After Wilson gives House his organ, he says, "You would need to buy your own cape," a reference to The Phantom of the Opera.
Including its title, this episode has various references to the movie "Contact": the outer-space fly-bys, the ghost face stretching out of time, and the fact that the girl's father died when she was a child. Additionally, the girl in this episode wants to study physics at a top flight university, like Ellie.