INTERACTIVE: The chances that the new SETI telescope will detect intelligent extraterrestrial life are: Good Remote Nil View Results

February 9, 1999
Web posted at: 2:26 p.m. EST (1926 GMT)

In this story: 'Hard-core' science A fruitless search -- so far RELATED STORIES, SITES

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Scientists on Monday unveiled plans to connect as many as 1,000 of small satellite TV antennas together to form a massive, yet relatively inexpensive, telescope array that will search for signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life.

Officials at the SETI Institute, which for 14 years has looked for signs of intelligent life outside Earth, announced the plan, along with the University of California at Berkeley, which has endowed an academic position for an astronomer searching for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Rather than try to drum up support for a giant, expensive radio telescope like the disk at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, the researchers opted to try to link an array of small antennas similar to those used for backyard television reception.

Once set up, probably at the summit of Mount Lassen in California, the radio telescopes will create a huge electronic ear dubbed the One Hectare Telescope, or 1hT, because it will comprise a total collecting area of one hectare (2.47 acres).

"The idea is to try to build a big telescope and do it inexpensively," William "Jack" Welch, the first astronomer to hold Berkeley's SETI position, said in a statement.

"By using a large number of satellite TV antennas and inexpensive receivers we will build ourselves, we can get a very sensitive antenna that is much cheaper than the cost of building one big reflecting dish and one large receiver," Welch said.

Welch said the new project, to be completed by 2004 at a cost of $25 million, would first search 1,000 nearby sun-like stars and eventually search 1 million candidate stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

Modern searches for extraterrestrial intelligence have used radio microwaves to look for signals from other solar systems, listening on certain frequencies. So far, no intelligent life has been confirmed, and SETI scientists have often had to scramble for telescope time and money.

Frank Drake, president and one of the founders of the SETI Institute, hailed Welch's appointment, saying the endowed chair at Berkeley "confirms the legitimacy of SETI as hard-core science."

Drake, reached by telephone at the institute in Mountain View, California, said the plan to electronically link the smaller satellite dishes together to listen for extraterrestrial life is better and cheaper than using large radio telescopes.

SETI researchers would not have to compete with other astronomers for telescope time, and the array of satellite dishes would be expandable if required, Drake said.

Once completed, the 1hT would be the world's largest observing facility devoted substantially to SETI research, which requires a large collecting area to find the weak signals that would presumably be coming from a transmitter trillions of miles (km) away.

Highly sophisticated digital receivers are needed to scrutinize millions of radio channels, the institute said in a statement.

The search for an extraterrestrial pulse was begun in the 1960s by two then unknown astronomers, Carl Sagan and Drake, both of whom later became renowned nationwide for their study of outer space.

Today, about a dozen radio telescopes located around the globe sweep the heavens searching -- so far unsuccessfully -- for signals from outer space.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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