Professor refurbishes telescope to investigate stellar mysteries

Since 1971, the telescope in FitzRandolph Observatory has seen little use. The equipment simply gathered dust, used by only the occasional amateur stargazer.

But beginning last summer, a team of University students and faculty headed up by physics professor David Wilkinson began a massive effort to change the dilapidated telescope into a state-of-the-art instrument that could help bring mankind one step closer to contact with extraterrestrial life.

Wilkinson's project was prompted by an experiment coordinated by Harvard University professor Paul Horowitz to detect and catalog unexplained polarized light pulses observed in the night sky.

Horowitz and Wilkinson had first met years before when Horowitz was still a graduate student at Harvard. When Wilkinson heard about Horowitz's research, he looked into furthering the study.

Along with a team of Princeton professors and students, Wilkinson launched a campaign to refit the obsolete University telescope to detect light pulses and perform experiments similar to those Horowitz was conducting.

"[The telescope] was in pretty bad shape," said Melissa Kemp '02, one of 17 volunteers who helped in the renovation. "It was dirty and decrepit. It needed repainting."

During the summer, the group cleaned and repainted the telescope, replaced the floor and metal railings and drove the telescope's two mirrors to Chicago to be cleaned and repaired.

"The telescope is working beautifully," Wilkinson said. "It is nothing to sneeze at."

First interest

Horowitz first became curious about using visible light to communicate with distant planets after attending a conference sponsored by SETI in 1998. There, he heard Nobel Prize-winning physicist Charles Townes speak about theoretical optical communication methods.

Following the conference, Horowitz became particularly interested in the possibility of using laser light in the search for intelligent life on other planets. Working with colleagues in Harvard's physics department, he modified an optical telescope at Harvard's Oak Ridge Observatory to allow him to detect flashes of polarized light from distant solar systems.

The same night that his telescope modifications were completed, Horowitz and his team observed something they could not fully explain — a burst of polarized light that lasted no longer than a few billionths of a second and was 5,000 times brighter than Earth's sun.

Since that first observation, Horowitz's team has observed more than 200 similarly unexplained flashes.

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Though no known star behavior could produce the intense light pulses that they observed, it was necessary for the Harvard scientists to confirm that the flashes were not merely a natural phenomenon of light being refracted in earth's atmosphere.

To rule out that possibility, the light pulses must be recorded from two separate geographical locations. Wilkinson's joint project with Harvard will aim to do just that.

When modifications to the Princeton telescope are completed this June, the two teams will focus the two telescopes on the same star in hopes that they will simultaneously view a light pulse.

"We do not rule out that there could be another natural phenomenon that could make these pulses," Wilkinson said. "But if it were natural, it would be physics we don't know yet," Wilkinson said.

What would almost certainly indicate intelligent life on another planet would be repeated pulses from the same source. "If I or both of us saw more than one pulse, it would be very hard to explain," Wilkinson said. "There would be some intelligence behind that code."

The telescope will be ready in June, well before observing season in September. The group needs more students, teachers, graduate students, post-docs and local residents to help observe. "We need nocturnal people," Wilkinson said.

"This is a long shot," he added. "But as long as people are excited about doing it, why not?"