Stephen Hawkings & Russian Billionaire to Spend $100million to Search for Extra Terrestrial Life

Mr Milner, who is based in California and Moscow, wants to harness the innovation of Silicon Valley to scan the skies for signs of life, including searching the entire Milky Way and 100 nearby galaxies.

His Breakthrough Initiatives project will provide $100m over the next 10 years to bodies searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence.

Some of the world’s largest radio telescopes will be used to scan for distinctive radio signals that could indicate the existence of intelligent life. Astronomers will listen to signals from the million star systems nearest to earth and the 100 closest galaxies, although they do not yet plan to send messages back into space.

The public will also be invited to enter a $1m competition to compose the best message to send into space.

Launching the venture at London’s Royal Society on Monday, Mr Milner – who has made his fortune through investments in technology companies such as Facebook – stated that the “public conversation” about life elsewhere in the universe has not significantly changed since in the past 90 years