CORY listens to cosmos for signs of ET

A NASA astronaut switched on one of Europe’s largest radio telescopes last night to allow it to “listen” to deep space and for signs of intelligent life.

Greg Johnson, who piloted the space shuttle Endeavour’s final mission in June, flicked the switch at the Big Dish Project at the National Space Centre’s (NSC) Elfordstown Earthstation facility at Midleton, Co Cork, making it the largest radio dish available for educational purposes in Europe.

Within seconds, the first cosmic microwave background sounds crackled through. The dish picked up the hiss from hydrogen atoms in a cloud up to 100m light years away, first emitted when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.