Just last month astrophysicist Stephen Hawking announced that he was supporting a $100 million program to investigate extraterrestrial life. Russian venture capitalist and physicist, Yuri Milner, is funding the project. The initiative will utilize two of the biggest radio telescopes on earth — the Csiro Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. Astronomers will listen for potential radio signals from advanced civilizations to see if they reach beyond the solar system.
Why all this attention to alien life? “Mankind has a deep need to learn, to explore, to know,” Hawking told the Royal Society in London last month. “It is important for us to know if we are alone in the dark.”
With all this talk of aliens, it seemed very fitting to ask some of the stars of the upcoming film Independence Day: Resurgence if they were believers. Are we alone? Click through the gallery to read what they said.
Brent Spiner, Judd Hirsch, Vivica A. Fox, Bill Pullman, Roland Emmerich, Jeff Goldblum, Liam Hemsworth, Maika Monroe, Grace Huang, Jessie Usher, Sela Ward
Jeff Goldblum: “I like to read and see shows about this like Through the Wormhole and Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. There’s a book called From Eternity to Here, which has to do with time, space and the shape of our universe.
Carl Sagan and other scientists tell us that based on logic — with the size of the universe — there is something out there. The configuration of the universe is such that there is likelihood in this. Nothing has visited us so far. And we don’t know the whole story of the universe. But somehow I feel in my tummy more and more connected to that which is eternal and infinite.”
"Independence Day Resurgence" Global Production Event
Judd Hirsch: “I do believe there is something else out there. Any mathematician will tell you — the probability is so great because of the numbers. Especially now we know that space is so enormously large. There are billions and billions of possibilities.
Aliens are often depicted as green, scary people. How do we know that aliens can be scary? Alien life could look like us somewhere else. Or they could look like puppies. Look, a little alien, how cute. Where did you come from?”
Vivica A. Fox, Bill Pullman
Vivica A. Fox: “My belief in alien life has always been the same since making Independence Day. I believe that there is other life out there. I’ve been in different places in the world and seen things happen. And I’ve thought, somebody else is out there.”
Roland Emmerich, Liam Hemsworth
Liam Hemsworth "I believe in it. How can there not be something else out there? It’s a big world out there.”
independence Day Resurgence
Independence Day: Resurgence, will open in theaters on June 24, 2016.
The movie stars Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum, Judd Hirsch, Vivica A. Fox, Liam Hemsworth and Brent Spiner.
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