Allen's newest venture for a galaxy far, far away

Paul Allen paid half the $50 million price tag for the new observatory.

The hunt for ET is revving up to warp speed, thanks largely to an infusion of cash from Seattle's most famous science-fiction fan.

Today, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen will join scientists from SETI — the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — to unveil the first major telescope devoted full time to answering the question: Is anyone out there?

"It's the longshot of longshots, but if we did hear a signal from another civilization, that would be world-changing," said Allen, who paid half the $50 million price tag for the observatory in Hat Creek, Calif.

The first mission for the Allen Telescope Array will be to scan several billion stars across a vast swath of our own Milky Way galaxy, said astronomer Seth Shostak, of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. That broad-brush survey will be followed in the coming years by detailed examinations of a million stars — a quantum leap in coverage of celestial real estate. In the 45 years since scientists first started looking for signals from alien worlds, only about 750 stars have gotten such close scrutiny.

"This is an exponential increase in speed," Shostak said. "And it covers much more of the radio dial, which is important because ET never told us where to look for his broadcasts."

The array of 42 radio dishes, perched atop a volcanic plateau 300 miles northeast of San Francisco, will also help push the frontiers of conventional astronomy, said Leo Blitz, director of radio astronomy for the University of California, Berkeley, which helped foot the bill.

"We can see a larger piece of the sky at once than other radio telescopes — and we can make better images than anybody," he said.

The telescope's power will enable more detailed study of pulsars, black holes, dark matter, gravity waves and phenomena not yet dreamed of, he said.

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