A 10-year, $100 million initiative to boost the search for extraterrestrial intelligence will feature "the most powerful, comprehensive, and intensive scientific search ever undertaken for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth," the initiative's organizers promised in an announcement today.

"Breakthrough Initiatives" is being bankrolled by billionaire tech investor Yuri Milner and led by a distinguished cast of scientists including Astronomer Royal Martin Rees and astronomer Frank Drake, who is Chairman Emeritus of the SETI Institute. (In 1960, Drake became the first person to set up a radio telescope to detect interstellar radio transmissions, and he formulated the Drake equation the following year.) Stephen Hawking was on stage at today's launch event, saying, “In an infinite Universe, there must be other life. There is no bigger question. It is time to commit to finding the answer," Nature reported.

The money will provide "significant access to two of the world’s most powerful telescopes," the 100-meter Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and the 64-meter Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia, the official announcement said. “We would typically get 24–36 hours on a telescope per year, but now we’ll have thousands of hours per year on the best instruments,” said Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center, according to Nature. “It’s difficult to overstate how big this is. It’s a revolution.”

"Breakthrough Listen," one of two projects announced today, will conduct a survey of the 1 million stars closest to Earth and listen for messages from the 100 closest galaxies beyond the Milky Way.

"If a civilization based around one of the 1,000 nearest stars transmits to us with the power of common aircraft radar, Breakthrough Listen telescopes could detect it," the announcement said. "If a civilization transmits from the center of the Milky Way, with any more than 12 times the output of interplanetary radars we use to probe the Solar System, Breakthrough Listen telescopes could detect it. From a nearby star (25 trillion miles away), Breakthrough Listen’s optical search could detect a 100-watt laser (energy output of normal household light bulb)."

All data generated by the project will be made available to the public to fuel additional research. Breakthrough Listen will also develop open source software to analyze the data.

Besides Breakthrough Listen, there is a "Breakthrough Message" contest to "create digital messages that represent humanity and planet Earth." There will be $1 million in prizes, with competition details to be announced later.

Milner, who struck it rich investing in Facebook and other companies, acknowledged, “It’s quite likely that we won’t find anything,” according to Nature. "But in 10 years’ time, there will be even more advances and we can work out the best strategy for the next 10 years of the project, and then maybe the next 10 after that."