Are we alone? Not in that desperate sense, but in that tiny green men sense?

That’s the question Professor of Physics Paul Horowitz wants to answer. He is the faculty director of Harvard’s recently christened optical telescope, which scans the skies for extraterrestrial life from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics’ Oak Ridge Observatory in Harvard, Mass. It is the first optical telescope dedicated specifically to the search for alien life.

“About half [the people we talk to] think we’re looking for UFOs, and I try to dispel that notion,” says Andrew W. Howard, a graduate student working on the project.

So they’re not searching for giant saucers in the sky or some Twilight Zone-style phenomena. Instead, they’re hoping to identify extraterrestrial communication, in the form of light flashes from distant civilizations.

But don’t look for ET and his friends to phone home any time soon.

Bruce Betts, director of projects at the Planetary Society, the NGO funding the telescope, says, “I think it is realistic, but this is a gigantic haystack and we’re looking for a needle.”

Betts admits that the project is based on several assumptions, “including that an advanced alien civilization is signaling out.”

Big assumption, maybe, but Horowitz has always been up for the challenge. At eight, he became the world’s youngest licensed amateur radio operator. More recently, he served as a model for the protagonist in astronomer Carl Sagan’s novel Contact, made into a 1997 movie starring Jodie Foster.

Fame can bring glory, but not necessarily little green men—or their flashing lights.