Breakthrough Initiatives - the search for extraterrestrial life

Breakthrough Initiatives is a company found in 2015 by Yuri Milner, a Russian billionaire entrepreneur and physicist as well. The central objective of the company/program is to search for and detect extraterrestrial life. It involves both scientific and technological exploration of exoplanets and star systems, to answer questions such as 'Are we alone?' and 'Can we ever reach the stars?'.

Pictured : Yuri Milner along with Stephen Hawking (right) at a press conference in July 2015

Where are they?

There are several billion stars in our galaxy, most with planetary systems. Of those planetary systems, the probability of habitable planets existing in the respective systems is quite high. Not to mention that there are trillions of galaxies in the universe. So, it only seems reasonable that alien life is abundant and evidence of such would have been recorded/observed. However, for obvious reasons, the aforementioned is yet to be confirmed which lead to the physicist Enrico Fermi questioning : Where are they? This is referred to as Fermi's Paradox. More information can be found here.

 

Programs

Breakthrough Initiatives is comprised of the following distinct programs : 

- Breakthrough Listen

- Breakthrough Message

- Breakthrough Starshot

Breakthrough Listen

This initiative began in July 2015 with a funding of $100m, expected to last for 10 years. It includes an analysis of the closest million stars to our planet, as well as surveying the centre of the galaxy where a supermassive black hole is though to reside. The initiative extends beyond our galaxy as well : it pays close attention to the 100 closest galaxies to the Milky Way, including the Andromeda Galaxy and satellite galaxies like the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds. The program utilises telescopes with a sensitivity 50x greater than that of existing telescopes to find extraterrestrial life.

Breakthrough Message

This initiative is a bit different to the other two. It focusses on developing a message to extraterrestrial civilisations - if found, answering the questions of how to send, as well as what to send. This is an international competition, where participants are encouraged to create a message that could be read on an interstellar or perhaps even intergalactic scale. It should be symbolic of the human race as well as the Earth. The winner receives $1m as a prize, funded by Yuri Milner. However, technology for sending these messages has clearly not been developed yet thus there isn't actually any plan to send them. But, it doesn't hurt to keep some handy in case an alien ends up in your backyard.

Breakthrough Starshot

Now this is definitely the most intriguing program of the Breakthrough Initiatives. Made public on April 12, 2016, this is a $100m concept of developing light sail spacecraft with the goal of flying to the Alpha Centauri star system at 20% of the speed of light (60,000 km/s). Light sail spacecraft use radiation pressure (pressure on anything in contact with electromagnetic radiation) created by sunlight on mirrors as a form of propulsion. The trip would take about 20 years to complete and 4 years to notify earth of arrival. This would be truly a remarkable feat, provided it were to happen in the next 20-30 years.

Solar sail (light sail) concept

The program has a possibility to include a flyby of Proxima Centauri b, an exoplanet in the habitable zone of the star Proxima Centauri, from a distance of approximately 1 astronomical unit (150m km). The program consists of 1000 craft, each centimetre sized propelled by ground beams. Each spacecraft would communicate data back to our planet using on board systems. Furthermore, it is expected that the 4 cameras on each of the craft could potentially capture an image of the aforementioned exoplanet, perhaps even vivid enough to resolve surface features.