Russian billionaire invests $100 million in search of alien life - Russian billionaire Yuri Milner on Monday launched the biggest-ever search for intelligent extraterrestrial life with British cosmologist Stephen Hawking.

The $100-million (92-million-euro), 10-year project named the Breakthrough Listen will scan the universe.

Milner said that the project would be the most intensive scientific search ever undertaken for signs of alien civilisation.

"In an infinite universe, there must be other occurrences of life," Hawking said at the launch event at the Royal Society science academy in London. "Somewhere in the cosmos, perhaps, intelligent life may be watching. Either way, there is no bigger question. It's time to commit to finding the answer, to search for life beyond Earth. It is important for us to know if we are alone in the dark,? he added.

The project will make use of some of the biggest telescopes on Earth with an aim to search far deeper into the universe than before for radio and laser signals.

"Breakthrough Listen takes the search for intelligent life in the universe to a completely new level," said Milner, a former physicist.

Milner has expressed confidence that the scan would help them in collecting more data in one day than a year of any previous search, tracking the million closest stars, the centre of our Milky Way galaxy and the 100 closest galaxies. "We don't need to assume that civilisation is way more developed than we are," Milner said.

Martin Rees, Britain's astronomer royal and one of the project leaders, said we can use modern technology for much more sensitive searches than we have done so far. "It's a huge gamble, of course, but the pay-off would be so colossal... even if the chance of success is small," the astrophysicist said.

"Is there life out there? We may not answer it but this gives a bigger chance that it may be answered in our lifetime," he added.