Skies to be swept for alien life

The switch has been thrown on a telescope specifically designed to seek out alien life, the BBC reports.

Funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, the finished array will have 350 6m antennas and will be one of the world's largest.

The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) will be able to sweep more than one million star systems for radio signals generated by intelligent beings.

Its creators hope it will help spot definite signs of alien life by 2025.

The ATA is being run by the SETI Institute and the Radio Astronomy Laboratory from the University of California, Berkeley.

"For SETI, the ATA's technical capabilities exponentially increase our ability to search for intelligent signals, and may lead to the discovery of thinking beings elsewhere in the universe," said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in a statement.

On 11 October the first 42 dishes of the array started gathering data that will be analysed for signs of alien life and help with conventional radio astronomy.

My personal view is that this is a waste of time and money. I believe the evidence is overwhelming that extraterrestrials have conquered the problems of interstellar travel and are visiting Earth, and their presence has been covered up for decades.