This is the Allen Telescope Array, named after the deep pocketed donor who paid for it - Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. It has been used for the last 4 years as part of Project SETI to scan millions of frequencies for signs of a broadcast originating from intelligent life elsewhere in our galaxy.
SETI was always an interesting long-shot, space is so huge and the odds of finding something is tiny. Tiny, but not zero. But alas, SETI has been defunded by the government (presumably to buy one more case of guns or something - it wasn't a big budget item). So the Allen Array will "hang up" very soon.
The excellent Carl Sagan book (and subsequent movie) Contact was a fictionalized account of the interception and decoding of a signal from space. Carl was a great proponent of the search for extra terrestrial life. Note that this search has nothing at all to do with UFOs or Area 51. The odds of a SETI discovery are small, but at least it's real science.
Was. Was real science.
1 comment:
Contact is one of my all time favorite movies. Goodbye, SETI. At first I thought you spelled it wrong (Alien Telescope Array)...hee hee.
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