Seriously! California Forest Fire Threatened Alien Search Telescope

Allen Telescope Array used to search for life beyond Earth. (photo: unsplash doc)

JAKARTA - Forest fires in California, United States (US) or what is known as the Dixie Fire today are not only causing homes and businesses to disappear. However, radio telescopes that are often used to search for other life outside the Solar System will be threatened.

Some time ago, the SETI Institute announced that the Allen Telescope Array, which is used to search for extraterrestrial life, is again threatened by forest fires. The array consists of 42 radio antennas and is being threatened by the Dixie Fire.

On September 10, the fire was about 12 miles south of the line and had burned nearly a million hectares of land. Currently, the Dixie Fire is the second largest fire in California history. By September 10, the fire had been 59 percent extinguished.

SETI itself later confirmed in a statement that scientists and engineers who normally work at the site had been evacuated to a safer place. SETI regrets that a suitable environment for radio telescopes is usually a place where forest fires often occur.

Radio telescopes are especially suitable in rural areas, as one of them is a fairly quiet place. Usually the area contains only livestock rather than humans.

"Since microwaves, the type of radio signal the Array is looking for, are not blocked by Earth's atmosphere, there is no reason to place such an instrument on top of a mountain, as is done for optical telescopes," the SETI Institute said in a statement. September 13.

For information, the Allen Array is located at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory and was founded in 1959. Observatory staff have also contacted the US Forest Service Fire Department in an effort to prepare for possible damage.

They came in and tried to help reduce the area by removing various objects that could start a fire from near the antennae, and pruning trees from branches hanging closer than 10 feet to the ground.

This is not the first time Array has been threatened. In the summer of 2014, the so-called Eiler fire reached State Highway 89, about two miles from the antenna.

The Allen Telescope Array is a unique facility. It is the only radio telescope built by SETI as their primary purpose. Its 42 telescopes, currently being refurbished, include advanced electronics that could speed up the search for signals that would prove the existence of other life. The upgrade was funded by Franklin Antonio, co-founder of Californian semiconductor company Qualcomm.