S.E.T.I

That stands for Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence.  It is a privately owned organization, funded by Paul Allen (of microsoft) and many others.  I recall having a S.E.T.I program on my computer when I was about 14, lending my processing power towards the cause.

Anyways, The Hat Creek Radio Observatory is owned by UC Berkeley, and they keep perminant staff on location, to monitor systems and give tours (Like the one we had).

Some of the array

Now in all, they have 42 attenas, with plans to build about 300.  They are pretty erratically located, and it would seem someone just threw a rock and decided that wherever it landed, they would build an anntena. Apparently there is some mathmatical alogorithum they use to design maximum definition.

Death Ray

Now in the offchance that they make contact with an intelligent species, They need to have some form of defence.  From most knowledge we have of aliences, we know that they are feirce human-killing machines (Independence Day, Star Wars, Alien (1-4), Predator, ET (he made elliot sick, that bioterrorizing SOB).  The list goes on, But anyways, this is part of the death-ray array.  Each antenna is fitted with one of these bad boys that could destroy an entire planet.  turning the glorious state of California into something of a ‘death state’.

As I mentioned earlier, they need a lot of computing power to analyze all the data comming in.  This is their server room:

COMPUTERS

These are computers.  Not really that cool unless you actually get to play on them :-/  They did not allow me near these, as they had probably done a background check and discovered several computer-related incidences that I might/might not have been involved in.

The signal, is couting down.

This is from one of their displays, illustrating what the observatory is seeing.  Since they are a radio telescope, they are not looking at normal, ‘visable’ light, like the hubble looks at, but rather, light of wavelengths larger and smaller than visible light.  this light is known as “radio waves” for the most part.

The Death-Ray I was talking about earlier is actually the radio antenna for the satellite.  If you remember back to your physics course on optics, the point where light gets focused is called the focal point, so the antennas are collecting the waves(like light), and condensing them/focusing them on another, smaller antenna in front of the main antenna, and then directing them back to the death-ray thing.  It is there that all the radio waves are heard by the computers and stuff.

This was on their board.  The classic driving force behind the SETI initiative has been to disprove every signal, that is, put it through the most rigorous testing to make sure that it is really what they are looking for, the signal from an alien civilization.

Anyways, it was yet another fun adventure.  If you have any more specific questions, feel free to ask.

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