SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT (publ. 4/27/2011, page A2) A story
about SETI's loss of funding misstated the role of the Allen
Telescope Array in the film "Contact." The telescope array
depicted in that film was the Very Large Array in New Mexico,
not the Allen Telescope Array.  If E.T. phones Earth, he'll get
a "disconnect" signal.   In an April 22 letter to donors, SETI
Institute CEO Tom Pierson said that last week the array was put
into "hibernation," safe but nonfunctioning, because of
inadequate government support.  The timing couldn't be worse,
say SETI scientists. After millenniums of musings, this spring
astronomers announced that 1,235 new possible planets had been
observed by Kepler, a telescope on a space satellite. They
predict that dozens of these planets will be Earth-sized -- and
some will be in the "habitable zone," where the temperatures are
just right for liquid water, a prerequisite of life as we know
it.  "There is a huge irony," said SETI Director Jill Tarter,
"that a time when we discover s