. . . to cover up the existence of alien lifeforms.

But this is what's going on:

At about 3:30 AM PST on 27 February an optical fiber cable connecting the U.C. Berkeley campus with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory was cut, apparently by vandals trying to "salvage" copper from other nearby cables.

The broken fiber carries data and voice connections for LBNL and also for the Space Sciences Lab and the Lawrence Hall of Science. SSL is where the SETI@Home project is located, so the millions of participants helping to analyze data have been unable to contact the SETI@Home servers ever since.

This morning we (CNS) were told that the repairs would be finished sometime today. Unfortunately that's not the case. The carrier has finished pulling new cable, but now LBNL has to splice the new cable into their own fiber plant. This process will not be completed until late in the day Friday, 2 March.

For more information, please visit the newsgroups sci.astro.seti and alt.sci.seti.

Thanks to Pat for emailing this to me. And yeah, I've got three systems running SETI screensavers (one at home, two at work). They've been less than happy for the last day or two. :(

Ah-ha! I wondered what the deal was when I couldn't connect to the server to deliver finished work units for the last couple of days. When I looked over alt.sci.seti on Google, however, I didn't find any mention. At least now I know the cover story. Thanks!