Josie Enenstein: Can you briefly describe both The Breakthrough Prize Foundation and Breakthrough Initiatives?
Pete Worden: The Breakthrough Prize was started about five years ago by Yuri Milner who studied Physics in Russia about 30 years ago but has become a very successful businessman. He believes that we should promote the role of science, understanding that science is the basis of our economic well-being. He was looking at a list of the best known people on social media and other surveys and noted that very few scientists are on these lists. He felt we needed to do something to promote the role of scientists and decided to give a very large prize, The Breakthrough Prize. The first prize Yuri Milner funded was in fundamental physics. He also has now gotten his colleagues, such as Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, Sergei Brin, the co-founder of Google, Anne Wojcicki, the founder of 23 and Me and Jack Ma, who founded Alibaba in China. We now have multiple prizes. One in biology, mathematics, fundamental physics. We started in the last year a prize for high school students for producing a 10 minute video to explain a fundamental concept in science. There are very significant prizes including scholarships up to $250,000. Maybe one of the most important things is that there will be a payment of $50,000 to the teacher who inspired the student. We also give the New Horizons Prizes for an early career scientist in physics and mathematics. That has been ongoing for about 5 years. There are more things coming, but the initiatives are mainly about funding distinct science and searching for evidence of life in the universe, whereas the prizes are about rewarding and emphasizing accomplishments of some of the best scientists today. Mr. Milner is also very excited about the fundamental questions of science and about how a lot of high net worth people can support this better. So about a year ago, he started The Breakthrough Initiative which is focused on the fundamental question of life in the universe. There are a bunch of different aspects. Are we the only intelligent life in the universe? Is there other intelligent life and can we detect them? Can we communicate with them? Last summer, he announced a prize in London with Stephen Hawking for a message we haven’t announced details for. But also to fund efforts to use some of the world’s largest radio and optical telescopes searching for intelligent signals. We are looking at other things and hope to announce in the next few months that there are there life-bearing planets around some of the nearest stars. The technology is coming along well for that.
J: What do you think is the most important part of offering these prizes to people?
PW: I think it is really a couple of things. Of course, it is always nice to be rewarded with a lot of money. But much more important is the inspiration to young people that as a scientist, you can be every bit as famous and celebrated as somebody that might have been in entertainment or sports. So one of the things we do with the prizes is that we have a very nice ceremony that is put on by Vanity Fair Magazine who does the Oscar party. We try to make it like the Oscars for science. There are 200 people from Silicon Valley who are invited, people like Seth McFarlane are the emcees, and Will Ferrell was the entertainment last year. It is a pretty nice event, broadcast live. We would like people to look at this and say you don’t have to be a sports hero, an entertainment figure or a politician to be well-known and respected. We are trying to really honor and bring credence to scientists so that young people say I want to do that. It also celebrates and publicizes the accomplishments of the neat science work people have done.
J: I read on your website about the Listen program that you are surveying 1,000,000 of the closest stars to Earth over the next 10 years. Do you believe that you can cover that enormous amount of stars in such a short period of time? How many times do you think you will listen to each specific star for signals?
PW: There’s a couple different things we are doing. We mentioned that we are going to look at the 1,000,000 nearest stars. We are also going to look at the nearest galaxies. And then we are going to do a scan to look at the whole plane of the galaxy, which will cover a lot of stars. We are starting that scan probably in the next six months. We have started looking at some of the nearest stars already with the Green Bank Telescope. But it is a challenge to observe that many stars. What we will probably end up using is not the telescopes that we are using now, but a new set of radio telescopes that are being built that can be steered electronically, meaning you don’t have to move the dishes with the receiving antennae, you can just electronically point them in different directions. We are pretty confident we can get a few minutes with each one of those stars and can probably do that a couple times during the period so we can see if any of them are broadcasting signals in our direction. The nearest 1,000,000 stars are up to 1,000 light years away or a little bit farther. So these are places that are near enough to us that with the technology that we can imagine in the next 30-40 years, they could look and see that there’s life on Earth. Of course if they are 1,000 light years away, they would have seen us 1,000 years ago. Even 1,000 years ago, they might have been able to determine that there was industry on Earth and maybe they should send us a signal every so often. It is probably important to survey those stars and we think that yes it is a challenge, but with the new radio telescopes that are coming online we can do it.
J: What are some of the best parts about being the Chairman of The Breakthrough Prize Foundation?
PW: The best part is that I get to talk to some of the world’s best scientists. I am an astronomer myself. For the last two decades I was helping manage things and leading efforts and now I get to actually talk to the people who do the work. That’s really cool. I have to say it’s kind of fun to go The Breakthrough Prize ceremony. I actually like to meet people like Will Ferrell and Christina Aquilera as well. Even though they are not scientists, it’s a fun thing. The other thing is our initiatives. We are getting a chance to answer some of these fundamental questions. The whole question “Are we alone in the universe?” Ever since I was a little boy, I would look up at the sky and say “Surely there has to be someone else up there.” Now I am getting a chance to really look.
J: At what age did you become interested in space and why?
PW: I grew up in the 1950s. When I was five or six years old, I was just learning to read. My mother bought me two little books. One was called Stars and one was called Planets. Those were my favorite books. I read them so much they fell apart. Then two years after that when I was seven years old, the United States tried to launch its first rocket into space. Now the first couple failed, although I thought it was cool that you could blow up things and get paid for it. When I was seven or eight, I said this is what I wanted to do. When I went to high school and college, it was the 1960s during the Apollo program, an awfully exciting time. Hard work though. When I went to the University of Michigan as a freshman, there were 120 people who were going to major in astronomy. After a while, a lot of us understand that you really had to know math well too. In the end only six of got degrees in astronomy and two us went on to get doctorates. One of the challenges is that you really have to stick with it. Ever since I was five or six I wanted to study stars and find out how whether there is intelligence out there we can learn from.
J: What was it like to work for NASA in a management position and what made you decide to move on to something else?
PW: NASA is without a doubt the neatest government agency. It is really a cool agency. As I said, in the 60s, they went to the moon. They are doing all these space telescopes and developing technology that makes airplanes fly better. It was a real treat to work for NASA. If they have done surveys as to which government agency is the best to work for, NASA is always at the top. For good reason. It is really exciting stuff. As a manager and a leader, I didn’t get to do much of the work. I had a chance to lead some of it. There is nothing more exciting than going down to the Kennedy Space Center and having a rocket launch that has a payload on it, an exploration vehicle that you manage the building of it. When it works, that’s the coolest thing ever. I worked for NASA for nine years and it is a really hard job. But there were some new things that are more speculative. When looking for intelligent signals, NASA, because it is a government agency, tends to be fairly conservative. I thought it was a really nice opportunity to go work on things that are a little less likely to succeed but if they do, are pretty incredible. I jumped at the chance. The nice thing about living in Silicon Valley is that I got to meet a lot of really smart people who had made a lot of money in high tech stuff. A lot of them had the same interested that I did. It was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.
J: What advice do you have for me, as a person who is passionate about astrophysics and the future of space exploration in terms of choosing an occupation, a place to work or a college?
PW: Obviously science and space science requires you to work hard, but particularly in math. Mathematics is a fundamental tool. It is really the basic thing. Secondly, I suggest that as you start looking at colleges, try to go visit. The professors are usually very approachable and I think before you choose a college, it is nice to talk to some of the astronomers and some of the students there, the undergraduate and graduate students. See if you see yourself being one of them. There are different personalities at different universities. Don’t be afraid to talk to somebody no matter what level you are at, “Is there anything I can do to work with you?” It is really to engage the people, but also to show that you can work hard and understand the basic mathematics.
