A big array of alien radio signal-hunting receivers in the Sierra foothills well north of California’s Lake Tahoe has made news again and again in recent years. It’s planned, it’s under construction, it’s still under construction, it’s delayed, it’s desperate for more money than its kick-starter angel ponied up for its start, please send money…and so on. Well the kick-starter, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, will push a button today to officially inaugurate the first 42 of several hundred receivers that the SETI Institute hopes to build at the Univ. of California’s Hat Creek Observatory.

The Allen Telescope Array has a long way to go, but even at this small scale, its operators say, it will not only speed up the search for non-human radio operators in the sky, but do useful general astronomy as well.

Several outlets have stories out summing up the technology:

NY Times Dennis Overbye reports the stats and that all the project needs is another $41 million (But, one thinks, Allen’s name is already on it. So the next big donor might have a hard time finding something on which to hang his or her or their own moniker) ; Seattle Times Sandi Doughton reports the hunt for ET is “revving up to warp speed, thanks largely to an infusion of cash from Seattle’s most famous science-fiction fan,” an infusion that happened quite a while ago ; Space.com Seth Shostak (author’s an insider – he’s a SETI Inst. senior astronomer); New Scientist Anil Ananthaswamy; Seattle Post-Intelligencer Tom Paulson ;

Grist for the Mill:

UC Berkeley Press Release; SETI Institute Press Release; Paul. G. Allen Foundation Press Release (via PR newswire); (Note: latter two are the same)

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 11th, 2007 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Science Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.