This is really smart in my opinion and exciting. They are apparently planning to deploy these super powerful telescope arrays. And they feel this is a huge move forward and improvement in likelihood of finding something:

It is perhaps fitting that this new program will make use of the Green Bank Telescope (GBT), since Green Bank, West Virginia was the site of the first modern SETI experiment, called “Project Ozma.” In 1960, Frank Drake pointed the Tatel telescope at two nearby stars to search for the telltale signs of intelligent life; radio signals near 1.420 GHz. He listened on-and-off for four months, collecting 150 hours of data. He heard nothing.

The new program will be “a factor of 100 times more powerful than any current or past SETI program” says astronomer Geoff Marcy, a leading member of the team that will be organizing this search. He goes on to say that the 1.5 GHz bandwidth used for this program will be “like tuning your radio in your car, but instead of collecting the music from just one station, you collect the transmission from 1.5 billion stations.”

Wow 100 times more powerful? That is like dial up internet vs. a t1 line. This seems like one of the best ways to have the greatest likelihood of finding something. Although it’s cool to design and launch extremely expensive devices to explore our solar system and beyong, this casts a much wider net.

thanks to universetoday.com for the great info

thanks to Jingchuan Yu / Beijing Planetarium for the pic