'Alien' Sounds

To qualify as a frequency transmitted by a potential extraterrestrial life form, Leigh says a frequency must fit several definite characteristics.

The frequencies should be "nice and quiet" and located "near the neutral hydrogen line," according to Leigh.

"We're looking for things called carriers," he said. "They're like pure tones, but instead of being sounds, they're microwaves."

Leigh also said the signal has to originate "not from the Earth [but] from a fixed point in the sky."

"We get a lot of interferences from Russian satellites, cellular phones and televisions, but none from aliens yet."

Just Like "Contact"

Although they've found no aliens thus far, Leigh says that Horowitz did manage in part to inspire the Jodie Foster character, Ellie Arroway, in the Carl Sagan novel Contact, which was subsequently turned into a popular movie of the same name.

Leigh says Sagan, who co-authored a paper with Horowitz in 1993 and published the best-selling Contact in 1995, had the fictional Arroway work on some of the same projects Horowitz worked on in real life.

Larger Than Life?

According to the SETI Web site (www.seti.org), the SETI Institute, located in Mountain View, California, "serves as a home for scientific research in the general field of Life in the Universe, with an emphasis in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It is designed to answer the question: Are we alone in the Universe?"

Leigh says various SETI projects exist around the country. Although the projects are not related to one another, project members do exchange information and advice, Leigh says.

For example, Leigh says, around 100 evolutionists, astronomers and biologists get together every three years for a bioastronomy conference on the subject. The last conference was held in Capri, Italy, in 1996.

Leigh says Harvard's SETI project is basically a one-man team founded and maintained by Horowitz, who also founded Harvard's laboratory electronics course 20 years ago and has held a long research interest in "extraterrestrial intelligence."

Horowitz works with a team of research assistants, which has fluctuated in number between three and seven. "Paul Horowitz is a very convincing guy," Leigh says with admiration. "He just sucks you in."

Another 20 Years?

And now, Horowitz, who declined to comment and referred all questions to Leigh when reached by telephone last week, is beginning an "optical SETI program" to "look for very short pulses of laser light."

Meanwhile, Leigh says he continues to go out to Harvard, Mass. to check on the frequencies and on the maintenance of the radio dish. He is now also working at Mitsubishi Electronics in Cambridge.