Hey E.T., call back later

Financial woes have delivered a serious blow to the search for E.T. One of its best tools, the Allen Telescope Array in northern California, has been put on hold until new funding is located.  "It is a huge irony," Jill Tarter, director of SETI research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., told me today. "Now we actually know where to point the telescopes to look at planets, but we don't have the telescopes to point right now, so a very ironic situation."  Click here.