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New US Telescope To Widen Search For Life On Other Planets LAFAYETTE, California (AFP) - US astronomers revealed a seven-dish SETI telescope, the first in a series of prototypes that will eventually widen the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. "This prototype launches the next generation of SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) research in a bold way," Jill Tarter, director of research at the SETI Institute said at the unveiling ceremony at the Russell Reservation, a few kilometers from the San Francisco campus of the University of California-Berkeley. The unveiling coincided with the 40th anniversary of Dr. Frank Drake's Project Ozma, the first scientific search for extraterrestrial life that was conducted through a 26-meter (85-foot) radio telescope in West Virginia. The seven-dish prototype developed by SETI Institute (Drake heads its board of directors) and UC Berkeley, and a second, larger prototype to be built in 2002, will help perfect the technology of the final telescope to be completed in 2005. Once finished, the One Hectare Telescope, or 1hT - so called because its total signal collecting area will be spread over 10,000 square meters (2.47 acres) - will be the world's largest telescope devoted to SETI and among the largest radio telescopes in the world for any purpose. Funds for the projected $25 million 1hT are being raised from private sources by the SETI Institute. The 1hT, to be located at US Berkeley's Hat Creek Observatory some 465 kilometers (290 miles) northeast of San Francisco, will also be used for more traditional research in radio astronomy such as the formation of stars, researchers said. Eventually, scientists hope to use hundreds, or perhaps thousands of small backyard-type satellite dishes linked by sophisticated electronics to create an unparalleled SETI observing instrument, they added. "The 1hT team will begin the search with 1,000 nearby sun-like stars and gradually move outward to encompass 100,000 and then one million candidate stars in our galaxy," researchers said. SETI researchers inspired a science fiction novel by the late media-savvy astronomer Carl Sagan that in 1997 became film director Robert Zemeckis' "Contact," starring Jodie Foster
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