Spaced Out

(CNN) -- Interstellar radio has lost one of its most avid listeners.
A collection of sophisticated radio telescopes in California that scan the heavens for extraterrestrial signals has suspended operations because of lack of funding, a spokeswoman said Monday.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute operates the Allen Telescope Array, the field of dish-like scopes some 300 miles north of San Francisco. The telescopes are a joint effort of SETI and University of California-Berkeley's Radio Astronomy Lab and have been funded largely by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who donated more than $25 million to the project.

I have followed SETI for a  long time, and have enjoyed running the Seti@Home screensaver, which lets users donate CPU time while their computer is idle and process the unbelievable amount of data that is gathered through the organization. I sincerely hope that they are up and running again soon.  In the meantime, I have a couple of computers gobbling up information and helping catch up on the data gathered so far.  While I don't expect to find aliens, I do think watching and listening will allow us to make important discoveries and build a foundation of information and statistics.