Note to ET: Don’t Bother Calling Us!

Note to ET: Don’t Bother Calling Us!

The title of this post is my advice to any extraterrestrials who might happen to be trying to contact Earth. Why am I giving them this harsh advice? We are not listening anymore. It is not that scientists have given up because they don’t think there are other intelligent beings in the universe. It is just that funding to the Allen Telescope Array has been cut. It would take $5 million to keep listening for radio signals from the exoplanets found by Kepler satellite for another two years in addition to $2 to $3 million to function and keep other research projects going.

The radio telescopes of the Allen Array are dedicated to searching for alien intelligence. The array was built by the SETI Institute. SETI is short for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Up until now, funding to operate the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, where the Allen Array is located, has come from several sources: private donations, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), and the state of California. Seth Shostak, SETI senior astronomer reported that, “As it happens, Berkeley’s budget is way down—the state of California is in terrible financial circumstances because of the economic downturn. Consequently, they don't have the money to keep the doors open and pay the electric bills and pay the staff at the antenna. And we don't either, because we run our SETI projects mostly based on private donations, and those are down as well."


As of April 15, the Allen Telescopes have been put into hibernation to protect them and allow them to function again in the future. However, all is not lost; SETI astronomers can still collect data during downtime on other telescopes. Instead of having a 24-hour sky watch, they will have to depend on a few hours here and there to collect their data. This will significantly diminish their chances of finding a signal. Until the Allen Telescopes are back online, I guess ET will just have to wait for us to pick up our phone again.