Welch, an astronomer at the University of California at Berkeley, is raising money to develop an array of radio telescopes that will listen for possible signals from extraterrestrial civilizations. The array, which will be located in Hat Creek, California, will consist of 500 to 1,000 satellite dishes linked by software.

The array may "increase the speed of observation by a factor of 100," Welch tells space.com. In the past, SETI projects typically have focused on only one star at a time, and have operated on a part-time basis at telescopes devoted mainly to other purposes. The Hat Creek project, however, will search for signals from 10 or more stars simultaneously, and will employ the satellite dishes full-time. Currently, the Hat Creek facility operates a smaller array of radio dishes.

Welch was appointed last fall to a newly endowed academic chair dedicated to SETI. He became interested in extraterrestrial intelligence in the 1970s, when he and other researchers detected water vapor in interstellar space. Since water is crucial to life on Earth, its presence in space showed that searching for alien life was "not a crazy thing to do," he explains.

Welch serves on the board of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, which collaborates with the university on SETI projects. He is seeking both large and small donations from private individuals for the Hat Creek array, which is expected to cost about $25 million.

SETI research has been conducted on a private basis since 1993, when congressional budget cuts eliminated a NASA program aimed at detecting intelligent signals.