Stephen Hawkings Backs Alien Search

Prof Hawking said: It's time to commit to finding the answer - to search for life beyond Earth.

19:33 23 July 2015

Professor Stephen Hawking fully supports a £64m initiative launched by Breakthrough Initiatives group at the Royal Society in London to search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. The 10-year effort will listen for broadcast signals from a million of the stars closes to Earth.

 

Speaking at the launch, Prof Hawking said: "Somewhere in the cosmos, perhaps, intelligent life may be watching these lights of ours, aware of what they mean.

 

"Or do our lights wander a lifeless cosmos - unseen beacons, announcing that here, on one rock, the Universe discovered its existence. Either way, there is no bigger question. It's time to commit to finding the answer - to search for life beyond Earth.

"We are alive. We are intelligent. We must know."

 

He added: "The search for extra-terrestrial life is the most exciting quest in 21st-century science. The Breakthrough Initiatives aim to put it on the same level as the other ultimate scientific questions."