Mountain View’s SETI Institute Suspends Search For Alien Life
April 26, 2011 9:44 AM
Allen Telescope Array, ATA, UC Berkeley, SETI Institute
A portion of the Allen Telescope Array in Hat Creek, Shasta County; a joint effort by the SETI Institute and UC Berkeley. (SETI Institute)
MOUNTAIN VIEW (KCBS) – Forget about phoning home. If E.T. ever wants to phone planet Earth, the call may not connect.
The SETI Institute in Mountain View has suffered a major financial setback – specifically, facing a $5 million gap in funding for day to day operations – and as a result, is shutting down its deep space listening program.
KCBS’ Matt Bigler Reports:
Major Setback In the Search For Life On Other Planets
That means SETI – the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence – will mothball its array of radio telescopes, dealing a massive blow to the search for life on other planets.
“It’s challenging,” conceded SETI Institute CEO Tom Pierson. “We’re motivated to fix it just as we were in the 1990s when the NASA SETI program went away and I believe we can do so.”
Indeed, NASA had provided the financial backing for some early SETI projects, but that funding dried up under Congressional scrutiny, with some lawmakers criticizing the “chase” for Martians and flying saucers.
A subsequent private donor drive proved successful, which allowed the institute to build the 42 radio dishes that are now being shelved.
Last week, Pierson sent a letter to donors advising them that those dishes were simply being put into “hibernation” – describing them as being kept safe, though in a nonfunctioning mode.
Meanwhile, Pierson was pinning his hopes on the U.S. Air Force, hoping that agency’s budget would allow for support of the SETI program – reasoning that the institute’s dishes could help the Air Force track space debris.
Without question, though, the dishes would remain off until funding is secured, and that could translate into a missed call from E.T.
“Sure, yeah, we might miss something but we would hope whatever’s out there is going to be you know, an ongoing broadcast that could later be detected,” he reasoned.
Pierson was confident there was a valid reason to get the dishes fired up again.
“NASA’s incredible Kepler mission is actually giving us our first really valid targets where we’re pointing at planetary systems that we know are out there around other stars,” he explained, “and that’s why we are extremely motivated to get the array back online and get back to work.”
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