BEIJING,,May 29 (Xinhuanet) -- A new SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute site in northern California will have 42 radio astronomy dishes up and running by the end of 2007, enabling it to scan the heavens for alien radio waves around the clock.

"There are a number of groups around the world doing SETI research. They are listening for radio signals out there, but it is not 24/7," said Scott Hubbard, who holds the Carl Sagan Chair for the Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.

"But it tends to be borrowed time where scientists sign up to use a facility for a few days or a few weeks at a time," he told Reuters Friday on the sidelines of a space development conference in Dallas.

That will change when the 42 radio astronomy dishes of the Allen Telescope Array are in operation. It is named for Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen, who donated some of the 12.5 million U.S. dollar construction costs.

"When you put all these dishes together it makes a pretty large patch in the sky which you can listen to with great sensitivity — detecting signals which are either very far away or very faint," Hubbard said.

"You don't have to have somebody who is planning to broadcast a signal. You hope to pick up somebody's old radio broadcast that left a different planet hundreds or thousands of years ago," he said.

Longer range plans include expanding the array to 350 dishes — but as the project depends on private funding and donations there is no timetable.

The dishes are in Hat Creek in northern California, which is in a protective natural bowl. This reduces the amount of radio pollution that could interfere with their detection of the skies.

Editor: Gareth Dodd

China View
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