Million-Plus Acre Dixie Fire in California approached Array Allen Telescope, threatening the search for facilities for Extraterestrial Intelligence (Seti).
Seti Institute, which operates the Allen Telescope (ATA) array, said in a statement that the Dixie Fire now ripped in North California only 12 miles from the facility. Given the Northward Fire Dixie movement, Alex Polak, Manager of the ATA science and engineering operations, said that the facility was evacuated as a precautionary measure and that mitigating efforts of threats around 42 antennas facilities were underway.
“Anticipating the possibility that [The Dixie Fire] might reach an antenna, the Observatory staff contacted the Fire Department M.S. Forest Service to prepare the site against finally damage,” said Seti’s statement. “Two teams from the Forestry Service, around a dozen people are totally removed from near the antenna. The trees in the area were trimmed from lower branches than ten feet above the ground.”
ATA is the only facility of its type whose main mission is to find radio signals from extraterestrial life. Because the type of microwave radio signal that is monitored by ATA is not affected by the Earth’s atmosphere, the facilities do not need to be found at higher heights such as mountain peaks or mountain plateats such as mirror optical telescopes and lenses.
However, what is needed, is a very calm area, usually a low-populated countryside which is often surrounded by pastures and natural forests. The type of region that makes detecting radio signals fainting which might occur in alien civilization is also the most vulnerable to forest fires, unfortunately.
Analysis: No matter what you do, climate change will interfere
Sometimes it is difficult to predict how climate change will affect our lives because we tend to see the big picture problem such as increasing temperature and sea level, but the big line effect has granular and downstream consequences for everyone.
If someone says that climate change will disrupt the life of alien life, people may not make the connection that California forest fires – exacerbated by the climate crisis – will disrupt the telescope array we use to search between stars.
When we talk about flooding in coastal areas, we don’t think about the interference of the industry produced from the essential supply chain that is interrupted by the road swept away, or a disruption of the factory or commercial center with powerlines that fall, the line we see Louisiana now.