The actual optical telescope is operated by a team at the Oakridge Observatory in Harvard, Mass.

While Horowitz says he has detected some flashes, he has yet to confirm their extraterrestrial origin.

Horowitz says that he can currently only observe a limited number of targeted stars but looks forward to developing what will be called the All-Sky telescope within a year or so.

This telescope, which will be complete once a detector apparatus is installed, will be able to observe the entire sky—10,000 times more area than the team currently covers.

“We’re only myopically looking at stars now,” he says.

He anticipates the All-Sky will allow his team to investigate not only stars, but the spaces in between them where he suspects that advanced civilizations may roam between various stars and planets.

He adds that his research is focused on “calculation, not speculation” and brims over with enthusiasm for the optical SETI.

Light Years Away?

Howard and Horowitz work concurrently with researchers at Princeton who make simultaneous observations. Each team generates observational diagrams, including the stars observed, the number of observations made and the signals detected.

According to Howard, the teams’ findings always match.

“Combined, the two results have never produced a false positive,” he says.

Jill Tarter, the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute in California, calls the project with Princeton “very innovative and clever.”

She describes the Sky Survey instrument Horowitz already uses as “typically Paul—typically creative and inventive.”

To Horowitz, the future of SETI seems both daunting and enthralling.

“SETI hasn’t succeeded yet, so it’s clearly got a ways to go,” he says.