If you had a net worth of $3.4 billion, what would you do with it?
If you are Russian investor Yuri Milner, you would spend $100 million of it on a project called Breakthrough Listen. BL rents time on the world’s most powerful radio telescopes, which are linked to a network of computers around the globe, to listen to the cosmos for any sounds that do not have a natural explanation. The assumption is that any such sounds must be signs of intelligent life out there.
Jeffrey Kluger has an article in this month’s TIME magazine on the restless search for E.T. University of California astronomer Frank Drake thinks there must be at least ten thousand civilizations in our galaxy. Famed astrophysicist and writer Carl Sagan thought there must be a million. A California group named SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has been at this since the 1970s, and I’m sure they welcome Milner’s millions to their cause.
Milner just can’t believe that Earth is the only place in space with biology. “We’re not alone,” he states. “Otherwise it would be such a waste of real estate.” You know, I feel kind of sorry for him. Not for the loss of all that money—his whole BL investment is only 1/340th of his net worth, and he’ll make more—but for the disappointment to his soul that this is all there is. People who heave the first 11 chapters of Genesis overboard will stare up into the night sky and never have an answer to its origin or meaning. Paul Davies is a theoretical physicist at ASU in Tempe: “Because we don’t know the mechanism whereby chemistry turned into biology, we don’t know how life began.”
The Christian biblical view really portrays people as important and valuable to God—Genesis chapter 1 reveals that God hung those billions of stars up there just for our benefit. Seriously! Billions of stars in billions of galaxies billions of light-years across are not a waste of real estate. They forcefully illustrate God’s power and glory and give you a spectacular show on every clear night.
Originally posted by Time of Grace.
