Russian investor Yuri Milner believes there's life elsewhere in the galaxy, and he's willing to put his own money on the line to find it.

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$100 million of his own money, to be exact. Milner is investing heavily in Breakthrough Listen , a 10-year project that will use telescopes exclusively for the purpose of monitoring and tracking any messages in space that might point to alien life . Professor Stephen Hawking has personally endorsed the project, and did so publicly via a recent conference call with Milner.The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and Australia's Parkes Telescope will both be used for this purpose, along with help from the U.C. Berkeley-based project called SETI@home to comb through gathered information.In addition to Breakthrough Listen, Milner also plans to concurrently launch Breakthrough Message, a similar project that aims to communicate with extraterrestrial life.“If a civilization based around one of the 1,000 nearest stars is transmitting to us with the power of a common aircraft radar, the Breakthrough Listen telescopes can detect it,” said Breakthrough Listen in a statement. “If they are transmitting from the center of the Milky Way, with any more than a dozen times the output of the interplanetary radars we use to probe our own Solar System, Breakthrough Listen telescopes could detect them.”For more on awesome space exploration, check out some of the newest photos of Pluto from New Horizon's flyby.

Cassidee is a freelance writer and the co-host of a podcast about freelancing. You can chat with her about that and all other things geeky on Twitter