A giant telescope called Parkes radio telescope located in Australia has directed its focus towards a sun's next-door neighbor with the objective of finding alien civilizations.
The 210ft massive telescope was pointed out to a red dwarf star called Proxima Centauri, which is 4.2 light years away from Earth. Proxima Centauri is said to be 1.3 times larger than Earth and orbiting just about the right distance from its star to permit water on its surface. This means that this planet is the so-called, "habitable zone" where a possible civilization might exists.
The project conducting this research is called Breakthrough Listen launched in 2015 by Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner with the objective of investigating extraterrestrial life, per Council Chronicle. And after 14 days of tests in November 7, Breakthrough Listen achieved its "first light" with an initial observation towards Proxima Centauri.
Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales in Australia is just one of three massive telescopes taking part in the Breakthrough Listen project. The other telescopes used are located in West Virginia, USA called Green Bank radio telescope and the one located at the Lick Observatory in California called Automated Planet Finder (APF).
One of the project's founders, Yuri Milner, said that the three major telescopes that will be used for Breakthrough Listen will be the ears of Earth. These telescopes will search for radio frequencies in the hopes of picking up signals of extraterrestrial civilizations.
But Breakthrough Listen scientist and director of the University of California Seti Research Centre Dr. Andrew Siemion said that the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations is probably very tiny.
But if ever one of those three telescopes detected signals of extraterrestrial civilizations, what will the experts do? Will they send signals or messages with these unknown creatures? And if the experts do, are they putting the planet at risk or are they opening up for a dialogue?
There is no confirmation on what to do if that happens. But Milner said that he wants to discuss it. But according also to Milner, if ever we do send signals or messages, this will be a very slow conversation. Because the distance of Proxima Centauri is 4.2 light years away and we would probably wait for at least 8 years, per Mirror.
