New Telescope to Hunt for Aliens

Perhaps ET is just a solar system away, and perhaps all we need is one more telescope to find him. That's the hope, at least, of some scientists who say a new radio observatory being built in Europe may hold a chance of finding alien life beyond our planet.
The Low Frequency Array, or LOFAR, is a network of up to 25,000 small antennae being built in the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, France and the United Kingdom. The distributed radio arrays will collectively scan the universe in the low radio frequency of light when they are completed in 2009.

"LOFAR can extend the search for extraterrestrial intelligence to an entirely unexplored part of the low-frequency radio spectrum, an area that is heavily used for civil and military communications here on Earth," said Michael Garrett, general director of ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy and professor of radio techniques in astronomy at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

"In addition, LOFAR can survey large areas of the sky simultaneously — an important advantage if SETI signals are rare or transient in nature."

http://www.space.com/searchforlife/080611-lofar-et.html