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Jill Tarter and the Allen Telescope Array

Posted by Hemos on from the looking-to-the-skies dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Today's interview with Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute (and Carl Sagan's inspiration for the main character of his novel Contact), outlines the forthcoming search capabilities of the large Allen Telescope Array. Their thousand-fold expanded search must find promising places to point 350 radio dishes. Outside San Francisco, the array spans an equivalent 8 football fields. Their new catalog, called HabCat, identifies all potentially habitable hosts for complex life within 450 light-years from Earth. Of the billions of places to point in the sky, their A-list total: 17,129. Start at Vega."

4 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. fp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    That is all.

  2. Eddan Katz, writer, dead at 54 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Eddan "Jon" Katz, wanna-be geek culturist, was found dead in his Bronx apartment this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his attempted contributions to so-called geek culture. Truly a Slashdot icon.

    1. Re:Eddan Katz, writer, dead at 54 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      They're saying now that he "accidentally impaled" himself on an Allen telescope array. The coroner had to use lots of vaseline.

  3. Nice title by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Science: Jill Tarter and the Allen Telescope Array

    Literature: Harry Potter and the Scorcerer's Stones

    Your Rights Online: John Ashcroft and the Eroding Mountain of Happy