In article <putqp0drcj5pi097spufi3asu2e6ki91e8@4ax.com>,
f/f george <george@yourplace.com> wrote:

I believe that "bigger" antennas are not the solution, "better"
significantly over

There is very little scope for making antennas better.  Radio astronomy
antennas already have better than 50% of the maximum possible gain for
their size, and it is only really the need to avoid too much noise
pick up from the earth than prevents that figure being higher.

The only real scope for antennas is the use of phased arrays (e.g. the
Allen telescope) to allow for looking in large numbers of directions
at once.  That is becoming possible because the cost of the electronics
is dropping.  (It is possible to look in multiple directions with big
dishes, but one tends to be limited in the number that one can look at
and the directions are not independently controllable.)

If one takes the current total system, it is not difficult to get
sensitivies within a factor of about 6 of the theoretical limit for a
given capture area (total noise is about 3 times sky noise and antenna
efficiency about 50%).  Even if you could achieve that limit, you could
only go beyond it by using bigger antennas.

antennas are! Also "better" places to look might help too. As Science
evolves we will discover and use both.