Hunt for Aliens: 1 Million Dollar Prize to Craft Best Message to Extraterrestrials

First Posted: Jul 30, 2015 06:57 PM EDT

Yuri Milner, the Russian billionaire, has funded a hunt for alien life. Now, he's offering a 100 million dollar prize to craft the best message to send to an extraterrestrial civilization.

"Some people have foolishly composed messages in English," said Frank Drake, an astronomer who has been at the center of searches for extraterrestrial intelligence since the 1960s, in an interview with The Huffington Post. "Big mistake."

The message itself could take thousands of years to reach intelligent life as it journeys through the depths of space. This means that the message should include as much information as possible for the creatures receiving it.

"There are many common reference points," said Drake. "Chemistry, for instance. Through the spectral lines of elements, which are the characteristic fingerprints they leave on the light spectrum, we can give scale-hydrogen's spectral line could be a common unit of length."

In other words, the message should be something that even life on the other side of the universe could understand. Using a "universal" language such as mathematics or some type of measurement could help with this type of communication.

Currently, the new hunt for alien life is possibly the biggest scientific search ever undertaken for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth. It was launched by Stephen Hawking, the British physicist, at the Royal Society in London last week.

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TagsAlien Species, Alien, Exoplanets, Life