SETI's Allen Telescope Array forced offline

Shakermaker

Shakermaker

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In an April 22, 2011 email (PDF) to Allen Telescope Array stakeholder level donors, SETI Institute CEO Tom Pierson described in detail the recent decision by U.C. Berkeley, our partner in the Array, to reduce operations of the Hat Creek Radio Observatory (and thus the Allen Telescope Array) to a hibernation state effective this month.
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This news sucks. According to the pdf it only takes 2.5 million dollar per year to run the facility. In government budget terms that is peanuts. I know there is a financial crisis going on, but this is the only program of its kind. As mentioned on the SETI site these are exciting times for astronomers with the discovery of so many exo-planets lately. Not being able to properly research those is a crime. Against science!
 
who the hell cares if Allen's Telescope no longer works. who the hell is Allen anyways
 
Microsoft's co-founder Paul Allen. Who will hopefully bankroll at least part of the continuation of the project.
 
theres a new technique to find alien planets anyway, using radio waves, so that tech was old anyway and didn't find much at all. not to say I'm happy about this news but there are more advanced ways to find alien life and we're making better strides if you are asking me
 
Warped said:
theres a new technique to find alien planets anyway, using radio waves, so that tech was old anyway and didn't find much at all. not to say I'm happy about this news but there are more advanced ways to find alien life and we're making better strides if you are asking me
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SETI isn't in the finding new planets business. They are looking for extra-terrestrial intelligence. Their research would be complimentary to astronomers who look for exo-planets. When a new planet is found, SETI could scan its particular little spot in the sky.
 
Shakermaker said:
SETI isn't in the finding new planets business. They are looking for extra-terrestrial intelligence. Their research would be complimentary to astronomers who look for exo-planets. When a new planet is found, SETI could scan its particular little spot in the sky.
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I know bro, but what have they found. from what I've heard they've had no results since the program started.
 
Warped said:
I know bro, but what have they found. from what I've heard they've had no results since the program started.
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None. But what would you expect? That you could find all intelligent species inhabiting the whole universe during a period of 25 years?
 
Warped said:
theres a new technique to find alien planets anyway, using radio waves, so that tech was old anyway and didn't find much at all. not to say I'm happy about this news but there are more advanced ways to find alien life and we're making better strides if you are asking me
Click to expand...

How would using radio waves find "alien planets"? Send them out and enjoy wait the hundreds or thousands of years it takes them to get there and back? SETI listened for (essentially) radio waves in hopes of finding extra terrestrial life. Granted the technique is kind of a long shot, it was as good as we had for a long time. Now that we have Kepler out there being a badass of exoplanet finding... I think there might be better techniques to be used. Just pointing an supremely augmented ear randomly around the sky has a pretty slim chance of working in retrospect. Now we can focus on areas with exoplanets are in the "goldilocks zone" and explore new techniques of investigation. Maybe even send strong pulses of information their direction... though it's another slim chance scenario. I think sometime possibly in our lifetimes, we're going to find a planet with some form of life. Whether it's buried somewhere in our solar system or hints of it somewhere in our galaxy...

However, I don't think SETI is going to be the best way to go.
 
http://www.space.com/11420-alien-planets-radio-aurora-exoplanets.html
Radio waves from the auroras of planets like Jupiter could be used to detect exoplanets that orbit at large distances from their parent star, according to a new study.

Auroras are flares of ultraviolet light in the upper atmosphere of planets. Scientists at the University of Leicester in England have shown that emissions from the radio aurora of planets such as Jupiter and Saturn could be detectable by radio telescopes such as the European Low Frequency Array, or LOFAR. Construction of the LOFAR radio telescope, with stations primarily located in the Netherlands, will be completed later this year.

"This is the first study to predict the radio emissions by exoplanetary systems similar to those we find at Jupiter or Saturn," said Jonathan Nichols, who is presenting the study's results today (April 18) at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting in Wales.
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my bad it was the Aurora radio waves, still pretty similar
 
I'm hoping in a few short years when we figure out how to bond together small cameras, we launch them through accelerators at tremendous speeds into the heavens and then 4 years later we'd see what Alpha Centauri and all its planets looked like.
 
Solution: Don't fire 10 Tomahawk missiles this year.

/thread/problem/aliens
 
Better this than the homeless shelters.

Not that this will stop people from shutting down homeless shelters.
 
Wait, were there no more children and the poor or elderly to **** over?
 
The obvious solution is to make telescope arrays fashionable among the financial elite of Haiti, so then they'll pay the scientists to build them onto their ultra-extravagant skyscrapers.
 
Regarding SETI's costs, Carl Sagan put it best into perspective:

"But, [SETI] costs too much, some of us say. But, in its fullest modern technological expression, it costs the same as one attack helicopter a year."-- Carl Sagan
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Man, that's lame. Come on, it's such a small amount of money to the sums that get splashed on rendering a few dozen human beings into a bloody mist.

Do we really need bloody mist that much? I know I don't.
 
Although I do agree that it isn't exactly much, the government has to start cutting costs somewhere, and it sure as hell can't be defense, law enforcement, or education. SETI must have seemed like the least efficient method of spending money.
 
15357 said:
Although I do agree that it isn't exactly much, the government has to start cutting costs somewhere, and it sure as hell can't be defense, law enforcement, or education. SETI must have seemed like the least efficient method of spending money.
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It can ABSOLUTELY cut costs of defense. Don't give me that shit. I know you love military and stuff but there's a point where its increase is detrimental to the society it protects. Since 2001, our spending has increased more than 81% not counting the cost of the wars themselves. That's ridiculous.

One thing we agree on is that education shouldn't be cut since we all know American Exceptionalism is non-existent especially with this anti-intellectual culture that's been fomenting, and we can only be exceptional by striving for excellence.
 
The money SETI needs is not even 0.001 percent of the estimated budget of the American ministry of Defense for 2011 (= US$525 billion).
 
Alright, I suppose 0.001% of the defense budget won't harm much.

Still, from what I've learned about the US economy in university, defense spending actually maintains American industries. And I'm not just talking about defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, or Springfield Armory. Every big corporation in the United States is connected with defense spending, from Kodak to Intel. I highly doubt that you can significantly cut defense costs without harming those industries, and therefore the entire US economy in general. And even counting only the direct dealers, it's a huge huge industry with thousands and thousands of jobs involved.

Proportionally speaking, the US government's spending is huge compared to, say, Japan, Korea, or other non-semi socialist countries. It's my opinion that it maintains the US economy.

Of course, I might be wrong, and I fully expect someone on this forum to come and tell me that I'm retarded with 11 reasons why I'm wrong. :p
 
15357 said:
Alright, I suppose 0.001% of the defense budget won't harm much.

Still, from what I've learned about the US economy in university, defense spending actually maintains American industries. And I'm not just talking about defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, or Springfield Armory. Every big corporation in the United States is connected with defense spending, from Kodak to Intel. I highly doubt that you can significantly cut defense costs without harming those industries, and therefore the entire US economy in general. And even counting only the direct dealers, it's a huge huge industry with thousands and thousands of jobs involved.
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This is true and it is not a good thing.
 
If they equip SETI with a giant death lazor then it can easily fall under the defense budget spending... plus we can shoot the aliens after we hear them...
 
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