Allen Telescope Array In Action

DIY News writes "36 of an eventual herd of 350 dishes are now operational in a remote area 250 miles northeast of San Francisco. These antennas, 20 feet in diameter and the height of a football goal post, are the first installment of the Allen Telescope Array, and they are ideal for short SETI projects while the array is being built." From the articel: "The young ATA's first foray into SETI will be known by the straightforward (if not overly galvanic) name of Inner Galactic Plane Survey. The word 'survey' may surprise many who are familiar with this telescope's design. After all, it's being finely tuned to speedily examine large numbers of star systems in a so-called "targeted search". The completed array will be exceptionally nimble at such individual scrutiny, and will leave previous targeted searches in the data dust."

Comments

Damn it

[Anonymous Coward]

Got my hopes up, i thought i had read "Alien Telescope Array In Action." Drunk and bored, *sigh*

Re:Damn it

[Tablizer]

Got my hopes up, i thought i had read "Alien Telescope Array In Action." Drunk and bored, *sigh*

Perhaps we need a new set of moderation tags for drunk trolls, eh?

I originally read it as "Allen Telescopes Alien in Action", as if this Allen dude is a space-born porn filmer.

Long days are a substitute for LSD it seems.

Re:Damn it

[Alien Being]

"as if this Allen dude is a space-born porn filmer."

Up Your Asteroid
Mission to Uranus
A Star is Porn
Rock-It Ship
Moondingo
The Legend of Victor Thrust
Rock-It Ship 2 - Re-entry
Challenger: O-Ring Blowout (sorry)
Roving Luna: How to Get Your Rocks Off
Snow Blow and the Seven White Dwarves

I left my normalness back east

[Tablizer]

In the patchwork of dry, cow-fouled ranch lands 250 miles northeast of San Francisco, an unusual crop [antennae] is poking above the dusty shrubbery.

Unusual crops and alien life (SETI responders) would not stand out near SF.

Re:I left my normalness back east

[mcrbids]

Unusual crops and alien life (SETI responders) would not stand out near SF. /sidenote: Damn, this CSS for /. SUCKS on IE! //sidenote

San Fransicso is very liberal. But, this is on the OTHER side of California's Central Valley, which is VERY conservative, consisting of lots of rice/wheat/nut farmers who are as republican as any.

(Sigh) If you think 250 miles from SF is "near" SF, you don't know your butt from a hole in the ground... or at least, you don't know California.

Has Anyone Considered...

[spudwiser]

That SETI, rather than looking in the wrong places... is looking in the wrong ways? ETs aren't going to let us see them until we know how to look at ourselves.

Re:Has Anyone Considered...

[Graymalkin]

SETI's search parameters are based on some really well though out assumptions about how ET civilizations might try communicating. In a technological society where eletromagnetic radition is reasonably well understood it shouldn't take too long to figure out that the radio portion of the EM spectrum is really useful, especially if their physiology remotely resembles anything on Earth. We can't naturally detect radio waves so we don't hear a buzzing sound when talking on cell phones and we can't see it so we're not blinded by an FM reparter on a hilltop. Radio travels quite far in all sorts of media and can be generated and detected with relatively simple electronics. Lower frequencies are also much easier to broadcast omnidirectionally so multiple receivers can pick up a signal simulteneously. Suffice to say that radio is something a technological civilization is probably going to make good use of. Because of radio's propogation characteristics it is possible to detect signals at extreme distances.

Because of this our solar system is surrounded by a bubble of radio chatter about a hundred light years in diameter, expanding a bit farther every year. A technological civilization within this bubble of radio noise is quite likely to see us. A thousand years from now a technological civilization within a two thousand light year bubble could potentially see us. Therefore it is assumed that we could see another civilization's radio noise. This is SETI's general search criteria, evidense of a technological civilization outside of our solar system.

Now if a technological civilization were deliberately trying to send us a message. Maybe not us specifically but anyone out in the galaxy who might be able to find such a signal. How might that civilization send out a signal? There's lots of different ways but there's a really good chance they would send it via radio. As mentioned, it has excellent propogation characteristics. Radio signals reach us from the edges of the visible universe, it wouldn't be terribly difficult to get a signal a few hundred or thousand lightyears. It is also something the universe is teeming with. There's radio sources all over the place yet also quite a few empty bands. A civilization that figures out how radio works and happens to point an antenna at the sky will find this out quickly.

Now it is possible advanced civilizations might communicate via some extremely high tech means. SETI's notion is twofold, we will be able to see random noise generated by a civilization or we'll get a deliberate signal from one. Under premise one we might see radio traffic of some super technological civilization, they might be broadcasting gravity wave signals but we might be able to see their radar. Under the second premise a civilization wanting to be seen by others would attempt to communicate in the most fundamental way possible. Radio waves are pretty fundamental. It takes a modest command of physics and electronics to detect them and understand what you're actually seeing.

So yes it has been considered.

Re:Has Anyone Considered...

[deglr6328]

I think what spudwiser may have been getting at is that while yes, the physics of interstellar radio transmission have been taken into account in the search for ETI, the fact that we simply can't know what we don't understand yet has not been taken into account. And it by definition CAN'T be taken into account yet because we are still to primitive to know of it!

Put it this way, there are still tribes of native people in South America which are mostly closed off from the outside world and which communicate to neighboring tribes on nearby hills using, for instance, smoke signals. It's all they have, and it probably works fairly well. However, they are completely unaware of the gigabits of information streaming through thier world (and even right through them!) every second of every day in the form of signals carried on electromagnetic radiation from radio towers, satellites and whatever else. With thier limited understanding of nature, they simply cannot conceive of such a phenomenon. Similarly, in our currently limited and incomplete understanding of physics, WE are that tribe right now too. WE think EM radiation is the most effective/only means of communication over vast distances. There is no ultimate physical law saying this must be absolutely true however, and until we fully understand how the universe works, we will remain in the dark, communicating with our primitive radio signals while perhaps simultaneously awash in the information of creatures posessing a higher intelligence.

Re:Has Anyone Considered...

[Belial6]

But! If these tribesmen see smoke from our coal burning power plants, they would very likely figure out that there are people making the smoke. The parent isn't saying that advanced alien civilizatons wouldn't use tech we don't understand. He is just saying that we would likely see something that we could recognize as artificial, and thus intellegent in origin. The trick isn't in understanding alien transmissions right away. The first step is finding out if they even exist. If you can do that, THEN you spend the extra time and money figuring out if they have anything interesting to say.

Prove it

[Rhinobird]

Show us exactly where the aliens are. Then we can figure out if they're close enough communicate with. Although even if they were at Alpha Centauri, it would still be too far to go.

Goalposts, now?

[Myself]

It just wouldn't do to say how many feet tall the telescopes are, since nobody knows how big a foot is. No, we have to specify height in relation to a goalpost, since obviously everyone reading Slashdot is intimately familiar with football goalposts (is that american football, or soccer?) and how to convert them into other common measurements.

Cool, but

[rackrent]

While I'm all for SETI, it seems we have so many other things to learn first. Personally, I'm a big fan of the work done at the coolest of all "Arrays", the Very Large Array located in New Mexico. It's a sight to behold, and the information they gather through radio information has been extremely valuable over the years.

I'm sure it's that more impressive as it is in the middle of nowhere...there is a visitor center there (unstaffed) and the last time I went through there they sold postcards, pictures, etc., and had a box where you were kindly asked to deposit your payment. That tells me they were interested in the science first, the glitz and glamour of space.com is probably very low on their list.

From the articel

[1u3hr]

For God's sake Zonk, use spellcheck.

You missed the point.

[nekojin]

I wasn't aware the idea of SETI was to establish communications with other sentient life. I thought the whole point was simply to FIND them if they are there. We can work on what comes after that, AFTER THAT.

Re:Waste of time, money and effort

[DigiShaman]

Uhhh...no! The would not be a waste of time. The culture shock this would have all around the world would shatter our very perspective of the universe around us.

While we wont be able to communicate back with them in real-time, it would spawn a whole new field of science dedicated to the decoding of the transmission and any potential science discoveries to be learned from the original aliens that transmitted their discoveries. It could potentially be a passive version of a "galactic alien library" beamed out to space! Second, it would spur the desires for the younger generation to dive into math, science, and engineering in hopes to one day discover meathods for FTL travel. While the idea is far-fetched, at least there is now a definitive goal to strive for.

Why not

[Rhinobird]

I mean 1 goal post is just 3 Sasquatches. 1 sasquatch is 3 grey aliens...but only 2 reptilians.

Obligatory joke

[Federico2]

350 anntennas array?
Imagine a beowulf cluster of this!

Re:What's the point of SETI

[1u3hr]

What's the point of spending all this money on such a useless and rather silly project? Seriously.

"philanthropist Paul G. Allen has committed $13.5 million to support the construction of the first and second phases of the Allen Telescope Array... This announcement follows the successful completion of a three-year research and development phase that was originally funded by an $11.5 million gift from the Allen Foundation."

It's private money (actually Microsoft money). $24 million might fund a "low budget" Hollywood movie or buy one Impressionist painting. The array will also be doing "ordinary" astronomy; "In addition to conducting a SETI survey of the inner galaxy, the ATA-32 will observe in the direction of the galactic anti-center to detect primordial deuterium, study dark matter in nearby dwarf galaxies, and generate maps of polyatomic molecules in molecular clouds."

Are they ever going to finish it?

[heroine]

This Allen Telescope Array has been getting advertised for at least 15 years now and all they've gotten is 10% of it erected and not a single bit of data yet. They must be spending $1 a year on it.

Wouldn't it be farther along if they didn't build it on the most expensive real estate in the world? Maybe instead of spending 15 years building 10% of it outside Sacramento they could compromise and build it 1 mile east of Calif* for a trillion dollars less.

Are they ever going to finish it or is it just supposed to be neverending publicity for Paul Allen?

Re:Are they ever going to finish it?

[xs650]

This Allen Telescope Array has been getting advertised for at least 15 years now and all they've gotten is 10% of it erected and not a single bit of data yet. They must be spending $1 a year on it.

Wouldn't it be farther along if they didn't build it on the most expensive real estate in the world? Maybe instead of spending 15 years building 10% of it outside Sacramento they could compromise and build it 1 mile east of Calif* for a trillion dollars less.

Mr Google tells me it's nearest Cassel CA, population 366, in the Mt. Lassen Area. That is a low priced area. The median home in Cassel in the 2000 Census data was valued at $130,000.