Leading globalphysicist Prof Stephen Hawking announced plans to launch a $100-million project to look for alien life.

The new Breakthrough Initiatives programmewas launched at the Royal Society in London and characterised as the "biggest scientific search ever undertaken for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth." The initiative is funded by US-based billionaire and Silicon Valley technology investor and physicist Yuri Milner.

Hawking, who is 73years old and wheelchair-bound, said, "We believe life arose spontaneously on earth. So in an infinite universe there must be other occurrences of life. Somewhere in the cosmos perhaps intelligent life may be watching these lives of ours, aware of what they mean. Or do our lights wander a lifeless cosmos - unseen beacons, announcing that here, on one rock, the Universe discovered its existence. Either way, there is no bigger question. It is time to commit to finding the answer to search for life beyond Earth. We are alive, we are intelligent, we must know."

Lord Martin Rees, Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics and University of Cambridge and member of the advisory committee of the initiative pointed out that the initiative is aimed at finding extra-terrestrial life.Milner wants modern day technology to be put to use to find alien life.