Posted on 08/14/2011 5:03:15 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Back in April we told you about the shuttering of the Allen Array and the difficulties that E.T. would have phoning home. Well, if you happen to be in touch with the lovable alien, let him know to load up a few more minutes on his long distance card because SETI is back, on the strength of private donations.
Forty-two radio telescope dishes near Mount Shasta will again start listening for sounds of intelligent life in the universe this fall after donors — including actress Jodie Foster — came up with more than $200,000 to save the Mountain View-based SETI program, made famous by the movie “Contact.”
The Allen Telescope Array was shut down in April when the SETI (Search of Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute ran short of of money for the project.
The non-profit organization, which was founded in 1985 and funded in the 1990s by Hewlett Packard co-founder David Packard, said the $210,000 in donations it has raised this summer will allow the radio antennas to be turned back on by September. They will be re-calibrated and operated 24 hours a day through the end of 2011 while the organization continues to raise funds.
For full staffing they require roughly $2.5M per year, and apparently their new drive to raise private funds is gaining traction even in a tough economy. If they finish the next round of collections by Christmas it looks like they may be good to go for the next two years at least.
Another positive sign is that the team seems to be shifting their strategy to a less catch-all plan of scanning the entire visible universe and beginning to focus on the most promising spots. With the wealth of new exoplanets being discovered, SETI seems poised to begin devoting a larger portion of resources to specific star systems where rocky worlds orbit in the “Goldilocks zone” where liquid water can exist.
I understand that this is all in the realm of science fiction… for now. But if they ever do get that phone call, I’m enough of a foolish optimist to believe that everything on the Earth could begin to change overnight.
Where does it talk about tax dollars?
Will Jodie Foster be one of the participants of this? Is she, “O.K. to go.”?
Go to HotAir, click on the embedded link to the April article. It talks about budget woes.
“Is this about the union or bigfoot?”
Emily Latella
ping
Sorry. I had to get it out of my system.
It makes no sense to point these radio-telescopes towards space when there are many locations on Earth to search for intelligent life:
1600 Penn Ave, Congress, EPA, NPR....
RE: Where does it talk about tax dollars?
This article only mentions that its current funding will be from private sources.
As for tax dollars, this Reuters news mentions it:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/13/us-space-search-idUSTRE77C20220110813
EXCERPT:
The SETI project was hit hard by recent federal government budget cuts and by cost-savings at UC Berkeley.
Pierson said the 27-year-old SETI Institute, which aside from overseeing the telescope array also researches origins of life in extreme environments and conducts public education, had received two-thirds of its funding from government sources.
Point the antenna up guys 'cause there doesn't seem to be any down here, especially in Washington.
I, for one, will welcome our insect overlords.
Actually, there's a better chance of detecting intelligent life in the vacuum of intergalactic space than in those places. Let's hope that intelligent life will be found at 1600 Penn Ave, on January 20, 2013. Maybe the telescopes can be aimed first toward some polling places on Nov. 6, 2012, to see if there are any signs of intelligent life there.
Me too, especially if the eat democrats.
Its all cool, as long as they stick to receiving and don’t transmit stuff.
What they will eventually “find” will be demons posing as extraterrestrials -
they will put on a convincing show (part of the coming great deception). They will probably be “environmentalists”.
>>> SETI is back on the air
It was never off the air. Various installations participate in the project. Most notably the Arecibo big dish in Puerto Rico.
We've been "transmitting stuff" for almost 100 years.
The child in me, who still has a deep love of astronomy, would go in a heartbeat.
The tired, adult, snarky cynic believes that if ETs ever visit, they're too foolish to stay away and deserve whatever happens.
If one posits that the Bible is untrustworthy, then isn’t the First Wookie proof enough......?
We're transmitting a hell of lot of noise into space. From an advanced civilizations perspective we've just awakened, chirping like nest of newly hatched baby birds.
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