Search Resumes for Evidence of Life Out There

[groovedaddy]

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Thank you for holding, our operators are no longer broke.

Astronomers announced Monday that they had taken E.T. off hold and resumed searching for radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations with a set of radio telescopes in Hat Creek, Calif. The project, part of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, was suspended in April when the University of California’s Hat Creek Observatory ran out of money.

Astronomers from the SETI Institute had been using an innovative set of radio telescopes known as the Allen Telescope Array to try to listen in on alien broadcasts from the raft of planets newly found by NASA’s Kepler satellite. Under a new deal — as well as a public fund-raising effort that netted $200,000 — the SETI astronomers will share the telescopes with the Air Force, which is interested in using them to track satellites and space junk.

At 6:18 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on Monday, when the stars in Kepler’s field of view rose in Hat Creek, the array was back on the job, looking for what Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute here called “technosignatures” of any inhabitants of those planets.

“We know there are planets there,” she said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/science/space/astronomers-resume-search-for-evidence-of-life-out-there.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23

[dtexdem]

1. Better hurry up, because I don't know how much longer ...

life will be feasible on this planet.