The SETI Institute has reportedly suspended its work at the Allen Telescope Array, due to funding problems. This apparently occurred on April 15th. They hope to find new funding and resume work. I look at the ATA webcams daily. I can confirm that an unusual number of cars were visible in the main lab parking lot on the 15th (11 cars instead of the usual 1 to 3). Further, the dishes that can be seen from the two still-working webcams have not moved since that date. The dishes were frequently re-aimed before this date. Link to article breaking this story today: http://news.discovery.com/space/search-for-et-suspended.html

Sad news. Hopefully this will not effect them using the VLA (Very Large Array) in New Mexico. This bring back an important point with Arecibo; it also nearly lost its operational funding a few years ago, but thankfully and hopefully it received the funding it needs. I assume it did otherwise I don't think we would be crunching WUs right now.

Here is a link to an article i wrote a few years ago about the possibility of Arecibo closing if it did lose its funding: Searching for asteroids, extraterrestrial life a little more rocky: Budget cuts threaten to close Arecibo, world's largest radio telescope

It really is a shame that we have to see these great science organizations lose their funding. For the most part, we can thank the US congress for diverting funds to other science projects, and political earmarks being canceled or also diverted. In some cases earmarks just don't make it to the projects they are assigned to because of errors on paperwork. Really does disappoint me.

EDIT: Well I thought the SETI Institute used the VLA for their search for ET...apparently, according to Wikipedia, I was wrong and it is not used for SETI at all.

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"By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible". Hebrews 11.3

See Eric’s Q&A posting, in the Staff Blog forum, about the ATA’s “hibernation”.

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Ahhhh.....I suspect they will be back in action in a short while. I suspect they are just trying to get some attention so they can raise funding. They will get it too! If that ATA telescope never looked for aliens, its still a very valuable tool for any astronomer! Loads of people will want a peice of the action.

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This is from www.setiquest.org:
ATA
Tullio

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Here is the German version of this news.....
Basically it says that California is bankrupt....
The USA has no more money available for the aliens. The financial crisis hitting California has now officially huge/cosmic size.





SETI-Projekt eingestellt

USA haben für Außerirdische kein Geld mehr

Die Finanzkrise des Kalifornien hat nun offiziell kosmische Ausmaße:
Aus Geldnot muss der US-Staat die Mittel für das Suchprogramm nach außerirdischen Lebensformen stoppen.
Mehr hier-->welt.de

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And they just ahd to use teh S@H screensaver. Perhaps one of our German crunchers could explain that the S@H project is alive and we and the Seti project is a private seti project not funded by the state of California

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

Wonder how long before the end of work hits crunchers.

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Wonder how long before the end of work hits crunchers.

This has nothing to do with SETI@home and does not effect the project. See the thread here.

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"By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible". Hebrews 11.3

And they just ahd to use teh S@H screensaver. Perhaps one of our German crunchers could explain that the S@H project is alive and we and the Seti project is a private seti project not funded by the state of California

I wrote an extensive post as an answer to the german newspaper article, explaining what seti@home is and how it has to cope and solve budget bottlenecks in order to keep the work going. The comment was censored and erased within minutes. I know that my German is not perfect but it was definetively not so bad.

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Journalists the world over cannot grasp the difference between SETI@home and the SETI Institute. We should not worry about them. Non ti curar di lor ma guarda e passa (Dante).
Tullio

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Journalists the world over cannot grasp the difference between SETI@home and the SETI Institute. We should not worry about them. Non ti curar di lor ma guarda e passa (Dante).
Tullio

We DO need to worry about misinformation and false reports. Because of all those misleading articles, the project could lose a lot of crunchers. Reporting false information is unacceptable and irresponsible.

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"By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible". Hebrews 11.3

The only newspaper I know admitting its errors is the New York Times. All others simple ignore any correction sent to them.
Tullio

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I don't think we'll lose as many crunchers as you're implying. Anyone who belongs to the project will likely come to the website to find additional information, and they'll see Eric's correction on the front page.

Others will just leave their computers crunching SETI until the data runs out... then when the data doesn't run out, they might get the idea that it's not going away (yet).