SETI’s ‘Noah’s Ark’ – a space historian explores how the advent of radio astronomy led to the USSR’s search for extraterrestrial life

SETI’s ‘Noah’s Ark’ – a space historian explores how the advent of radio astronomy led to the USSR’s search for extraterrestrial life

During the Cold War, a new field emerged at the intersection of radio astronomy and radio communications. It put forward the idea that astronomers could search for radio communications from possibly existing extraterrestrial civilizations. Astronomy usually dealt with observing the universe’s natural phenomena. But this new field made the detection of technologically, or artificially produced radio waves, the object of a natural science.