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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
In the shadow of the Cold War, whispers from the cosmos fueled an unlikely alliance between the US and USSR. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (or SETI) emerged as a foundational field of radio astronomy characterized by an unusual level of international collaboration—but SETI’s use of signals intelligence technology also served military and governmental purposes.
In this captivating new history of the collaboration between American and Soviet radio astronomers as they sought to detect evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations, historian Rebecca Charbonneau reveals the triumphs and challenges they faced amidst a hostile political atmosphere. Shedding light on the untold stories from the Soviet side for the first time, she expertly unravels the complex web of military and political interests entangling radio astronomy and the search for alien intelligence, offering a thought-provoking perspective on the evolving relationship between science and power.
This is not just a story of radio waves and telescopes; it's a revelation of how scientists on both sides of the Iron Curtain navigated the complexities of the Cold War, blurring the lines between espionage and the quest for cosmic community. Filled with tension, contradiction, and the enduring human desire for connection, this is a history that transcends national boundaries and reaches out to the cosmic unknown, ultimately asking: how can we communicate with extraterrestrials when we struggle to communicate amongst ourselves?
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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CONTENTS
Cover
Table of Contents
Endorsements
Dedication
Title Page
Copyright
A Note on Terminology
Foreword
Notes
Introduction
A Cold War Science
The Cosmic Mirror
Notes
1. What Is CETI? Reframing the History of Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence
New Technologies and the Possibility of Strange and Exotic Beings
Science or Pseudoscience?
The Elephant UFO in the Room
A Critique Is Not (Necessarily) a Condemnation
Notes
2. Alien Intelligence: Radio Astronomy and the Dawn of the Cold War
Falling Behind
Country Roads
Death by Telescope
The Longest Search
Notes
3. Telegram Killed the Radio Star: The First “False Alarm” in CETI
Attribution and Discovery
The Birth of Soviet CETI
A Supercivilization Is Discovered
Notes
4. First Contact: The Relationship between Carl Sagan and I. S. Shklovsky
The Power of Friendship
A Most Important Find
Universe, Life, Mind
Same Planet, Different Civilizations
Intelligent Life in the Universe
Notes
5. Why Can’t We Be Friends? Messaging Extraterrestrial and Terrestrial Intelligence
The Morse Message
Pennants, Plaques, and Puritans
The Expectation of Mankind
Malevolent or Hungry
Notes
6. The Cosmic Prism: CETI and Existential Threat
Longevity Anxiety
The Common Enemy
A Warning about Danger
The Great Filter
Notes
Conclusion
The Decline of Cold War CETI and the Rise of SETI
The Pen Is Mightier Than the Sword
Fake News
Beautiful Dreams and Horrible Nightmares
Notes
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Figure i.1
The Cosmic Mirror – In art history, the motif of the mirror has long served as a…
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1
The Tomahawk, a Minnesota newspaper, published an article expounding on the vari…
Figure 1.2
Frank Drake, pictured here at the age of 32, shortly after completing Project Oz…
Figure 1.3
This grainy image shows the inside of the control room of the 40-foot telescope …
Figure 1.4
This engraving, entitled “Le Magnétisme dévoilé” (1784–5, artist unknown) depict…
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1
Green Bank, West Virginia. Credit: Rebecca Charbonneau.
Figure 2.2
This is a map of the NRQZ, with the marked location of the original headquarters…
Figure 2.3
RFI restrictions. Signs such as these are found around the premises of the Obser…
Figure 2.4
RFI mitigation truck. This is a picture, taken in 1981, of an RFI monitoring tru…
Figure 2.5
Microwave faraday cage. This is a microwave used by the Observatory staff in the…
Figure 2.6
This is an image of the ADU-1000 South Station transmitting array, part of the Y…
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1
The IAU telegram of Sholomitskii’s results, showing the variability he observed …
Figure 3.2
A graph from Drake’s Project Ozma talk at the 25th Anniversary Green Bank confer…
Figure 3.3
An article published on April 13, 1965 in the Coventry Evening Telegraph shows t…
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1
Carl Sagan, the renowned astrophysicist and science communicator, stands proudly…
Figure 4.2
Iosif S. Shklovsky was a Soviet astrophysicist. For most of his career he served…
Figure 4.3
“The Israeli Python and the American Barrel.” Cartoon by Boris Zhukov, Pravda Vo…
Figure 4.4
Excerpt from the first edition of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1966). Sagan…
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1
This image shows a newspaper clipping describing the success of the Soviet Morse…
Figure 5.2
This comic book titled Space Western features a dynamic scene of a futuristic co…
Figure 5.3
This Soviet poster from 1961 states: “Socialism is our launching pad!” It highli…
Figure 5.4
These pennants, replicas from the Luna mission, are held at the Russian Museum o…
Figure 5.5
The Pioneer Plaque, pictured here, was designed by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake wi…
Figure 5.6
The Arecibo Message was sent on November 16, 1974 by the Arecibo radio telescope…
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1
Joseph Mallord William Turner, Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth. Exh…
Figure 6.2
The Pale Blue Dot, captured by the Voyager 1 probe. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
Figures 6.3–6.6
Top Left: Nikolai Kardashev presenting a paper at the US–USSR CETI conference. T…
Figure 6.7
An illustration from Soviet nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov’s response to a qu…
Figure 6.8
Spike Field, view 1 (concept and art by Michael Brill). The Spike Field was one …
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Endorsements
Dedication
Title Page
Copyright
A Note on Terminology
Foreword
Introduction
Begin Reading
Conclusion
Index
End User License Agreement
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Praise for Mixed Signals
“With this work the torch passes to a new generation of SETI historians, who analyze not only the science of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence but also its cultural, religious, and political aspects. Focusing on the 1950s through the 1980s, Rebecca Charbonneau brilliantly explores both human and extraterrestrial communication, while vividly portraying CETI/SETI in the context of the Cold War.”
Steven J. Dick, former NASA Chief Historian and author of Astrobiology, Discovery, and Societal Impact
“Charbonneau has accomplished here the rare hat-trick of innovative research, incisive argument, and delightful writing, making this book an invigorating pleasure to read and a vital view of science history to engage with. A must-read for scientists, historians, and anyone curious about what – and whom – we seek in the stars. Charbonneau offers a new and compelling way to understand the search.”
Jaime Green, author of The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos
“Does intelligent life exist beyond our planet? Scientists have been searching for evidence of it for decades. Now historian and SETI researcher Rebecca Charbonneau offers an engrossing and surprising history of those efforts on both sides of the Iron Curtain and shows that what we seek in outer space has repeatedly led us right back to earth.”
Greg Eghigian, author of After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon
“Any scientist who attempts to find, or communicate with, alien life possesses curiosity about and openness to hypothetical lives lived very differently from their own. In Mixed Signals, Rebecca Charbonneau offers the first investigation into those scientific attempts as they played out during the Cold War, among American and Soviet humans who were often alien to each other. Mixed Signals is an insightful, rigorously researched history that swirls the celestial and the terrestrial together. Too often, astronomical science is divorced from the earthly conditions it inhabits, eschewing politics for purity; Mixed Signalsis an antidote to that attitude, showing science’s influence on politics, politics’ influence on science, and the overlap between communicating on Earth and communicating to the cosmos. The events and people detailed in this book show that humans’ attempts to learn about life in the universe are, in the end, fundamentally about our home planet.”
Sarah Scoles, science journalist and author of Making Contact: Jill Tarter and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
“With clarity and insight, Rebecca Charbonneau has given us a beautifully written tour of the early history of SETI. More than just a description of who did what when, Charbonneau reveals the intricate webs of influence that knitted the deepest questions scientists can ask (Are we alone?) together with the prosaic realities of international politics and conflict. A must-read for anyone interested in SETI or in the intersections of science and culture.”
Adam Frank, University of Rochester and author of The Little Book of Aliens
“Charbonneau offers a truly fresh take on the often-told story of the origins of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Through interviews and examination of the historical record, she has unearthed fascinating anecdotes about Sagan, Drake, Dyson, Shklovskii, and other SETI pioneers that illuminate how the field emerged from the military and political tangles of the Cold War. Charbonneau shows how the problem of communication and collaboration across the Iron Curtain closely mirrored the problem of communication with alien life. An instant must-read for students of SETI and those who want to know how the quest to answer the biggest question in astronomy truly began.”
Jason T. Wright, Director of the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center
“A fascinating dive into the Cold War-era history of humanity’s search for alien life, filled with a treasure trove of remarkable events and encounters and supported by meticulous research. Charbonneau brings to life the personalities who gave rise to the modern age of SETI. She highlights how SETI is as much a search for the human condition as it is for alien life.”
David Kipping, Columbia University
Dedication
This book is dedicated to Ken Kellermann
MIXED SIGNALS
Alien Communication Across the Iron Curtain
Rebecca Charbonneau
polity
Copyright © Rebecca Charbonneau 2025
The right of Rebecca Charbonneau to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2025 by Polity Press
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5692-2
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2024937008
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website:politybooks.com
A Note on Terminology
This book covers the history of the scientific effort to search for and communicate with extraterrestrial intelligence during the Cold War period. Over the past 60+ years, the terms used to describe this field of science have evolved. I will therefore use three different sets of terms in this book. The rationale for these distinctions will be explained in greater detail in Chapter 1.
When describing events, people, and themes that pertain to the years between 1959 and 1975, the acronym CETI (communication with extra-terrestrial intelligence) will be used. CETI is the major topic of concern in this book.
When describing events, people, and themes that pertain to the 1980s and onwards, the acronym SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) will be used.
When describing events, people, and themes that encompass the entire field, spanning 60+ years, the acronym C/SETI will be used.
A Note on Terminology
Foreword
This is a book that, on the surface, concerns the history of the search for and communication with extraterrestrial intelligence, also known respectively as SETI and CETI. As you will soon learn, CETI developed in the mid-twentieth century, out of a field of astronomy known as radio astronomy. Yet today many radio astronomers do not professionally engage in CETI, largely considering it a fringe subject – maybe even a pseudoscience, as it is to some.
To illustrate this point, I took a few hours to run around my workplace, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) headquarters in Charlottesville, Virginia. I asked my astronomy colleagues this simple question: “What are your thoughts on CETI/SETI?” It was not a comprehensive sociological survey by any means, of course, but here are a few anecdotal replies that I found generally representative of the answers I received that day:
It is an important enough question that it’s worth devoting some resources to it. But it’s unlikely we will ever see a positive result in our lifetimes. I think we are probably alone in the universe. (Radio astronomer)a
Do I think there is intelligent life in the universe? Absolutely. Will we be able to make contact? Probably not. (Data analyst for the ALMA radio telescope)
What’s SETI? (Astrochemistry graduate student)
So why write a book about a subject that seemingly does not matter much to the professional astronomy community? I might begin by noting that there was a time when nobody was taking radio astronomy very seriously either. In fact, even NRAO’s first director, the highly esteemed optical astronomer Otto Struve, had little faith in the new science when he took up his post in 1959. NRAO radio astronomer and CETI scientist Frank Drake later recalled his interactions with Struve in the early 1960s:
He thought he could predict the future of radio astronomy, and it looked bleak to him. He warned us that unless some exciting discovery turned up – something like a variable radio source … we would run out of things to observe in one year and then we’d all be out of work.1
But our preconceived beliefs about what is “out there” do not always line up with the reality of what we find. Despite Struve’s concerns, the radio universe turned out to be an exciting place (and we all still have our jobs, seven decades later). And CETI is part of the reason Struve eventually became excited about his job at NRAO.
The first scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence was conducted at NRAO in 1960 (you will learn more about this project shortly) and it energized Struve. The project, called Project Ozma, used the Observatory’s 85-1 radio telescope to search for intelligent extraterrestrial signals from two nearby sun-like stars. Struve published an article in the magazine Physics Today shortly after this search and remarked on the surprisingly polarizing reactions to the new field of CETI, noting:
This project has been given an unreasonable amount of publicity, often incorrect or distorted and always with the wrong emphasis. It has aroused more vitriolic criticisms and more laudatory comments than any other recent astronomical venture, and it has divided the astronomers into two camps: those who are all for it and those who regard it as the worst evil of our generation.2
A divisive science for a divisive time; the tension between two diametrically opposed viewpoints described by Struve parallels the Cold War environment that both CETI and radio astronomy grew up in. This book hopes to highlight how the Cold War shaped the development of CETI and radio astronomy. To this end, it will focus especially on the paradoxical nature of scientific communication during the Cold War, where astronomers aimed to communicate with extraterrestrials while struggling to bridge the communication gap between their own nations. In this light, we will find that CETI was not such a fringe science after all, but a phenomenon that shaped the ideas, technology, and culture of astronomy in the mid twentieth century. In 1977, engineer and CETI scientist Barney Oliver wrote: “It is easy to dismiss [CETI] as romantic, chauvinistic nonsense, but is it? We suggest that it is chauvinistic and romantic but that it may not be nonsense.”3 The contents of this book are also chauvinistic and romantic, but I hope to show that they are not nonsense.
Before beginning, I would like to take a moment to address the laundry list of incredible, brilliant, and kind people who have supported me and this project over the years. First, I thank my family, especially my handsome, lovely, sweet, and wonderful husband, Jim, whose support and encouragement were invaluable over the past few years. That being said… I’d have finished writing this book much more quickly if it weren’t for you!
I owe my career to Ken Kellermann, emeritus scientist and historian at NRAO, and also to Ellen Bouton, archivist at NRAO. Their support, wisdom, and kindness changed the course of my life and influenced me deeply. I am also immensely grateful for the support of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, an institution that has assisted my research for many years and in countless ways. I would especially like to thank Director Tony Beasley and Assistant Director Tony Remijan, but also Tristan Ashton (and Faye!), Erica Behrens, J. J. Burns, Barry Clark, Sophia Dagnello, Chris De Pree (and Sheryl!), Cosima Eibensteiner, Aaron Evans, Miller Goss, Nan Janney, Amanda Kepley, Erica Keller (and Allyson!), Amy Kimball, Anna Kapinska, Pearl Lara, Ryan Loomis (and Diana!), Andy Lipnicky (and Camille!), Dominic Ludovici, Brett McGuire, Anthony Pearson, Scott Ransom, Michael Sanchez, Samantha Scibelli, Haley Scolati, Jackie Villadsen, Cole Wampler (and Ashlyn!), Akeem Wells, Sarah Wood, and every other person who helped me during my time at NRAO. Go Janskys!
I also thank my colleagues from my time at the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, especially Daina Bouquin, Katie Frey, Giancarlo Romeo, Emily Margolis, Charles Alcock, and Urmila Chadayammuri.
I thank the historians and other social scientists who trained, influenced, and supported me, especially my PhD supervisor, Richard Staley, and my PhD advisor, Simon Schaffer, as well as Robert Illife, Steven Dick, David DeVorkin, Kathryn Denning, Woody Sullivan, William Barry, Sloan Mahone, Erica Charters, and Stephen Garber.
I offer sincere thanks and warmth to the Drake family, especially Frank, Nadia, and Spencer (the future historian extraordinaire!). I also thank the rest of the SETI community, especially Jason Wright, Jill Tarter, the members of the St. Andrews SETI Post-Detection Hub, and the members of the Order of the Octopus.
Finally, I offer thanks and solidarity to my Ukrainian, Russian, and former Soviet colleagues, especially Sasha Plavin, Margarita Drochkova, Yuri Kovalev, and most especially Leonid Gurvits. Your bravery, wisdom, activism, and kindness in the face of treachery continue to inspire.
Notes
a.
This radio astronomer also happens to be my husband, who clearly made a mistake in marrying an optimistic SETI researcher!
1.
Drake, Frank.
Is Anyone Out There?
New York: Delacorte Press, 1992, pp. 29–30.
2.
Struve, Otto. “Astronomers in Turmoil.”
Physics Today
13.9 (September 1960): 18–23.
3.
Oliver, Bernard. “The Rationale for a Preferred Frequency Band: The Water Hole.” In Morrison, P., Billingham, J., and Wolfe, J., eds.,
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: SETI
. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Scientific and Technical Information Office, 1977.
Introduction
How can we interpret signals from extraterrestrials when we struggle to interpret signals on Earth? We will begin not in space, but at the bottom of the ocean.
October 27, 1962 – the Soviet Foxtrot-class submarine B-59 cuts quietly through the depths of the Caribbean Ocean, armed with a nuclear-tipped torpedo. Above the surface, the Cuban Missile Crisis is reaching its height.
Suddenly, explosions. Left and right, the submarine is shaken by depth charges dropped by a US ship overhead. Concerned that they are under attack, and perhaps that nuclear war has broken out above the surface, the captain, Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, decides to fire the sub’s nuclear torpedo. To do so, he must first have unanimous support from two other officers, the political officer and the deputy.
President Kennedy had earlier declared a blockade of sea traffic between Cuba and the United States. Robert McNamara, the US secretary of defense, sent to Moscow and Soviet submarines radio messages headed “Submarine Surfacing and Identification Procedures,” which stated that the US Navy would take action to “induce [submarines] to surface and identify themselves” if found violating the blockade. The US Navy had orders – not to attack Soviets, but to drop warning charges to prompt submarines to surface.1
B-59 did not hear McNamara’s message; it was too deep to receive radio communications.
The political officer, Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov, gave his authorization to fire. But the final officer, Deputy Vasili Arkhipov, refused to authorize. According to the ship’s communications intelligence officer, Arkhipov did not see the charges, which had been dropped only to the sides of the submarine, as a hostile act of war.
This is not an attack, he argued. This is a signal.2
The history of the Cold War is in large part a history of signals: signals from the ocean, signals from the Earth, and signals from outer space. Unlike the two previous world wars – which were fought in trenches, boats, and airplanes, using toxic gases, guns, and bombs – many of the most significant features of the Cold War were battled through adherence to a set of signaling and listening practices and variations on them, including intelligence-gathering masked as diplomacy, satellites peeping from overhead, and scientific progress disguising threats of destruction. Fundamentally, signaling is a form of communication, and communication was the battlefield of the Cold War. The above episode also demonstrates that communication is rarely straightforward, especially between cultures that are foreign – or alien – to each other. Cold War communication often relied on signals and codes, and therefore was rife with the potential for miscommunication. After all, were it not for Deputy Arkhipov’sa understanding that the US charges were attempting to communicate a desire that the Soviets come to the surface and not a hostile act of war, the Soviets might have somewhat reasonably decided to retaliate with their nuclear arsenal, potentially igniting a “cold” war into a hot conflict that could lead to global annihilation.
In addition to signals, the history of the Cold War also concerns aliens. Cold War-era science fiction, spurred by the Space Race and by fears of an attack from above that were in turn prompted by the launch of Sputnik (and the beep-beep of the signal it transmitted) and by the rise of atomic weaponry, foretold alien invasions and first contact scenarios with a combination of delight and terror. Like the entire Cold War, these science fiction stories of extraterrestrials fundamentally concerned communication with foreign cultures – the act of sending, listening to, and interpreting signals. Take for example Gene Roddenberry’s television show Star Trek, which first aired in 1966. Star Trek is set in the twenty-third century on the starship Enterprise, a military–scientific vessel operated under the auspices of the United Federation of Planets and tasked with both “exploring strange new worlds” from a scientific–technical perspective and maintaining peace throughout the galaxy through military power. Take away the rubber costumes and planet-hopping and Star Trek is simply a show about Cold War international relations and the scientific–military–industrial complex.3 As with the Cold War itself, much of the show concerned signals. Enterprise was constantly in communication with alien civilizations, picking up distress signals and being tasked with the difficult challenge of making first contact.
A spin-off from the original series, Star Trek: The Next Generation had an episode focused entirely on the challenges of communicating with the alien. The episode “Darmok” began with the captain of the Enterprise, Jean-Luc Picard, becoming marooned on an alien planet inhabited by a species whose members could communicate only in metaphors drawn from their own complex mythology.4 The entire 40-minute episode is dedicated to Picard’s frustrations as he tried to conduct meaningful communication with a people whose culture and way of signaling differed significantly from his own. The act of communication with the “other” is a major theme of Cold War and post-Cold War science fiction precisely because it parallels the attempts of communicating with the “alien” on our own planet – those nations and peoples whose languages, cultures, and ontologies differ drastically from the familiar ones.
There was also an underlying sense of anxiety during the Cold War, similarly evoked in alien science fiction. Film theorist Susan Sontag, in an essay on science fiction evocatively titled “The Imagination of Disaster,” famously wrote:
Here is a historically specifiable twist which intensifies the anxiety. I mean, the trauma suffered by everyone in the middle of the 20th century when it became clear that, from now on to the end of human history, every person would spend his individual life under the threat not only of individual death, which is certain, but of something almost insupportable psychologically – collective incineration and extinction which could come at any time, virtually without warning.5
But why was science fiction so prominent a genre in the United States and in the Soviet Union during the Cold War period? The rise of science fiction can likely be explained by the apotheosis of science in the postwar period. The Cold War’s scientific–technical competition, arms race, and Space Race elevated the status of science and technology in both countries. Furthermore, one of the primary battlefields of the Cold War was outer space – not only in the Space Race, but in the less public race for gathering intelligence with the help of satellites and techniques of signals intelligence. As seen in Star Trek, aliens were a convenient stand-in for foreign civilizations with which we struggled to communicate and build some understanding. Considering this combination of science adulation, xenophobia, and newfound public awareness of outer space, it is no wonder that science fiction became a primary medium through which to express Cold War anxiety and aliens became its mode of expression. The subject of this book is not science fiction, yet I begin with this brief analysis to highlight the interconnected nature of science, warfare, anxiety, and aliens in the Cold War mindset. Recognizing these connections, let us turn our focus on the development of two sciences that arose in the early Cold War period: radio astronomy; and communication with (and search for) extraterrestrial intelligence.
A Cold War Science
Radio astronomy is a subdiscipline of astronomy that observes the universe in the radio part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Instead of the mirrors and lenses that optical telescopes use to observe the “visible” part of the spectrum (meaning those wavelengths of light that human eyes can perceive), radio telescopes use receivers, parabolic dishes, feed horns, and antennas to explore the “invisible” universe (meaning light in the cosmos that has a wavelength too long for the human eye to detect). Despite what you might have seen in Netflix’s Three Body Problem and in other science fiction shows, radio astronomers do not use headphones to “listen” to radio signals; radio waves are not sound waves, they are light that our eyes can’t detect. Radio astronomers use creative ways to visualize radio waves, often in the form of spectra and data-processing techniques that convert raw radio wave data into meaningful images and maps.
The rise of radio astronomy as a scientific discipline was not simply a revolution in astronomy but also a significant diplomatic development in the Cold War – integral to the facilitation of international scientific collaboration and citizen diplomacy during an otherwise geopolitically contentious period. Not only was radio astronomy an intrinsic part of mid twentieth-century scientific research in both the United States and the Soviet Union, but it helped promote a philosophy of scientific internationalism and facilitated successful scientific exchanges between nations locked in conflict. The reasons for these successes are twofold.
First, Cold War-era radio astronomers developed scientific techniques and experiments that sometimes necessitated global cooperation, incentivizing scientists in the United States and Soviet Union to circumnavigate political barriers to achieve their science goals. Their “science first” approach resulted in many successful collaborative experiments in the 1960s and 1970s that led to the development of long-standing partnerships between research groups in the United States and the Soviet Union, then Russia, culminating in cooperation on contemporary projects and missions such as RadioAstron, a space-based radio interferometer. As part of my field work, I traveled to Moscow to conduct interviews with scientists in attendance at the RadioAstron International Science Council, held at Russia’s Astro Space Center in October 2019. As an example of a more recent large collaborative project between US and formerly Soviet astronomers, I was curious to see whether the internationalist mentalities of 1960s radio astronomy were still alive in the present day. One astronomer who had worked with colleagues in the Soviet Union during the Cold War told me:
This is one of the major strengths of an area like radio astronomy … because you don’t just deal with your own country, you’re literally dealing with the world … The Cold War was going on but the scientists were still collaborating … these things are separate from politics, and I think that’s a very powerful phenomenon.6
Interestingly, that interview was conducted on October 4, 2019 – the 62nd anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, the Soviet satellite that became the first human-made object to orbit the planet and gave the Space Race an extraordinary public profile.
Sputnik and the subsequent Space Race are key examples of how science and technology can be politically charged and subject to interference determined by non-scientific motivations. Fervent internationalism and cooperation aside, radio astronomy was no exception. In other words, despite best efforts when “dealing with the world,” it was impossible to avoid worldly challenges. Cold War-era radio astronomers collaborating with one another from either side of the Iron Curtain faced many problems that stemmed from geopolitical conflict, such as travel bans, mail interference, inconsistency in data sharing, and obtrusion from the intelligence community. Therefore the second reason for the unusual collaborative success of radio astronomy during the Cold War period was the development of a unifying philosophy that transcended political boundaries. Out of radio astronomy grew a subfield: communication with extraterrestrial intelligence, CETI, which fostered an unprecedented level of international collaboration focused on a common quest that was seen as universally significant, not nationalistic.
CETI has long been a part of the infrastructure and scholarship of radio astronomy. Some contemporary radio astronomers are resistant to this view, as CETI has been viewed by some as existing on the fringe of radio astronomy. At best, it was a waste of telescope time; at worst, a damaging pseudoscience. Scientists who became involved in CETI sometimes did so at the risk of their careers. But CETI was (and remains) a foundational subfield within radio astronomy, one that contributes to building and shaping networks of cooperation even during unusually hostile geopolitical times.
CETI’s unique collaborative success resulted from the general philosophy of the community. In considering the potential cultural impact of discovering extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI), prominent CETI scientists such as Carl Sagan and Frank Drake argued that the discovery of life on other worlds might bring about global unity. They strove to cooperate with their global peers as “earthlings,” not national citizens.7 Because of this cosmopolitan perspective, CETI assisted in the formation of networks of contact and communication between Soviet and Americanb astrophysicists, which led to collaboration in other areas of radio astronomy, regardless of political challenges. Yet despite its success in promoting international collaboration and camaraderie, there was another side to Cold War radio astronomy and CETI – their roles in supporting, and sometimes appropriation by, militaries and governments.
During the Cold War, the United States considered scientific freedom an instrument of warfare.8 This framing was due in part to the ideological campaigns waged by the United States and the Soviet Union in their fight for global dominance. In the Soviet Union, the demand that science serve the interests of the people (and state) involved censorship of scientific literature,9 state-mandated theories,10 adherence to Marxism,11 and (in extreme cases)12 the murder and imprisonment of scientists whose actions or beliefs did not align with the politics of the day. In the United States, the ideological campaign was far more subtle and arguably more insidious. To present itself as a foil to the Soviet Union, the United States concocted an ideology of “scientific freedom,” which was in practice synonymous with its brand of free-market capitalism, democracy, and individual liberty.13 American science was presented as apolitical; unlike their Soviet peers, American scientists did not have shadowy government censors like Glavlit reviewing their work, nor did they face travel bans for not joining a given political party. American scientists were free to disagree with each other’s theories in independently published scientific journals, mostly without fear of imprisonment.c Yet this presentation of “scientific freedom” as a tool to promote democratic values to “unaligned” countries masked another side of American science – a side that was not apolitical but deeply entrenched in politics, the military, and imperialism. The notion that science promoted democracy by providing a rational framework for the pursuit of truth was undermined by the reality that science in the United States was co-opted by the military–industrial complex; there was essentially no field of science in the mid twentieth century that was untouched by the influence of the US military. Furthermore, US scientific freedom disguised US imperialism, which directly benefited the construction of scientific facilities and instruments on settled land, as part of its scientific–technical competition with the Soviet Union. With this understanding, science and its institutions seem to be central agents of democracy, and yet they look potentially exploitative and tyrannical.
Radio astronomy and CETI are revealing case studies within the larger history of Cold War science because of the manner in which these specific branches of science embodied the dual tensions of Cold War scientific institutions. They played pivotal roles in promoting internationalism and scientific freedom while simultaneously being implicated in two central ills of the Cold War: espionage and nuclear proliferation. As we shall see, by virtue of their scientific goals, CETI radio astronomers became adept at developing tools and techniques that aimed to target and identify intelligent extraterrestrial signals from space. This made the field ripe for exploitation by the intelligence community, which used the signal detection and analysis techniques developed by CETI to enhance its deep-space surveillance capabilities.14 These instruments were also used for missile tracking and nuclear defense systems. Such confluences shaped the ideas of CETI; as CETI scientists speculated on the evolution of technological civilizations in the galaxy, they wrestled with the future of their own technological civilization, as it faced the new threat of self-annihilation. Clearly, historical investigations into the political and social hurdles faced by radio astronomers and their international and regional communities during the Cold War undermine the belief that science was separate from politics and demonstrate that internationally cooperative sciences bear worldly challenges in addition to scientific ones.
The Cosmic Mirror
This is a history about a science, about a war, and about a question; but fundamentally this is, at its very core, a history of communication. The present book rests on a small irony: although they were focused on communicating with extraterrestrials, astronomers in the Soviet Union and the United States were also quite alien to one another, and communication across the Iron Curtain was in some sense just as much of a challenge as communication across the depths of space. This dynamic should not surprise us, as the United States and the Soviet Union have long alienated each other.
Consider the meeting of US and Soviet troops at the end of World War II. On April 25, 1945, the Soviet Red Army and the US Infantry successfully cut the German army in two at the Elbe River, southwest of Berlin. The day is still informally celebrated, and sometimes called a “first contact” between the United States and Soviet forces. The term “first contact” is an appropriate one, for the soldiers on either side of the river appeared to expect aliens rather than fellow human beings. Luibov Kozinchenko, a Soviet soldier from the Red Army’s 58th Guards Division, later recalled the day: as the Americans crossed the river, “[w]e could see their faces. They looked like ordinary people. We had imagined something different.”15 On the US side, Al Aronson, an American soldier from the US 69th Infantry Division, claimed: “I guess we didn’t know what to expect from the Russians. But when you looked at them and examined them, well, you could put an American uniform on them and they could have been American!”16 Both sides appeared surprised at the humanness of these people, who had until then seemed quite alien.
This book imagines four potential audiences – historians, astronomers, SETI researchers, and a curious general public – and envisions they will each take away a unique perspective from their reading. Historians will gain C/SETI as a novel entry point into our understanding of the complex cultural and political dimensions of Cold War science and technology. Astronomers, I hope, will learn to see C/SETI not as a fringe pseudoscience, but as a field that shaped the structural and cultural foundations of their discipline. SETI researchers will learn new perspectives on the history of their field, especially the oft neglected Soviet side, and will also gain an appreciation for the fact that including interdisciplinary perspectives in the search for intelligence in the universe only stands to improve the search. Ultimately I wish for all my readers to appreciate the creativity, tenacity, and optimism of Cold War-era CETI scientists, especially those from the former Soviet Union (such as the Ukrainian Soviet astronomer I. S. Shklovsky, whose scientific accomplishments and feats of bravery have not yet fully reached the Western world).
This book pretends to be about aliens, but it fundamentally concerns human beings and two of their primary emotions: hope and fear. As one SETI scientist once put it to me, “science is not only hard because science is hard; it is hard because we live in the world.”17 This is a complex subject. CETI both undermined the geopolitical goals of nation states through international collaboration and actively supported militaries through assistance in intelligence gathering. CETI scientists alienated fellow earthlings at the same time as they strove to depict our world equitably in messages to extraterrestrials. CETI inspired antinuclear activism as well as aided in developing tools and techniques that made nuclear strikes more accurate. It simply isn’t possible to conclude that radio astronomy and CETI were definitively forces for either world peace or global oppression. Instead, we find ourselves sat within the uncomfortable tensions of this history, and we can use CETI as a vessel through which to analyze the contradictions and complications of Cold War science and philosophy.
The Cold War-era aliens of Star Trek were human beings dressed up in costumes with the addition of pointy ears, green skin paint, or cybernetic implants; nevertheless, they were highly anthropomorphic. It is now a common trope and a refrain in SETI that we must avoid anthropocentrism, the tendency to interpret or project homocentric values and characteristics onto our expectations of extraterrestrial life. Some have argued that anthropocentrism is unavoidable, while others have argued that being cognizant of our tendencies toward anthropocentrism can foster creative, out-of-the-box thinking. It is not in any sense a new idea to point out that human culture and bias infiltrates our imaginings of extraterrestrial intelligence.
In my view, however, the thesis “C/SETI is anthropocentric” reflects an incomplete thought. Certainly, you will find many instances of anthropocentric (and even Eurocentric or male-centric) thinking in the pages of this book. But anthropomorphism here is an asset, not a limitation. In this book, our task is to understand not the nature of the alien, but human beings and their creations, including science and war. Our biases, chauvinism, and motivations shape our world, and in studying them we gain a novel perspective on, and way into, our own history.
Jill Tarter, a SETI scientist and prominent public advocate for the search, defined a theory she has called “the cosmic mirror”18 (Figure i.1). Tarter has argued that the pursuit of C/SETI is valuable even if no evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence is ever detected, because the introspection and unity it prompts are valuable in and of themselves. She describes the cosmic mirror as
the mirror in which all humans can see themselves as the same, when compared to the extraterrestrial ‘other’. It’s the mirror that allows us to alter our daily perspectives and see ourselves in a more cosmic setting. It is the mirror that reminds us of our common origins in stardust.19
Figure i.1 The Cosmic Mirror – In art history, the motif of the mirror has long served as a device to chastise the viewer’s (often a woman) sense of vanity. The original painting by Caravaggio shows the sisters Martha and Mary from the New Testament. Martha is trying to convert Mary from her hedonistic life to a more virtuous life following Jesus. In the original painting, which shows a convex mirror, uses the mirror to symbolize the life of self-absorption she is about to give up. In this edited image, however, the Cosmic Mirror replaces a conventional mirror, reminding the viewer of our small place in a vast cosmos and inviting contemplation of humanity’s interconnectedness. This reinterpretation shifts the focus from individual self-preoccupation to a broader reflection on our place within the cosmic order, inviting viewers to ponder deeper existential questions. Instead of being an object of vanity to be cast aside, the mirror transforms into an object that encourages us to seek deeper meaning.
With the cosmic mirror, Tarter argues that C/SETI reflects a universalizing image of humanity, juxtaposed against the truly alien. I wish to take her definition a short step further – into what I will later label and define as the cosmic prism – and argue that CETI reveals not a universal portrait, but the many-shaded schisms, conflicts, and contradictions of our world. It unveils the locality of our instruments of both science and warfare, our cultures and ideologies, and our Earth-bound and orbital systems of communication. Perhaps no other science shows us as much about ourselves, and prompts us to consider: do we like what we see?
Notes
a.
Note on the transliteration of Russian names and words: I have chosen to transliterate Russian in a way that reflects the original Cyrillic spelling. For example, I would choose to transliterate the name Геннадий Шоломицкий as Gennadii Sholomitskii, representing ий with a double
i
as opposed to a single
y
and using a double
n
instead of a single
n
, even though this does not alter the pronunciation. I have chosen this transliteration style to aid future scholars in the field who may want to search Russian and Soviet sources: they should be able to reverse-engineer my English spellings into Russian easily. An exception is the name of Iosif Samuelovich Shklovsky, which under my style rules would be transliterated “Shklovskii” but whose bearer personally preferred a transliteration with
y
. Because this book owes a great deal to Shklovsky, I have decided to deviate from my style to honor his wishes.
b.
The use of the term “American” to refer to citizens of the United States is sometimes contested, as some argue that it erases the identities of people who live in “the Americas,” that is, the continents of North and South America, but not the United States. That said, given that the main bulk of this book focuses on the period between 1950 and 1980, when “American” referred primarily to citizens of the United States, to avoid confusion, I have chosen to use this adjective here just as the historical figures I write about did (and would have done in my place, too).
c.
Of course, there is a history of the United States impugning scientists for ideological reasons, as happened when the US government removed the security clearance of J. Robert Oppenheimer, known as “the father of the atomic bomb,” when he was accused of being a communist.
1.
Blanton, T. S. and Burr, W. “The Submarines of October: US and Soviet Naval Encounters during the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 75
. National Security Archive, October 31, 2002.
2.
Kikoy, H. “Vasili Arkhipov: Soviet Hero that Prevented WW3.” War History Online, July 4, 2004.
3.
Buzan, Barry. “America in Space: The International Relations of
Star Trek
and
Battlestar Galactica
.”
Millennium: Journal of International Studies
39.1 (2010): 175–180.
4.
“Darmok.” Episode 2, Season 5 of
Star Trek: The Next Generation
, directed by Winrich Kolbe, written by Joe Menosky. Paramount Domestic Television, 30 September 1991.
5.
Sontag, Susan. “The Imagination of Disaster.”
Commentary Magazine
, October 1965, n.p.
6.
Interview with David Jauncey held on October 4, 2019 in Moscow, Russia. Stored in the Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physic, College Park, MD.
7.
Drake, Frank.
Is Anyone Out There?
New York: Delacorte Press, 1992, p. 115.
8.
Wolfe, Audra.
Freedom’s Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science
. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018.
9.
Vladimirov, L. “Glavlit: How the Soviet Censor Works.”
Index on Censorship
1.3–4 (1971): 31–43.
10.
Gordin, Michael D. “Lysenko Unemployed: Soviet Genetics after the Aftermath.”
Isis
109.1 (2018): 56–78.
11.
Graham, Loren.
Science and Philosophy in the Soviet Union
. New York: Knopf, 1972.
12.
McCutcheon, R. A. “The 1936–1937 Purge of Soviet Astronomers.”
Slavic Review
50.1 (1991): 100–117.
13.
Wolfe,
Freedom’s Laboratory
.
14.
“The Longest Search: The Story of the Twenty-One Year Portrait of the Soviet Deep Space Data Link and How It Was Helped by the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.” National Security Archives (Undated, but produced after 1983; declassified September 2011).
15.
“Comrades.” Episode 1 of
The Cold War
(documentary), produced by Pat Mitchell and Jeremy Isaacs. CNN, 1998.
16.
Ibid.
17.
Conversation carried out in July 2019 with Anamaria Berea, research investigator at Blue Marble Space Institute of Science.
18.
Tarter, Jill. “What If There’s Somebody Else Out There?” CNN, April 20, 2010.
19.
Ibid.
1What Is CETI?Reframing the History of Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence
I want to begin by asking “just what is CETI?” and, perhaps more critically, “what is it not?” Simple enough questions, but ones with exceedingly complex and contradictory answers. Most people, when they consider the scientific efforts to discover the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, will use the term “SETI,” which is an acronym for “search for extraterrestrial intelligence.” Many would immediately think of the SETI Institute, a scientific organization founded in 1984 that funds research and education on the search for intelligent life in the universe. They may think of prominent SETI scientists, such as Seth Shostak or Jill Tarter. The exchanges between Ellie Arroway and Palmer Joss from the hit science fiction film Contact (1997) may come to mind. But SETI is a relatively new term; it only entered use in the scientific community in the early 1970s and did not gain wide traction before the 1980s. In the 1960s, when astronomers started to use radio astronomy equipment to conduct searches for evidence of extraterrestrial signals, they tellingly preferred the term “CETI” – communication with extraterrestrial intelligence.
It was not until 1971, at a joint US–USSR conference on communication with ETI, that the shift from CETI to SETI slowly began, marking a shift in how the field was defined.a The 1971 conference was enthusiastically centered on CETI with a “C.” This term suited the conversations held at the conference; one attendee, Marvin Minsky – a computing pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) – presented a paper on how to use AI to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligence without the need for long response periods: simply launch and place intelligent computers around planets that might harbor intelligent life and let them do the talking for us.1 Carl Sagan opened his conference remarks by noting how fitting the term CETI was for the field, because in Latin ceti is the genitive of the noun cetus, “whale,” which he notes is “undoubtably another intelligent species inhabiting our planet,” and also because the first CETI project, Project Ozma, observed a star system named Tau Ceti.
But it is generally recognized that a conversation took place at the conference that argued for transitioning CETI to SETI.2 The conversation allegedly took place between Carl Sagan, American radio astronomer Frank Drake, and Soviet radio astronomer I. S. Shklovsky. According to oral history accounts, the group realized that scientists must first find extraterrestrial intelligence before attempting communication, and therefore a focus on “search” rather than “communication” would be more representative of the field’s goals.3 But there is another reason why the shift might have occurred. During the Cold War period, CETI scientists from the United States and the Soviet Union experienced immense difficulty in communicating with each other, because of cultural, political, and disciplinary differences. These difficulties led them to the realization that establishing effective communication with extraterrestrial intelligence could be an overwhelmingly challenging task. Indeed, upon leaving the Soviet–American CETI conference, Frank Drake remarked that he and his American colleagues returned home “having gotten a hint of what life on another world was like.”4 Perhaps in recognizing the various challenges of communication, both terrestrial and extraterrestrial, the Soviet–American cohort decided that the first problem to solve would simply be detecting evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence.
This book will cover themes and histories that can sometimes be applied to SETI, but our focus will remain on the period between the 1950s and 1980s. CETI with a C was a distinctive phenomenon in the larger history of the extraterrestrial life debate and of the contemporary search for extraterrestrial intelligence, though it was connected to it. I choose to put parameters on CETI with a C because CETI was the term in use at the time when the field developed, and the choice to emphasize communication (as opposed to search) reveals important characteristics of the young science that tie it closely to the Cold War environment from which it emerged.
