By Tim Binnall
An ambitious alien-hunting program backed by a Russian billionaire has, so far, failed to yield any signs of intelligent life out in space. The disappointing news comes by way of an update from the Breakthrough Listen project which surveyed a whopping 1,327 stars for signals that would be indicative of an advanced technological civilization. Boasting a budget of $100-million and a ten-year commitment, the program is the brainchild of entrepreneur Yuri Milner, who launched the initiative in January of 2016.
In a newly-published paper on the work done so far by scientists with Breakthrough Listen, they detail how the group utilized two telescopes here on Earth to examine the stars and found that there was nothing in particular that caught their attention. While they did notice some oddities during the study, which stands as the most comprehensive search for alien life to date, the researchers explained that they eventually managed to determine that the handful of outliers came from prosaic sources such as satellite interference.
Given the presumably complex nature of an advanced civilization's way of communicating, scientists with the project conceded that they simply may not be looking for the right kind of signal or that humankind might not even be technologically advanced enough to pick up such a message. Be that as it may, the organization is committed to continuing their quest and even went so far as to release their data to the public so that any armchair alien hunters can examine the information for themselves and possibly pick up on something they may have missed. With that in mind, let's hope the signals don't contain some coded message instructing aliens here on Earth to commence the invasion.