Stephen Hawking and Russian-born billionaire entrepreneur Yuri Milner announced a bid to combine vast computing capacity with the help of world’s most powerful telescopes to intensify so far fruitless search for aliens.

Hawking, who speaks with the help of computer technology due to the effects of the motor neuron disease, explains the necessity of this $100 million project, he said, “We are alive, we are intelligent, we must know.”  “The scope of our search will be unprecedented: a million nearby stars, the galactic center, the entire plane of the Milky Way and 100 nearby galaxies,” Milner told at a press conference at Royal Society of London.