Australian expertise is playing a key role in a renewed quest for alien life.
The CSIRO's hugely powerful Parkes radio telescope in NSW is one of only two in the world that will scan 100 star systems for signs of life, in a $135 million project funded by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and recently launched by cosmologist Stephen Hawking.
Thanks partly to the Australian dish's unhindered view of the southern hemisphere, scientists will be able to scan 10 times more sky, and with 50 times more sensitivity, than previous searches for extra terrestrial life.
"This is a systematic, massive scale search, the likes of which we have never been able to attempt before," said Swinburne University of Technology research fellow Alan Duffy.
The new project - called Breakthrough Listen - will build on work done by SETI, or the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, over the past 50 years. The data collected will be made available to the wider community to search and scan.
The program will scan a large array of frequencies for signs of life, with the southern hemisphere allowing for a pretty good view of the milky way.
"We see a very large fraction of the nearby stars from the southern hemisphere and we can also see into the centre of the galaxy," said Naomi McClure-Griffiths from ANU's Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics.
"We are in a really good position for seeing our galaxy, where there are stars, where there may be planets and there may be life."
If alien life is found, we won't necessarily be putting our hands up and waving at them.
Dr Duffy said the idea of hostile aliens, even if they're capable of getting here, is "weird".
He reasons an advanced race that can cross the seemingly impossible distance between stars probably wouldn't bother coming all this way take our resources - because they'd probably have cracked things that currently escape us, such as asteroid mining.
But aliens don't have to be hostile for things to go awry, and we don't have to look at space to predict the results.
"If you just look at the history of our species, any time a technologically advanced civilisation has interacted with one that is less so, it never goes well, even when the intent at the beginning isn't hostile," Dr Duffy said.
While Milner's program is offering $1 million for the best greeting, there is no plan yet to send it.
Dr Duffy said the potential for first contact will pose a new conundrum for human-kind.
"Do you just send the internet, no holds barred, just send everything there is about us and let the aliens judge," he said.
"Or, like a first date, keep the craziness aside and the exes and have a nice, presentable face to first contact."
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