Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Billionaire in the universe – RosInvest.Com

Вторник, 21 июля 2015 г.

money searching for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations in ten years will be allocated through the Foundation with the participation of Russian businessman Yuri Milner – Breakthrough Prize Foundation. “Ideological leader” of the project was the physicist Stephen Hawking. In an interview with RBC Milner spoke about the essence of the project and its prospects.

On investments in search of $ 100 million was announced on Monday, July 20 at a joint press conference Milner and Hawking in London. In operating the famous physicist will not participate, but a businessman named him chief ideologue of the project, which will be developed within two main areas – Breakthrough Listen (search for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations) and Breakthrough Message (creation of the messages from the Earth).

At this stage, will only invest Milner, but he did not rule out that in the future to it may join other businessmen. His foundation (the board of directors in addition to the Milner are Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Alibaba Group Jack Ma and Anne Vozhitski, the former wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin) signed an agreement on the use of the largest telescopes in the world, including the 100-meter Green Bank radio telescope in the Americas and 60-meter Parkes in Australia. Telescopes have joined the specially designed software and servers.

According to Milner, the new technology will process the signal with a much higher rate than in previous similar projects. “This will mean that during the day we will process the same amount of information as early in the year,” – said the investor RBC. The project team expects to increase the sensitivity of the signals 50 times and reach ten times the heavenly space.

Thus Milner is going to revive and bring a new level of project SETI (eng. Search for extraterrestrial intelligence – « the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, “the common name of activities to identify extraterrestrial life).

Milner is known primarily as an investor of Internet projects: he founded, together with investment partners Digital Sky Techologies became the basis of the current Mail.Ru Group, and created with Alisher Usmanov DST Global invested in Western companies and only IPO Facebook earned about $ 2 billion. In 2015, Forbes estimated the state Milner at $ 3.2 billion.

«This project has always been a Cinderella »

– What is the project?

– This is the biggest project in the history of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Its scale – $ 100 million over ten years. Technically, it is organized as follows: we have signed contracts for the use of the largest telescopes in the world, in particular the Green Bank Telescope in America and Parkes telescope in Australia. This is the largest telescopes, which are at our disposal now, I mean, in our civilization.

These telescopes will be connected to the software and servers, which are specially designed for this purpose and developed. They enable signal processing at a rate which is several orders of magnitude higher than all previous designs of this kind. The very first attempt to hear the signal was in 1960, it made a man named Frank Drake. He is one of the leaders of this project are now.

– Who will finance the project?

– The money will be allocated through the Breakthrough Prize Foundation [foundation involving Milner issuing premium in the field Sciences]. But at this stage of my funding only.

– $ 100 million – it’s your money?

– Yes.

– On what will be spent big part of the money?

– you know, we have signed some NDA [non-disclosure agreements, non-disclosure agreement], but I can say that there is any dominant expense item, they are all there are roughly comparable .

– saying “at this stage”, you hope that some people will join you?

– Maybe, but for the next ten years, I have a personal commitment [ from English. - "Commitment"], and then we’ll see. I am ready to support the project further, but it is open, some people may join. But this, I hope, will not determine the future of this project, because these resources are sufficient to ensure that it dramatically enhanced compared with all that was before.

I would not have done the project if he is not something radically new. A radically new things here are a few. The first time that we rent on these telescopes, it has never been used in such an amount for the project. This project has always been a Cinderella – it always pushes in the farthest corner, give an hour here, two hours there, telescopes, I mean. And here we are guaranteed to be a significant amount of time in five years on each telescope. We have signed long-term contracts.

– The project does not provide, for example, the construction of new telescopes? Only the use of existing?

– Absolutely. Because in fact, such telescopes are built, they are outstanding engineering structures. Furthermore, the already constructed a number of new telescopes. And as these new telescopes will be introduced into the work, we will try to connect them too.

– I understand that the draft does not provide for any KPI, depending on which you can change your mind giving more money?

– KPI no no, we sit, looking, improve the software, improving the server part, connect the new telescopes and continue to seek. Ten years later, if you do not find, we are once again discuss the situation, and perhaps even prolonging a decade.

– And who will write and improve this software?

– We have a group, the most powerful in the world today on the analysis of such information, in Berkeley, California. We have this group will seriously enhance and give her more opportunities to improvise in this area. Soft, we also open source, everyone can afford to put it. And we will develop a platform to people even wrote some applications to analyze the data.

– By the way, how do you feel about the signal itself, “Wow” (see. Inquiry)? You think it’s still there was something real or still random noise?

– You know, I read all about this signal, of course, he often checked, it was not confirmed, but , among other things, which we will check, too. We are also going to look at the source and try to see if there was something interesting. It is one of the objects of our observations. We will try to verify it.

«Focus on what is called intelligent life»

– What is involved in all this Stephen Hawking?

– Steven Hawking – this is our ideological leader. He, unfortunately, can not somehow operationally involved in this, but it is the main ideologue of this trend, and all this is very inspiring. Everyone, I mean, who would do it from an operational point of view.

– In several interviews Hawking complained that there was no money for such a wonderful, in his opinion, the project SETI, and said that good for him to find investors. This led me to think you are on the participation?

– Children’s Dreams, plus his thoughts, plus communication with a large number of specialists in this field. In general, the story begins in 1961, when Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space, and President [John] Kennedy announced the launch of “Apollo.” By the way, our announcement coincides with the date of landing the first men on the moon [20 July 1969]. In the same year I had the opportunity to be born by chance, and I was named in honor of Yuri Yuri Gagarin. It was the first signal to me to think about the cosmos. Then I read different books, and I was more interested in the topic not only space, but also life in the universe. It was a book of Joseph Shklovsky – “The Universe. Reason. Life. ” I read it in a relatively early age, she has made a significant impression of me.

Including in connection with this, I then became a physicist and for a while it worked. In 1987 in Moscow the first time I saw Stephen Hawking, who came to lecture, and the next time I saw him in 2012 in Geneva, when I presented the award Breakthrough Prize [Science Prize, established with the participation of Yuri Milner].

– In Hawking there are many different ideas in the search for extraterrestrial life, including the idea of ​​a manned expedition to Mars or the flight to Europe, the moon of Jupiter. On Mars is going to fly Elon Musk – how you feel about his project?

– Very positive attitude. I believe that we need to diversify. Especially if we’re alone in the universe, then there is no getting around it, have somehow it spread. Because if there is no one, the responsibility lies with us.

– But you do not want to organize an expedition to Jupiter, Pluto? In the distant or nearby space?

– With regard to the near space, take the solar system, where there is sufficient funding and in much larger quantities. Compete here with NASA or the Russian Space Agency, the Chinese or the Indians – this occupation is … Well, there is, and Elon Musk. Here, it seems to me, clearing already fully mastered, it is clear that we must do all the plans laid out in the next 20 years. Even the latest news, photos of Pluto – outstanding. It seems to me that we somehow do not fast, but moving, but with regard to everything that is happening outside our solar system, where we have full zero funding. I think it would be right to focus on this: for all that in the solar system, and there is a lot more likely than inside.

– What are the areas of the Universe will be sought signals?

– As for the facilities, they fall into several categories. This 1 million nearest star to the Sun, is a central part of our galaxy, the Milky Way and nearby galaxies is 100, starting from the Andromeda and so on.

– Judging by your words, for the first time a program of action already is, it is prepared and approved?

– Yes, for the first ten years we have clarity, what needs to be addressed. We are now starting to finance the project, which is called the Optical SETI. Basically, there are two types of signals that we can at the current level of technology to detect: a radio or optical signal. The optical signal – it should be a powerful laser that someone brings to us, huh? The optical design also at the same time we declare, that’s another observatory called Lick [located in San Jose, CA], and there is equipment to search for laser signals it is also included in the project. As people will appear some other ideas – and we expect to fund the idea, too – will be a certain number of grants for the generation of new ideas in this area.

– In 2018 it is planned to start Telescope “James Webb”, which will replace the “Hubble” – in this project you will participate?

– «James Webb” a little bit not so engaged, he is looking for, say, a life, traces of life nearest planets. And we focus on what is called intelligent life, intelligent life. We are looking for traces of the civilizations that have collected on your radio, and there is something sent.

«Either we are alone, and it’s great, or we are not alone, also super»

> – The same Stephen Hawking said that there are two ways to establish contacts with extraterrestrial civilizations – to try to catch other people’s signals and send their. Second, you are not going to deal with?

– By the way, Hawking against the second approach. Because it’s dangerous, we do not know who it could catch him. We are in this dialogue or dispute does not expect to participate and do not plan to send signals, but we plan to do another thing. We will announce international competition with a prize pool of $ 1 million to the people who come up with the best message of which could be sent.

– That is just in case let it be?

> – Just in case, prepare and send it or post – the scientific community is divided roughly in half. Some people headed by Hawking said that we should not, others say, “No, let’s.” And we do not want to participate in this debate, and just want to say, ‘OK, you’re there until negotiate, and we’ve been thinking that, in fact, send ».

– Imagine that you are lucky, and we catch the signal, which can be verified as a messenger intelligent civilization. What are we going to do with it in this case?

– Firstly, the first thing I’ll call you. It will be an interesting headlining, yes?

– For the public this is a shock, awe or fear, perhaps, but for science to mankind?

– For the public all together probably. For me, this issue is of such a philosophical, existential, I would say. I believe that we, as intelligent civilization should seek necessarily the answer to this question. Let us whether we will it, will it be done within the next ten years, 20 or 50, but we just can not, but are obliged to continue this project. Because any answer to this question is dramatic. Either we are alone, and that, in general, super, or we are not alone – and this is also great, but in a different way. But do not take the effort to get the answer – it is not a manifestation of the higher mind, I believe.

Full version, visit the www.rbc.ru

Valery Igumenov, Daria Lugansk
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