Join us on Wednesday, September 24 at 2:30 PM in White Hall, Room G09. Rebecca Charbonneau will present a talk titled "The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence during the Cold War."

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Abstract

In this talk, I will discuss my recent book Mixed Signals: Alien Communication Across the Iron Curtain, which examines how the Cold War fundamentally shaped the emergence and evolution of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Far from developing in isolation, SETI grew directly out of the Cold War's unique scientific and political environment, with radio astronomy serving as both its technological foundation and conceptual framework. The Cold War influenced not only the infrastructure of SETI research, but also its core intellectual assumptions about communication, intelligence, and the nature of civilizations. By examining previously overlooked archival materials from both sides of the Iron Curtain, this talk reveals how geopolitical rivalries, ideological frameworks, and the pervasive atmosphere of surveillance and secrecy shaped scientists' approaches to detecting and interpreting potential extraterrestrial signals, leaving a lasting impact on how we continue to search for life beyond Earth today.

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Biography

Rebecca Charbonneau is a historian of astronomy at the American Institute of Physics. She earned her PhD in History & Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge in 2021, followed by a postdoctoral position at the Harvard|Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Jansky Fellowship at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Her first book, Mixed Signals: Alien Communication Across the Iron Curtain was released earlier this year, and has been positively reviewed by The New Yorker, Publishers Weekly, and others.