SETI shutting down?!

Wow, Tom Skerritt's part was prophetic now wasn't it? Now Jodi Foster never will be Contact...ed. You see where the SETI project has has to shut down the 42 radio dishes in its array called the Allen Telescope Array, near Hat Creek in California? Yep, it was announced this week (4/22) by SETI Institute CEO Tom Pierson, who described the recent decision by U.C. Berkeley, "our partner in the Array", to reduce operations. Pierson noted that there may be work coming, that would keep the array functioning, from the USAF. The shutdown comes at a very odd time as SETI was set to study the multitude of smaller planetary systems that have been revealed by NASA’s Kepler Mission.

Here are a couple of places to read more about the shutdown

IO9 article

Article in SETI