The Breakthrough Initiative is widening its galactic reach. New Breakthrough-funded upgrades to the CSIRO Parkes Radio Telescope (“Parkes”) in New South Wales, Australia, will now allow it to sort through up to 100 petabytes of raw data from stars in the galactic plane looking for telltale signs of intelligent technological societies.
This leveling up in sensing power means the BTListen back-end can now gather up and analyze 130 gigabits per second – or, more than 100 million radio channels in each of the receiver’s 13 beams. Big deal? Indeed. Cosmic-big. It’s one of the most extensive, data-rich SETI experiments we hyoomans have yet mounted.
So, to celebrate, I want to indulge in a little nostalgia, with a look back at Stephen Hawking (I still hate that he’s gone. I really do.) talking about the project that he thought Earth really needed to get behind. And just between you & me, this Hawking guy seemed to know his space-and-stars stuff, ya know? So, we need to pay attention, OK? OK.