Our Boldest Effort to Answer our Oldest Question: The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life Beyond Earth

Some 500 years ago, a growing awareness of cracks in the Ptolemaic model led to the Copernican revolution - a paradigm shift in our understanding in which we came to realize that the Earth was not the center of our cosmos, but rather just one of several bodies in orbit about the Sun.  Centuries later, watershed discoveries brought us awareness of the structure of our galaxy, innumerable galaxies beyond our own, the cosmological evolution of the universe and the rich physics that tie them together.  Just 10 years ago brought another humbling realization - planets, including planets like our own Earth, are abundant throughout our galaxy, and indeed planetary systems are the rule rather than the exception.  Today we look towards a vista of yet further discovery, one that may answer our oldest and most profound question about the universe: Are we alone?

Of the many ways we now search for life beyond Earth, only the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) holds the promise of identifying communicative and technologically capable beings like ourselves.  Here I will describe the latest developments in the the search for technosignatures, the remotely detectable manifestations of technologically-capable life.  Among the most exciting developments is the Breakthrough Listen Initiative - a ten-year 100M USD global research program that constitutes the most comprehensive, intensive and sensitive search for extraterrestrial intelligence in history.  Together with our international partners we are marshaling the world’s foremost observational astronomy resources to conduct state-of-the-art searches for a wide range of technosignatures, spanning the electromagnetic spectrum and leveraging the most powerful and cutting-edge data analysis techniques available.