Sun sets on SETI

It was once a rite of passage for a wannabee geek to have the SETI screensaver running on your PC, so you too could contribute to the communal greater good and play Spot The Alien (see above) but now itts closing, due to lack of funding and results - S F Mercury:

Lacking the money to pay its operating expenses, Mountain View's SETI Institute has pulled the plug on the renowned Allen Telescope Array, a field of radio dishes that scan the skies for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations. In an April 22 letter to donors, SETI Institute CEO Tom Pierson said that last week the array was put into "hibernation," safe but nonfunctioning, because of inadequate government support.

Of course, they wail, this is awful timing as there is most certainly going to be Jam Tomorrow:

The timing couldn't be worse, say SETI scientists. After millenniums of musings, this spring astronomers announced that 1,235 new possible planets had been observed by Kepler, a telescope on a space satellite. They predict that dozens of these planets will be Earth-sized -- and some will be in the "habitable zone," where the temperatures are just right for liquid water, a prerequisite of life as we know it. "There is a huge irony," said SETI Director Jill Tarter, "that a time when we discover so many planets to look at, we don't have the operating funds to listen."

A large reason for the drop off is simply funding cuts, both state and private donors. Apparently it only needs $5m or so a year to run, so let's see if any other of the Silicon Valley super-rch step up. However, one of the commenters probably has the correct answer:

I'm glad they finally realize that aliens have a right to privacy, too!

Broadstuff can reveal a deeper secret - the Aliens themselves have asked the Illuminati to influence the US Government to stop it owing to their privacy worries