Signs of alien life have possibly been spotted during the ongoing research orchestrated by those working on the Stephen Hawking project, Breakthrough Listen. The astronomers, who conduct each experiment over a 30-minute period, detected 15 FRBs (fast radio bursts) occurring repeatedly from a dwarf galaxy located a distance of three billion light years away from Earth.
According to the New York Daily News, the potential discovery of alien life was one of Stephen Hawking’s main objectives when he first founded Breakthrough Listen back in July of 2015. The program itself is the world’s most heavily funded program in which scientists search for extraterrestrial beings. One of Breakthrough Listen’s biggest monetary contributors is Yuri Milner, the Russian internet billionaire whose net worth currently sits around at $3.5 billion. He earned most of his riches having founded Digital Sky Technologies, a highly successful investment firm based in Hong Kong.
The Guardian Reveals that the source of the sound, still officially unknown, is suggested to have come from either rotating neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields or black holes. A more scoffed upon theory is that they did, in fact, come from aliens, but this is not being entirely ruled out as of yet.
While it is true that most would see this as far-fetched, the amount of money spent on the project, as well the extremely high standing of the individuals directing, have made even skeptics think twice before automatically denying such a thing. Breakthrough Listen was funded $100 million to search for life forms other than humans, and given that Stephen Hawking has already made so many astounding discoveries in the scientific community throughout his career, people became eager to give it a chance.
This has not always been the case, however. At the start of the project’s launch, researchers, in particular, were far more cynical. This new potential discovery is, reports Astronomy, the second to be looked into since this past April. At that time, 11 alleged alien species were said to be heard using Breakthrough Listen’s technology. A two-day conference was held in California shortly after the sounds were detected, and at that point in time, Breakthrough Listen was the most notable SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) initiative to have been launched since 1995’s Project Phoenix.
Although it remains to be seen whether these extraterrestrials do indeed exist, the recent recording of these sounds has certainly got the public talking. Alien life on earth and throughout the rest of the universe has always been something of a wonder to most, but they may never know what lies behind these 15 FRBs.
