torrent," as Breakthrough Listen's Principal Investigator Andrew Siemion puts it. Over the last few years, Listen has published the most comprehensive search for technosignatures ever made; released an unprecedented survey of the Milky Way's Galactic Center and Earth Transit Zone; and produced an innovative catalog of astrophysical exotica, one listing almost every type of observable object or phenomenon in the known Universe.

Now, Siemion and fellow researcher Professor Michael Garrett from the UK's University of Manchester have announced a reanalysis of existing data and subsequently identified weird and wonderful exotica like interacting galaxies, radio galaxies, various active galactic nuclei, and many gravitational lens systems, all at vast cosmological distances from Earth.

However, the inventory also lists several closer galaxies and galaxy clusters that, while still millions of light-years away, could be of prime interest to Breakthrough Listen. These systems make great places to look for rare, powerful signals, as they contain hundreds of billions of stars that could have habitable planets orbiting them.

Narrowing the Parameters

Listen is also transforming SETI's reputation, proving the hunt for aliens can operate within strict limits of scientific validity.

Garrett has felt "troubled" that previous SETI surveys didn't account for the radio telescope's field of view containing unwanted background objects as well as the intended target star. Now, the project's newest paper, "Constraints on extragalactic transmitters via Breakthrough Listen observations of background sources," accepted for publication in "Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society," outlines how Siemion and Garrett have been able to place new constraints on the prevalence of powerful transmitters that could originate from these newly identified systems and on the luminosity function of potential alien transmitters. It's another step towards narrowing the field of research and increasing the likelihood of Listen finding indisputable proof of extraterrestrial intelligence.

Listen now has many more targets to scan so, for now, it's a waiting game, but the possibilities of the project's findings are tantalizing to consider. The Breakthrough Initiatives bring to mind the exciting age of a former time when humanity placed men on the moon. Thanks to Milner, who knows what the next great space-age breakthrough will be?

About Yuri Milner

Yuri Milner is an Israeli entrepreneur and former physicist, co-founder of internet company Mail.Ru Group, and founder of tech investment firm DST Global. His work includes investment in the areas of internet technology and science philanthropy. The latter began in 2012 when Milner and his wife Julia joined the Giving Pledge and established the Breakthrough Foundation.

The Breakthrough Foundation funds several large-scale projects that contribute to the advancement of science and the widespread communication of scientific ideas, including the Breakthrough Prize, the Breakthrough Junior Challenge, and the Breakthrough Initiatives. The Breakthrough Foundation has contributed to various other humanitarian causes, including programs that support science, medicine, and technological innovation in Israel.

Milner continues to split his time between DST Global and his Breakthrough Foundation philanthropic enterprises.