From Gimla, there's Rapaiya, I'm PJ Bo.

Once a year, an elite group of British scientists meet to talk about this problem that they call

the silence in the sky.

The meeting is always close to the public, but I talk to one of the scientists who attends.

His name is William Edminson.

A closed group in the sense that it's academics who are interested in searching for extraterrestrials,

you must be aware that it's a slightly off the wall sort of topic.

And as a consequence, we feel the need to be fairly careful about the audience so that we can have sensible and genuinely scientific discussions.

You want to keep attack academics because if you don't, it's going to be people who are going to be like,

I know that there's extraterrestrial life.

It talks to me every day or whatever.

Yeah, or I had lunch with one yesterday or whatever.

Right.

So in September 2015, they go to have their annual meeting this time, it's in Leeds, Warm Cloudy Day,

but that year something was different.

This Russian tycoon had come out of nowhere to announce a new initiative, $100 million in funding to search for extraterrestrials.

This was a huge deal because there is no money in study research. This is something that all these prestigious scientists just do on the side.

And more than that, this tycoon, he specifically was offering a lot of money to whatever group who come up with the best message to send to aliens.

This would be a message that would be broadcast using an interstellar radio signal that could reach light ears and light ears away.

Not some dinky little probe like Voyager, a message that could actually get picked up.

So they have their meeting and somebody asked the obvious question, do we, the UK, study research network, want to participate?

Do we think this is a good idea?

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