"Martin Andersen" wrote in message
. ..
[....]
With the new telecope
array, one million stars will eventually be scanned. That's a nice
sample of Galaxy stars, and
for the first time in our history, a large enough sample to make some
real constraints to how
common ETI's are.


I wish I could share your opinion about this conclusion.
Even though I am a big fan and supporter of the ATA, I do not believe that
an analysis of one million stars around us would give us much 'constraints'
on how common ETI's are.
The best thing that the ATA can prove would be that none (or some of these
star systems harbor a
civilization which deliberately sends a signal to us.
There would be no proof of an ETI NOT being there.
For that (proof of absense) we would need a much larger antenna, since we
would need to show that ETIs around these star systems do NOT use EM
transmitters of any form.

Rob