Allen Telescope Arrray Innaguration

ALLEN TELESCOPE ARRAY

Today 11 Ocotber 2007, in the remote northeast corner of California, technology innovator and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen will hit the big red button.

No, he won't be throwing heavy-duty machinery into an emergency shutdown, nor will he be sending ICBMs screaming from their silos (traditional functions for ruddy buttons). Instead, he'll be christening a new telescope that, in its significance, could eventually outpace the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria.

The famous technologist will be inaugurating the initial 42 antennas of his namesake, the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) – the first major radio telescope designed from the pedestal up to efficiently (which is to say, rapidly) chew its way through long lists of stars in a search for alien signals. Within two decades, it will increase the number of stellar systems examined for artificial emissions by a thousand-fold. The ATA will shift SETI into third gear.

This telescope is truly a geek's barn-burner. In the last two decades, high-performance radio amplifiers have gotten smaller and, more importantly, much cheaper. This has changed the recipe for building radio telescopes, and the ATA is taking advantage of the new formula.