Stephen Hawking’s mission to find alien life detects mystery signals

A mission to explore intelligent alien life in the universe has recorded some mysterious signals coming from a galaxy three billion light years away, according to an Indian-origin scientist working on the ambitious project co-founded by Stephen Hawking. Vishal Gajjar is part of the team working under the Breakthrough Listen project – set up by Hawking, one of the world’s best-known scientists, and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner to discover the truth about the universe. The latest fast radio bursts (FRBs) prove their equipment is working well and ready to pick up signs of life if they exist.

“We really have no idea about where they come from,” Gajjar, one of the scientists from the University of California Berkeley Research Centre, told The Daily Telegraph. He noted: “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. “There are more theories than the number of sources. We have opened more questions than answers. As we do more study we find more weird things,” he said. Breakthrough Listen is a USD 100-million global astronomical initiative launched in 2015 …read more