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Professor Stephen Hawking is about to launch an space exploration scheme called StarShot - and you can watch it live here at 5pm GMT.

The British physicist w ill appear alongside billionaire ET hunter Yuri Milner to discuss the incredible plans.

We already know that Milner has agreed to fund a decade-long search for aliens which will cost him a cool $100 million, so it's a fair bet that he's got something exciting up his sleeve.

The billionaire trained as a physicist before making big bucks with canny investments in the fledgling tech industry.

Now comfortably sitting atop a business empire worth an estimated $2.9 billion , he has vowed to spend huge sums of cash in order discover the answer to one of humanity's biggest questions.

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"The universe is not teeming with life, but we’re probably not alone," he told Time last year .

"If we were alone it would be such a waste of real estate. But I don’t want to be the judge, I just want to help find an answer."

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April 12 is an auspicious day for Milner, because it marks the 55th anniversary of the first even human spaceflight, which was undertaken by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin 1961.

It is believed the billionaire was named after Gagarin, who is understood to be his life-long hero.

The event takes place at 5pm GMT today (12pm EST) and will be held at the One World Observatory in New York City.

We'll have all the news about this exciting new development in the search for alien life as soon as more details emerge.