S.E.T.I.,Allen Telescope Array Runs out of Funding!!!...ATS Fundraiser?

S.E.T.I...Allen Telescope Array...Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Forced into Hibernation...

By rights, SETI - the search for extraterrestrial intelligence - should be entering its golden age. After decades of begging or borrowing time on other people's telescopes to scan the skies for repetitive radio signals suggesting intelligent life, SETI scientists finally got their own equipment a few years ago: the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) in California. The Kepler satellite, which has found more than 1,200 possible planets around other stars so far, has handed the ATA a bonanza of promising new targets, with more to come.

So it was especially distressing to SETI fans when a letter went out a couple of days ago from Tom Pierson, CEO of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. "Effective this week," he wrote, "the ATA has been placed into hibernation due to funding shortfalls for operations of the Hat Creek Radio Observatory (HCRO) where the ATA is located." Admits Jill Tarter, the Institute's research director, "We've been in better shape."

"If you think of SETI as not just research but exploration," says SETI Institute Senior Astronomer Seth Shostak, "this is like sending Captain Cook to the South Pacific but not giving him any food or supplies." (Shostak, who seems to have nautical analogies to burn, told the San Jose Mercury News that the suspension is like "the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria being put into dry dock.")

"We're hoping," says Tarter, "that the public will speak up about how important SETI is.""It's really frustrating," says Tarter. "We're here with 1,235 gorgeous new exoplanets from Kepler. This is the first time ever we've been able to say 'we know good places to look, we're not just guessing about which stars might have planets.'" MIT physicists Philip Morrison and Giuseppe Cocconi observed in a 1959 Nature paper that laid the intellectual groundwork for SETI, "The probability of success is difficult to estimate," they wrote, "but if we never search, the chance of success is zero."

...ARTICLE

Im just wondering,how can people let something as important as the Allen Telescope Array that is set in place to search for extraterrestrial life run out of funding? You would think that there would be enough people here on ATS to be able to send some kind of donations...I dont know if its important to any of that this place stays open but it should be because this the place that will be able to tell us first when some type of life has been found elsewhere and thats what alot of us are here waiting for..right?
If somehow we here at ATS could get together to start a fundraiser for A.T.A then I feel maybe others will catch on and add funds theirselves...Then maybe it can get started back up and begin looking for what were all waiting for...

A noble enough attempt...

but to be honest...

if we already aren't in contact...
Then I highly doubt that S.E.T.I will do the trick of establishing first contact

I highly believe we've already been in contact with other worldly beings for some time now...'
if not...
Then I doubt radio telescopes in the desert will produce much of anything...
other than a waste of valuable tax dollars...

Cos if they can fly half way across the universe in their fancy flying disk...
why can't they "pick up the phone" and give us a call?

I'm actually glad to see that people and governments are being a little more careful with their money...

I know its sure hard enough for me to get a few dollars... I save every penny I can just to buy what I need...

Anyways Best of Luck gdaub23

-Evol Eric

i agree with EvolEric, it is a near certainty that we are already in contact; even if we arent, SETI is not going to find anything, ever, and even if they did the gov wouldnt tell us anyway...i see SETI as a distraction from the truth that the aliens are already here...anyway, this could be part of disclosure, since if they are moving in that direction, it wouldnt make any sense to keep up the pretense of searching...people would be angry that we were needlessly funding SETI when we knew the truth all along, so shutting it down a little while before disclosure gives tptb plausible deniability...

reply to post by HenryPatrick


I agree, I think we already have contact and that they are probably already here, and disclosure is coming, Finally the media is recognizing UFO reports, when previously they were ignore/laughed at. I think they are preparing the public for disclosure.

Honestly, SETI is a waste of money and time. The fact is, highly advanced alien civilizations probably won't be communicating with radio waves. Even if they were, the vast size of the universe could mean we could search for thousands of years and not find a thing. We need to divert any SETI funding to potential telescopes that could identify the atmospheric details of the exo-planets that were recently proposed to be in the areas where life could be available. If we can find a habitable planet using that technology, we could send targeted signals and see if we could get a response.