''This is the place where you could find a Nobel Prize winner, you could find a great poet, or an astrophysicist," said Joe Davis, an MIT research affiliate, citing a project once hatched around the bar by people from MIT, Harvard, BU, and the Boston Ballet to use an MIT radar installation to beam messages into outer space in hopes of hearing back from intelligent life. (So far, no answer.)
''We did it in 1986, and the nearest star we transmitted to was Epsilon Eridani, 10.6 light years away," Davis said. ''So now, 2006 . . . this is the year. This is the year."