At 2.00 p.m. on 15 February, a seminar about the Breakthrough Initiatives will take place in the Council Chamber, presented by Pete Worden, Executive Director of the Breakthrough Initiatives.

The Breakthrough Initiatives are programmes of scientific and technological exploration, probing the big questions of life in the universe.

On 20 July 2015 at the Royal Society in London, Yuri Milner, Stephen Hawking and Lord Martin Rees announced a set of initiatives — a scientific programme aimed at finding evidence of technological life beyond Earth entitled “Breakthrough Listen”. In addition, on 20 April 2016, atop the One World Trade Center in New York, Breakthrough Starshot was announced, a project for an interstellar voyage to Alpha Centauri.

These are the first of several privately-funded global initiatives to answer the fundamental science questions surrounding the origin, extent and nature of life in the universe. The Breakthrough Initiatives are managed by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation.

More information about the event can be found here: https://indico.cern.ch/event/703896/.