Today, in the remote northeast corner of California, technology innovator and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen will hit the big red button.
The famous technologist will be inaugurating the initial 42 antennas of his namesake, the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) – the first major radio telescope designed from the pedestal up to efficiently chew its way through long lists of stars in a search for alien signals. Within two decades, it will increase the number of stellar systems examined for artificial emissions by a thousand-fold. The ATA will shift SETI into third gear.
The individual dishes of the ATA are 6 m in diameter. Like slow-growing lotus blossoms, these antennas have methodically erupted on a lava-littered heath 300 miles northeast of San Francisco during the last four years. Eventually, 350 dishes will grace the Hat Creek Observatory site. But the 42 now up and running are equivalent in collecting area to a 40 m single-dish antenna – and that’s large enough to start doing some serious science.
SETI may be a little far out for some; but, at least you can appreciate how the usual progression of miniaturization and cost-reduction we accept as common in electronics technology – makes something like this possible as a private project.
The writing is the sort of fanzine stuff I’d associate with SETI ; but, impressive that today’s cost is about 1/100th of what things cost back when the VLA was built.
Pauls wastes a lot of money, but at least this does put scientists to work.
If only Carl Sagan were alive to see this. Somewhere that man has a huge grin on his face. I’ll bet Ann Druyen and Steven Soter are excited, as am I. With any luck, I’ll get a tour. The electronics and guidance for this beast are amazing. Thanks, Paul Allen!
Here are some great pix of the novel antenna design and deployment:
[off topic]
Speaking of Carl, it’s a shame the movie “Contact” didn’t end like the book. Anyone here remember the revelation at the end of the novel? One free BRDDA to first correct guess!
What appalls me is the poster gives SETI publicity, John C Dvorak even posts, but what about Folding @ Home ?
SETI to me is a colossal waste of computer time, whereas protein folding to find cures for cancer has immediate positive consequences.
http://folding.stanford.edu
I’ve also sent plenty of emails & posts about this, asking for a Cranky Geeks Folding @ Home team.
I even made two Snazzy Cranky Geeks logos, that I can’t post here.
So John, Uncle Dave, KD Martin, Eideard what are you waiting for???
Holy huge waste of money, Batman! There is nothing out there people. The odds of us being “out here” is already mind-bogglingly-ridiculously high. JEESSHHH!!
PS. Don’t forget to click on John’s Horoscope ads on the left… promote free-thinking!
Hey SETI–try looking in subspace. Morons.
I really hope that the silence continues to be deafening. We’ve only got a single statistic, this planet, so not truly much to go on. However, what has happened every time a more technically advanced civilization has come in contact with a less technically advanced civilization on this planet? If the aliens can come here and we can’t go there, that makes them the more technically advanced of the two of us. So, what happens to us if we find them and invite them over for dinner? Do we really want to meat them?
http://www.terrybisson.com/meat.html
It’s not a waste. As long as the rich buy expensive toys the money trickles down. I doubt any culture advanced enough to need interstellar communications could rely on slow light speed communications. Even if they did, how the hell would you ever translate it? A good many people would claim it was a deception and conspiracy.
Bubba- I remember, I think it was that the alien appeared to Jodie Foster as her father, as not to frighten her, the trip happened so fast (in earth time) that it didnt appear to happen, yet to her, it lasted soem time. Am I close, do I get the prestigious BRDDA?
> [off topic]
> Speaking of Carl, it’s a shame the movie “Contact” didn’t end like
> the book. Anyone here remember the revelation at the end of the
> novel? One free BRDDA to first correct guess!
0000001000000
0001000001000
0010000000100
0111111111110
0010000000100
0001000001000
0000001000000
Only MUCH bigger and base-11.
Yes, I wanted the book ending as well 🙁
3. Bubba- oops, that was the ending of the movie, guess I am disqualified. Damn.
4.
and wiping out 2/3’s of the world population would solve 99% of the problems on earth…
7.
HOW to serve man. Ever read the book?
I didn’t think anyone else remembered how to serve man. Not the Twilight Zone version. The original short story.
With roast potatoes – as well as I remember.
People bitching about the waste of this project forget that with the construction and operation, maybe someone will invent a new way of doing things like processing data or measuring things, maybe this will lead to other breakthroughs. Maybe it will help people design a better WiFI card or better cell phone tech.
Instead we get “Wah people are spending private money, where is my cut or where is the poor’s cut…”
If we tried to solve all the world’s social problems 1000 years ago we would still be trying to solve them. You can solve them but you will never reach a utopia, just 1984 like dystopias.
#4, Mark – from reading the article – and more – it’s clear the SETI folks had a great deal to do with developing this project. Folding@home is a positive and productive (we all hope) project that the folks at dl.tv have adopted. Worthwhile in its own right – but, that’s not what this project is about.
And the Post – as I would expect – is about the technology of the project. Interesting in and of itself.
End of the book Contact: there was a message in Pi.
Jokelet by Paul Allen, by way of Douglas Adams: 42 (the number of Allen dishes initially) is the answer to life the universe and anything. For those who know, what is the question, and why doesn’t the question make sense at first?
I’m saying that SETI is worthless and Folding@Home has purpose.
From the POV of donating computer resources.
The ATA array will be used for all kinds of research, not specifically for SETI, as SETI simply obtains a copy of the information, and scans it for non-natural pulses. Big Whoopee.
Even if we should find a Sentient Signal, the sending civilization would probably be long dead by the time we receive that message, and send something back.
“hello earthlings… we just saw your new planet, ripe with all the ingredients for carbon based life, and we would like to welcome you to the universe. We also bid you farewell as this message will arrive just before you succumb to your dying sun. Don’t bother replying.”
I’ve been processing SETI work units since the first day they went online. If we don’t try, we won’t know but maybe I should have asked some of the posters here first before I started as it seems they know for sure.
Still, it’s a great idea and I’m in it for the long haul.
#10, Tom Bont receives the penultimate BRDDA for not only getting it correct but including the mini-diagram. Amazing that Carl thought up a wonderful graphic of a circle encoded in the number PI itself. I enjoyed the movie immensely, but I thought the book was even better.
The Prestigious BubbaRayDipDork Award is yours. Congratulations!
http://tinyurl.com/2qfq39
Jeez, I didn’t think anyone would get that, there are a lot of 10 percenters here…
[absurdly off topic]
#16, Floyd, wasn’t The Ultimate Question requested from the computer Deep Thought ? As I recall, It takes Deep Thought 7.5 million years to compute and check the answer.
#4, Mark Derail, SETI to me is a colossal waste of computer time, whereas protein folding to find cures for cancer has immediate positive consequences.
Research is what it is, whether SETI, cancer, or building a better mousetrap. Don’t lament the “wasted” computer cycles for SETI, you never know what we’ll find out there. And the research isn’t just about listening for aliens — it greatly advances radio astronomy and related fields. We still need to know and explore the universe around us, not just the human body (a marvelous product of evolution). [There, that ought to stir up the muck.]
I’m glad to see Allen spending his money on something that could be useful. This whole project will cost less than the Master Bath on his latest yacht.
Now, maybe Gates or someone will sponser a set up to scan the skies for stray meteor’s or astroids heading our way. The goverments of the world sure aren’t interested if the amount they spend on this is any measure.
Of course a stray 1 mile long astroid would solve a lot of social problems on the planet if it hit. 🙂
#23, Joshua, Of course a stray 1 mile long astroid would solve a lot of social problems on the planet if it hit.
That it would. Check out this interesting theory about the Chicxulub asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and 50% of the species on Earth. The article also has interesting data about global warming:
From Space.com–
http://tinyurl.com/2ykz8w
Never has so much money been wasted in the futile goal of trying to prove that “God doesn’t exist”, so all the atheist scientists can have guilt free sex with someone they’re not married to (e.g. Carl Sagan), without the laws of the land to hinder them. It all boils down to this.
The Bible doesn’t say anything about God putting life on other worlds. So if the scientists can find some crum of life, or proto-life, anywhere else in the galaxy. Well then that clinches it, doesn’t it? No God! As if God, using a human author to pen his words, would have someone write down the following.
“BTW, not that it’s the least bit important to your survival, or moral conduct. But I’ve personally been to the rest of the universe. And planted gazillions of species of life there, that may or may not take. So now you on earth can feel insignicant and meaningless, as I obviously have so little faith in your survival that I’ve dumped tons of life elsewhere. God out.”
Yeah, that would have gone over real big with mankind. And the scientists looking for other life, are too focused on the accolades of discovery, that they don’t even want to consider the consequence. The space program has been dancing around this issue for decades. First they want to go to the moon, to beat the “godless russians”. But then when we got there, the scientists wanted to learn how the moon got made (what, no God now?). And when the Apollo 13 astronauts were in trouble, it was “pray for their safety”. But after that, it was back to looking for a god-free origin of the moon. Even the first few moon landing missions had the astronauts isolated on their return. In case some moon germs had evolved there independently. But I’m sure it had more to do with keeping us from seeing how weak the crews had become from enduring several days of zero G.
Can’t have rubbery legged heroes on crutches. We might question the viability of space travel. And we should never question that! Only God.
Um, Glenn E–has it occurred to you that only you are having problems with humans trying to find out more about how the Universe came to be? From your religious point of view, you could consider the science to be revealing How God Really Did It.
If scientists find something that contradicts your reading of the Bible (or the Tao Te Ching or Koran, or whatever), consider that those books were written by imperfect people that had no knowledge of science, and mistakes were made. It doesn’t mean that you can’t find wisdom in there, however.
The rest of us are more interested in what has been found out about the Moon, Mars, and the other planets. Getting back on topic, it’s the same with SETI…
Folks will ridicule SETI right up to the moment the Mothership arrives and demands all our virgins, then they’ll raise hell because nobody saw it coming.
For me, I want technology to proceed to the point where they can transplant my brain into a compact little vat that can handle my life processes for a few million years, then plug me into a jalopy of a starship and let me go exploring.