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A massive radio telescope in rural West Virginia has begun listening for signs of alien life on 86 possible earth-like planets, US astronomers have said. The giant dish has begun pointing towards each of the 86 planets — culled from a list of 1,235 possible planets identified by NASA's Kepler space telescope — and will gather data on each one. It is not absolutely certain that all of these stars have habitable planetary systems, but they are good places to look for ET, says University of California, Berkeley, graduate student Andrew Siemion. The mission is part of the SETI project, which stands for Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. The SETI institute recently announced it was shuttering a major part of its efforts — a $50 million project with 42 telescope dishes known as the Alien Telescope Array (ATA) — due to a budget shortfall. Astronomers hope the Green Bank Telescope, a previous incarnation of which was felled in a windstorm, will provide targeted information about potential life-supporting planets, even if on a smaller scale. "We have picked out the planets with nice temperatures — between zero and 100 degrees Celsius — because they are a lot more likely to harbour life," says physicist Dan Werthimer, a veteran SETI researcher. — AFP
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