If you are not entirely familiar with the SETI Institute and the acronym it borrows – the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence – you could do far worse than to read in the Washington Post a broad and useful summary by Marc Kauffman. The piece seems to cover no news ground, but it covers a great deal of territory. He visited the Allen Telescope Array, at the Hat Creek Observatory that the University of California runs up where the Sierra fade into the Cascades. He spoke with Jill Tarter, a SETI scientist and among the best know popularizers in her field, and with Frank Drake, who is even better known.

And, the story reports, SETI is still scrounging hard for the money to expand the array dramatically from the 82 dishes now operating. The project wants to have hundreds more.

Grist for the Mill: SETI Institute ATA Fact Sheet ;

- Charlie Petit

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 at 2:48 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.