Getting your player ready...
SAN FRANCISCO — In the mountains of northern California, a field of radio dishes that look like giant dinner plates waited for years for the first call from intelligent life among the stars. But they’re not listening anymore.
Cash-strapped governments, it seems, can no longer pay the interstellar phone bill. Astronomers at the SETI Institute said a steep drop in state and federal funds has forced the shutdown of the Allen Telescope Array, a powerful tool in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, an effort scientists refer to as SETI.
“There’s plenty of cosmic real estate that looks promising,” Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer, said Tuesday. “We’ve lost the instrument that’s best for zeroing in on these better targets.”
