There are meetings this week in Banff about the Square Kilometer Array:
http://www.skatelescope.org/
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is a mega-science project to build a revolutionary radio telescope with global involvement and unprecedented scientific and technical ambition. It is being planned and designed by a twenty-nation collaboration of engineers, astronomers, astrobiologists, physicists, industrialists and policy makers.
The SKA will be made of thousands of receptors linked together across an area the size of a continent. The total collecting area will be about one square kilometre, giving 50 times the sensitivity and 10,000 times the survey speed of the best current-day radio telescopes. The SKA will be located in either Africa or Australia-New Zealand, and the first astronomical observations will be made in 2019.
Are we alone?
The SKA will be able to detect extremely weak extraterrestrial signals and may even spot other planets capable of supporting life. Astrobiologists will use the SKA to search for amino acids, the building blocks of life, by identifying spectral lines at specific radio frequencies.
A spokesperson on CBC Radio Calgary yesterday said they should be able to say by 2020 if there are other intelligent civilizations in the universe.
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0408473