An array of small satellite dishes unveiled Wednesday by a group of alien hunters could mark a new era in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Housed at a tree preserve in Lafayette, California, the telescope array is made up of seven small satellite dishes purchased for around $1000 each and modified to search specific parts of the sky for radio signals originating from alien civilizations.

Frank Drake introduced the array to a crowd of reporters.

Perhaps the biggest problem the SETI Institute has encountered in its hunt is finding powerful telescopes to use for extended periods of time. SETI rents time on the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, the most powerful radio telescope in the world, but for only a few weeks a year. With its own array, the institute would have constant use of its own very powerful tool.

"The greatest stumbling block though all of these 40 years has been the lack of access to large antennas," Drake said at an event celebrating the activation of the prototype array. "This makes for a very inefficient search, because we must search many, many stars -- tens of thousands, perhaps millions -- before we will hit upon he signal."

"The Signal" is what those involved in the alien hunt call the noise that would confirm the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. It could either come intentionally -- by a civilization signaling its existence -- or as part of the civilizations regular activities, like broadcasting television signals.

To many in the SETI Institute, the existence of "The Signal" is presupposed. Many believe that its confirmation could very likely happen in their lifetime, perhaps from a signal captured by the institute's own telescope array.

"If you ask somebody in the SETI business how long it'll be before they find the signal, they'll give you the number of years before their retirement," said Seth Shostak, an astronomer who is the institute's public outreach officer. Shostak's own opinion is that intelligent life likely exists elsewhere, though it may be found that searching the sky for radio waves might not be the best method for finding it.

But many say that searching the skies for alien signals is a waste of time. Several books have been written, including the recently published book Rare Earth, which take the position that technologically advanced civilizations are exceedingly rare in the universe. Congress, too, took a shot at SETI, cutting off public funding for a search conducted by NASA and the SETI Institute in 1994.

Regardless, the activation of the seven telescopes -- which rotated a few times to a rousing ovation from the few dozen audience members -- could play a role in creating a golden age for radio astronomy. If the telescopes can be properly linked, the SETI Institute plans to build a series of hundreds of dishes across a field of 10,000 square meters at Berkeley's Hat Creek Observatory, about 290 miles (465 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco, by 2005. The cost, believed to be $25 million, would be significantly less than building one very large telescope of equivalent power.

Even radio astronomers not involved with SETI could use the array for the more traditional astronomical work of searching for undiscovered celestial bodies. This so-called One Hectare Telescope (1HT) could be expanded to perhaps a 0.4-square-mile (1-square-kilometer) area, surpassing the most powerful radio telescopes today in sheer power.

By using off-the-shelf small dishes instead of one custom-built giant telescope, the institute would save millions of dollars in construction costs. With the sky searching power of these telescopes, the SETI Institute would for the first time be able to determine just how rare technologically advanced civilizations are.

"We'll either detect a signal with the instrument we want to build," said Leo Blitz, director of Berkeley's radio astronomy laboratory, "or we'll find out how alone we really are in the universe. In either case, we will have succeeded in learning something important about our place in the universe."