Stephen Hawkings' ambitious mission to hunt for intelligent civilisation outside the earth has recorded radio signals from a galaxy three billion light years away. The project known as Breakthrough Listen project was co-founded by renowned scientist Stephen Hawkings along with Russian billionaire Yuri Milner to study the universe.
This global astronomical initiative worth USD 100 million was launched in 2015 and has detected 15 radio signals till now. The current signal was picked up by Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, US. The lastest fast radio bursts (FRBs) doesn't seems to have come from an alien life but an unknown source discovered in 2012 and termed as 'FRB 121102', say scientists. Initially, scientists thought that signals are from events such as a supernova but it was reheard in 2015 and 2016 . FRBs are radio signals from space that runs for just milliseconds. However, this has indicated that equipments are effective and can detect any signal of life if available
"We really have no idea about where they come from. We currently know 30 to exist in the universe and only one is known to repeat which means we can look at it again and again. We looked at this one at a higher frequency. If some form of life would like to produce a signal that is detectable to another civilisation this could be a way to do it, but I don’t think they are coming from intelligent civilisations," an Indian-origin astronomer Vishal Gajjar told The Daily Telegraph.
For first 10 years, the programme will study 1,000,000 closest stars to Earth and beyond our galaxy it will be detecting messages from 100 closest galaxies at 10 billion different frequencies. Announcing the project at a press conference in London, Hawkings said "Somewhere in the universe intelligent life may be watching the lights of ours aware of what they mean."
