Clearly, if we wait a few hours to check out a signal, it might fade into temporary oblivion. In the worst case, we could miss the evidence of a hailing alien. So we don't wait. We check out all signals right at the telescope within 20 minutes, a job that is tougher than a two-dollar steak. The Project Phoenix system monitors 28 million channels simultaneously, and is hooked up to an antenna that's the equivalent of ten thousand large, backyard satellite dishes.
Signals pour in at the rate of several a minute.
It does so by using pipeline processing. This sounds like something that would interest an oil company, but pipeline processing is just a computer term. It refers to handling the signals in a sequence of steps, with a different system at each stage. If the signal makes it through stage two, a second telescope, the 250-foot metal monster at Jodrell Bank, England, is called into play. It checks to see if it can find the candidate.