If the telescope detects a flash, the apparatus will send information about the exact time and location of the light to its powerful computer.
Horowitz's team will review the data and decide if any flashes bear investigation. If so, the Harvard team will then ask another team to corroborate the sighting.
The telescope sports a 6-foot (183-centimeter) reflecting mirror and is so powerful it will be able to scan the entire sky of the Milky Way (see photo) over 200 clear nights. This is roughly equivalent to scanning all the books in print, every second.
What enables its powerful data processing capability are the 32 electronic chips that were "handmade" for the telescope by a graduate-student team member.
No Blinking Allowed
If the telescope detects a signal that the team believes comes from an alien population, scientists have no protocol for whether and how to respond. Horowitz's team won't respond themselves, he said.
"We're not sending anything and never have,'' Horowitz said. As far as any aliens are concerned, there is probably a proper way to respond, and we do not know what that is, he adds.
Any life-forms that would send signals would likely be very different from us, says Carol Cleland, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
It all makes her slightly skeptical. "How do we search for life as we don't know it?'' she said.
A few glitches need to be squared away before the telescope goes fully online.
For example, if the observatory's roof is left open during the day, the heat generated by sunlight on the telescope creates what Harvard's Horowitz called "the world's biggest oven.
"We could burn the place down," he said
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