I am sympathetic to this program,
but I also would be extremely surprised to actually see success. I simply think we know enough even now to communicate
without broadcasting in the electromagnetic spectrum. Successful quantum entanglement almost begs
that interpretation even if you have to walk one side of the entanglement across
the intervening gap and even if the information flow is at light speed. Broadcasting is then meaningless as an option
and that is the underlying assumption of SETI.
Thus having it shut down is a
loss of data only for the data’s sake.
There is also still plenty of
data to process, and I am sure we will not catch up on it soon.
On the other hand, I suspect a
new funder will be at the table as this work is at least popular.
SETI Institute to shut down alien-seeking radio dishes
By Lisa M. Krieger
Posted: 04/25/2011 07:20:22 PM PDT
Updated: 04/26/2011 08:30:14 PM PDT
If E.T. phones Earth, he'll get a "disconnect" signal.
Lacking the money to pay its operating expenses, Mountain View's SETI
Institute has pulled the plug on the renowned Allen Telescope Array, a field of
radio dishes that scan the skies for signals from extraterrestrial
civilizations.
In an April 22 letter to donors, SETI Institute CEO Tom Pierson said
that last week the array was put into "hibernation," safe but
nonfunctioning, because of inadequate government support.
The timing couldn't be worse, say SETI scientists. After millenniums of
musings, this spring astronomers announced that 1,235 new possible planets had
been observed by Kepler, a telescope on a space satellite. They predict that
dozens of these planets will be Earth-sized -- and some will be in the
"habitable zone," where the temperatures are just right for liquid
water, a prerequisite of life as we know it.
"There is a huge irony," said SETI Director Jill Tarter,
"that a time when we discover so many planets to look at, we don't have
the operating funds to listen."
SETI senior astronomer Seth Shostak compared the project's suspension
to "the Niña, Pinta and Santa
Maria
"We have the radio antennae up, but we can't run them without
operating funds," he added. "Honestly, if everybody contributed just
3 extra cents on their 1040 tax forms, we could find out if we have cosmic
company."
The SETI Institute's mission is to explore the origin, nature and prevalence
of life in the universe. This is a profound search, it believes, because it
explains our place among the stars.
The program, located on U.S. Forest Service land near Mount Lassen,
uses telescopes to listen for anything out of the ordinary -- a numerical
sequence of "beeps," say, or crackly dialogue from an alien version
of a disembodied "Charlie" talking to his "Angels." The
entire program was set up to prove what once seemed unthinkable: In the
universe, we are not alone.
Lack of funding
But funding for SETI has long been a headache for E.T.-seekers. NASA
bankrolled some early projects, but in 1994, Sen. Richard Bryan of Nevada
convinced Congress that it wasn't worth the cost, calling it the "Great
Martian Chase" and complaining that not a single flying saucer had applied
for FAA approval.
However, successful private funding came from donors such as Microsoft
co-founder Paul Allen, allowing SETI to raise $50 million to build the 42
dishes.
Plans called for construction of 350 individual radio antennas, all
working
in concert. But what's lacking now is funding to support the day-to-day
costs of running the dishes.
This is the responsibility of UC Berkeley's Radio Astronomy Laboratory,
but one of the university's major funders, the National Science Foundation,
supplied only one-tenth its previous support. Meanwhile, the state of California
About $5 million is needed over the next two years, according to
Tarter. She hopes the U.S.
Astronomers mourn
The Allen array is not the only radio telescope facility that can be
used for SETI searches. But it is the best; elsewhere, scientists have to
borrow time on other telescopes.
Meanwhile, other SETI projects will continue, such as the
"setiQuest Explorer" (www.setiquest.org),
an application that allows citizen scientist volunteers to look for patterns
from existing data that might have been missed by existing algorithms. Through
a new partnership with "Galaxy Zoo" (www.galaxyzoo.org), this project runs in
real time, so discoveries can be followed up on immediately.
Bay Area astronomers mourned the hiatus of the SETI program and
expressed concern about the future.
Rob Hawley of the Peninsula
Astronomical Society called it "unfortunate. The Allen scope was a
wonderful experiment. "... Hubble gets all the press, but there are lots
of limitations."
Amateur astronomer Sarah Wiehe of Palo
Alto
"If we miss a distant signal," she added, "it would be a
terrible loss."
what it means
SETI's mission to explore the prevalence of life in the universe,
including about 1,235 possible planets recently discovered, is compromised,
according to scientists.
what's next
The program needs about $5 million over the next two years to support
the telescope facility.
online extra
To learn more about SETI and its programs, go to www.seti.org.
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