Dr. Rebecca Charbonneau is a science and SETI historian and a Karl Jansky Fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.
Guest | Dr. Rebecca Charbonneau, Karl Jansky Fellow, National Radio Astronomy Observatory [@TheNRAO]
On Twitter | https://twitter.com/StellarHistory
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-charbonneau-31090aa1/
On Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/rebeccaannecharbonneau
Host | Matthew S Williams
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/matthew-s-williams
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Dr. Rebecca Charbonneau is a science and SETI historian and a Karl Jansky Fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. In addition, she knew Dr. Frank Drake ("the father of SETI") personally and has written and presented extensively about his legacy.
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For more podcast Stories from Space with Matthew S Williams, visit: https://itspmagazine.com/stories-from-space-podcast
The authors acknowledge that this podcast was recorded on the traditional unseeded lands of the Lekwungen peoples.
Matt: Hello, and welcome back to Stories from Space. I'm your host, Matt Williams. And joining me today is Dr. Rebecca Charbonneau, a historian of science, an expert in the history of radio astronomy and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and a Jansky Fellow with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, and someone who knew the late and great Dr. Frank Drake personally.
So Dr. Charbonneau, you are Jansky Fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. And what exactly is the Jansky Fellow?
Rebecca: So a Jansky fellow is a postdoctoral Fellowship at NRAO. And it is a two to three year Fellowship in which scholars are able to conduct research that pertains to their unique research agenda. In my case, I'm a historian of science. And so I conduct history of astronomy research at NRAO.
M: Now, what's this Fellowship established by Frank Drake? R: Oh, I actually don't know that is it?
M: Well, that's no. I just remember what you're saying about the Fellowship he pushed for having women.
R: So that was not the Jansky Fellowship, that was the summer student program at NRAO. So we have had undergraduate and graduate students working at our institution for gosh, coming up on 50-60 years. So yeah, pretty much for the entire time the institution has existed. And Frank was one of the early maybe the first director of the summer student program at NRAO.
M: And you got into the history of science, and I gotta say, that is a very, very fascinating field, isn't it? It's the best job in the world. Yes. I only took one course that was titled that very thing there in school. But suffice to say, it's something that I really, really got into and tried to homeschool myself in so very much. How did you come to it?
R: So I had a very backwards entry into history of science. I initially went to school for astronomy, at Mount Holyoke College in Western Massachusetts. But unfortunately, due to a family tragedy, I had to drop out of college briefly. And actually, I actually worked for Disney for a brief time and just add from Florida, that's, that's what's there. You know, being an 18/19 year old kid, that was a good option for me. But then I ended up going back to school in Florida, closer to home, and they didn't have an astronomy program at the school I attended. And so I kind of had to give up on that dream.
And I became an art historian, because another one of my passions is art history. And what's funny was, is that I ended up really loving art history being quite successful in it, and I won this research Fellowship to live in Rome for a summer, which was to study Caravaggio paintings, 17th century art. And while I was there, I had an opportunity to go to Florence and visit the Museo Galileo, which
is a museum of the history of astronomy dedicated mostly to Galileo, they have the his original telescopes, they actually have a preserved relic of his middle finger kind of been bombed in the museum. It's a really, really interesting museum. If you ever in Florence, I highly recommend checking it out.
And that was the first time it occurred to me that I could combine my two passions, you know, history, material, culture, arts, and then also astronomy, which I had kind of previously given up on. And so that's how I discovered history of astronomy was a thing. And I went back to school for my my senior year, and I begged all of my professors to let me write history of science and history of astronomy papers, as long as I made some sort of connection to art history, either by writing about, for example, like early 17th century naturalist illustrators, who were, you know, painting illustrations of flora and fauna, but also making scientific insights into them.
And that was kind of how I got around that, and I built up my history of science repertoire. But yeah, it was it was very much a last second discovery in my academic career. Because, you know, I history of science is not a very popular career. It's there's not that many of us are encima things. And so yeah, it was a kind of a serendipitous discovery, very happy that I found my way into it.
M: Yeah, I think there should be Frankly. You reminded me of the Renaissance experts, I guess, the Renaissance men as we would call them, I feel like people their time kind of had academia figured out, like more holistic. So yes. Now, how was it you came to join the National Radio astronomical observatory?
R: So I have worked with NRAO for a long time, the web started there. It's actually kind of a funny story. I was. So I, as I mentioned, I, right after I finished undergraduate school, I was really interested in becoming a historian of science, but didn't actually have a background in history of science. So I didn't feel really confident that I could go right into a Ph. D program.
So I ended up doing a master's degree in History of Science at the University of Oxford, and with the intention of going straight on to my PhD from then, but about halfway through the master's degree, I realized that I still didn't have the level of understanding of astronomy that I needed in order to complete a PhD. And so I was really fortunate. And I was able to get a about a half a year long position working in the history office of NASA Headquarters, actually. And that was fabulous.
Because, you know, getting to spend about half a year there, get learning all about the history of NASA history of space sciences was really valuable. But I ended up having a period of about eight months, between the end of that position, and when my PhD would start where I didn't have anything, no opportunities, no job, and I was kind of frantically emailing, trying to figure out like, what do I do with this time?
How can I keep learning while I'm not in school? How can I learn, you know, reinforce my astronomy education. And I ended up sending an email to someone at NRAO, because I had heard they had a historical archive there. And I wanted somehow to come visit or get involved or, you know, just kind of see the archive. And I kind of mentioned what my background was. And I got this email back from a man named Ken Kellerman.
He was formerly a chief scientist at an Oreo, he's an amazing man. And he said that he would be willing to hire me full time, as like an archival intern, to work with him at NRAO. Because I did what I didn't know at the time was that he was writing a book on the history of the institution. So I was able to help edit some of those chapters, also, while processing papers in the archive, and then doing my own research and learning astronomy, learning NRAO history.
So that was, that was about six years ago now. And then I've come back to work with Ken or to work in the archives as a researcher almost every summer since. And eventually, the Jansky Fellowship is really designed for astronomy, or engineering researchers. But technically, if you look at the description of the Jansky Fellowship, it says that it wants to support research for anyone who uses NRAO facilities to conduct astronomical research that supports the mission of the observatory. And one of the missions of the observatory is to promote radio astronomy.
And so I made the argument that history of astronomy is a very key part of helping to promote radio astronomy history and NRAO history. And yeah, and they agreed with me, and so I was, I'm the first ever humanities Jansky Fellow - social scientist.
M: The NRAO does not currently have the position of NRAO Historian? R: No, it doesn’t. We have an archivist. And that's it.
M: Yes. NASA has that position, NASA historian. So if the NRAO is thinking of creating that position, or looking for nominees, just you know, let me know.
R: Oh, yeah.
M: Absolutely. It should be a historian. Who does that there?
R: Yeah, the NASA model has been very successful. They actually - did you know that the NASA Chief Historian position was created at the same time that NASA was created?
M: I did not!
R: Yeah, NASA Administrator James Webb established the position, right. As NASA was established, there was this this foresight that they knew they were doing something of historical merit. And so they hired a historian at same time as the institution began to help keep track of all of the discoveries and the historical significance. And yeah, so it's very, they had very good foresight.
M: That is yes, if only yes, if only the others had the same...
R: Well, NRAO takes its history pretty seriously. I mean, the fact that they have a historical archive is really brilliant of the institution, it. It really, there actually - I can think of very few other observatories in the country that have such a collection. In fact, in some ways, NRAO has become the default depository for radio astronomy archives in the in the entire United States. So that's why we ended up getting papers from people who never even worked at NRAO. But we're radio astronomers in the US because it's kind of become like the place. It's that bad is quite brilliant.
M: Yeah. So and you had an occasion to meet Dr. Frank Drake, did you not?
R: I did. Yeah. I met Frank for the first time back in. It was actually right after I started at NRAO, I believe. So, back in 2018. And that's because he and I were actually on the same panel together. We were at an astrobiology conference in Green Bank, West Virginia. Green Bank is formerly the headquarters of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. It became its own separate institution, the Green Bank Observatory, back in 2016. But it's still maintains really close connections with NRAO. And yeah, and I met Frank when we were on this panel, and this astrobiology conference, and the panel was on SETI, Past, Present, and Future. And so Frank and I were we're kind of representing Past, but in slightly different ways. Of course, I'm a lot younger than Frank, but I have represented the past in the sense of the person who's studying the history of study, and Frank represented the past as the person who established the discipline.
M: Well, that seems like the perfect pairing. Yeah, this was the person who is recounting all this from an omniscient view, the view of the history, and whereas this guy was there.
R: It's a good mix to have. I work with people who have conducted historical astronomical research like Frank. And it's, it's usually a good combination to have someone who had first hand experience, because they provide that you know, that that firsthand testimony that the color to the history, and then historians help where it's, it's hard to look back on one's life with it from an objective standpoint. And that's where historians come in. And we can help with that elements. So it's usually good to work together.
M: Yes, yes. Now, you had also you had the opportunity to present on the life and times of Frank Drake and how history will remember him, which is, I think, very, very important. And this was at the Penn State SETI Summit. Now, as I understand this was the second annual. So last year was the first? So just from a sort of topical reading of what was going on there. You had experts from various fields coming in talking about all the issues. I was immediately put in mind to the very first SETI meeting that Frank Drake himself hosted, which I'm going to use as an excuse to bring up the Drake equation here. Yes. So can you run our listeners just tell them briefly, what is the Drake Equation?
R: So the Drake Equation is an equation that Frank Drake first introduced in 1961, at this acclaimed SETI conference you're referencing so that was a conference that happened in 1961. At in Green Bank, which was then at that time, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, and it was the first ever conference on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It took place the year after Frank first conducted Project Ozma, which is generally considered the first ever SETI experiment.
And the Drake Equation was a tool that he devised to help predict how many existent and communicative intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations might exist in the galaxy at any given time. So the equation is N equals R*, Fp, Ne, Fl, FI, Fc, and L.
And so N is the number of civilizations, R, stars the average rate of star formation in our galaxy, Fp is the fraction of those stars that have planets, Ne is the average number of planets that can support life, Fl is the fraction of those planets that actually do develop life, Fi is the fraction of the planets in which that life becomes intelligent. And we don't really define that. But that's a complicated question in SETI. Fc is the fraction of those intelligent life forms or civilizations that develop technology that is detectable by humans.
In Frank's time radio was one of the main mechanisms that we expected that to be in, but that's evolved over time. And then L stands for Longevity, so the length of time that those civilizations are detectable, how long they exist, and are communicating or detectable by us.
M: Yes. Yes. As my listeners, hopefully, tuned into a previous episode where we discussed the Drake Equation. Yes, every single parameter you could spend a 5000 word essay explaining just all the neatness and implications of it. Now, the purpose of the equation was not really to offer predictions as much as it was - this is my understanding, please correct me if I'm wrong - it was to summarize the challenges that city researchers face?
R: Absolutely. Yeah, it was. I do think that in some ways, it was a hypothetical tool that Carl Sagan was the first person who ever published a paper with his own prediction on how many civilizations that actually might be. So it's not that it wasn't a tool at all for prediction. There was an element of that. But yes, you're absolutely correct in that it was trying to highlight what the barriers were the knowledge barriers that we'd have to overcome in order to to really start wrestling with that question of, “Is there intelligent life in the Universe?” in a scientific capacity, which was, which was the goal, right? This was a this was a meeting at a scientific institution participating scientists were there and yeah, so that was the key part of this question.
M: And, tell me if you agree here - one of my big enduring impressions from it, right, whether or not this was intended; certainly, was that even if you figure conservatively, for each parameter, you come out with a small number. So even treated conservatively, if life is really really rare, there would still be a few civilizations out there.
R: A lot of people have calculated that way. Yeah, the thing that's interesting about the Drake Equation is that by discipline by individual, you really can get such an enormous range of numbers, which is why I think you're completely spot on. When you say that it is in some ways a tool to show what what our knowledge barriers are, right? Because when Frank made the equation in 1961, when he developed it, that, you know, they didn't know a lot of the answers just to certain variables, but now we're starting to fill those in, right?
Like they did not know, exoplanets existed. They speculated that they aren't they might exist. But there was no evidence that was the case. Worse, of course, now we're detecting and we're detecting hundreds 1000s of exoplanets. And we're certainly going to detect more we now know, we hypothesize that pretty much every star has an exoplanet around it at least one. And so yeah, it's a, it is just showing us the limitations of our knowledge.
M: And thank you for saying that, too. Because that is, that is something that is super relevant to this is that yeah, 1960. So much of what went into the Drake Equation was theoretical and speculative. And, yes, it's now the first three parameters, I believe, star formation, or the rate of star formation in our galaxy, the number of stars that have planets and the number of those that are likely to be habitable, we actually have a pretty good idea about all three. The rest, on the other hand, yeah, the rest are, “No, give us time.”
R: Yeah, it'll take a while. Some of them are, some of them are in theory, concrete questions that we could answer. Like, like in the theory, if we had the capacity, that technology we could
determine how many planets develop life, right? That's an answerable question. It's a scientific question. Some of the variables in the Drake equation are more abstract, or they're not as scientific per se. Like, for example, the one about going on to develop intelligent life had defining what we mean by that is, is a very, it's a philosophical question, in some sense, more than it is the scientific question.
M: Absolutely. And it's one of the, I find immediately, one could debate this endlessly. But let's just say intelligent and accept that that comes with a lot of baggage. Okay. We can agree on that. Let's just keep going here.
R: That’s basically what we do in the study community, we’ve debated this a lot, where study tends to be there's a reason why the Penn State you mentioned the Penn State Conference, we like the word SETI, as opposed to simply technosignature research, right? Because we like thinking expansively about these big picture questions. That's part of the excitement of being in the SETI community is, is that we're not just doing searches, we're also thinking very expansively about what it means to be a living being in the universe. And what does it mean to possess intelligence? And these are some of the most exciting questions in our in our field.
M: Yes. And so in terms of what you what you had to say, during your your presentation there. How do you think history is going to look back on Frank Drake?
R: So I have to I have to get my disclaimer, which historians always do, which is, of course that it is – it’s impossible to know how future people will reflect back on Frank Drake. History is a social science or still science, we still strive to be empirical. And so this is, of course, speculation, but I can tell so rather than telling you how history might look back on Frank Drake, I can tell you how I as a historian, look at Frank, from my perspective, right now. That's my, that's my very precise disclaimer.
And I can tell you that. So as an individual, as someone who met Frank, who knew Frank, I look back on him very fondly as a deeply, deeply kind person. I, when I spoke with Frank, in 2018, at that conference, actually, one of the projects I was working on was on the history of Soviet and American cooperation in SETI, because a lot of people aren't familiar with Soviet contributions to the history of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. And then it was it was prolific.
And Frank, as one of the study pioneers worked very closely with his colleagues in Soviet Union. And so we were discussing this, and one of the things that struck me was that Frank would talk so much with fondness for his Soviet colleagues about how much he wanted to work with his colleagues, about how they were wonderful people, and that it was such a shame that there were these geopolitical tensions that made it difficult for them to work with one another openly.
Him and many of his colleagues on either side of the Iron Curtain, were dismayed by the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Many of them, including Frank, became anti-nuclear activists who'd speak out against the nuclear arms race. And so he was a deeply kind person. And I thought manifests also, I think, in that story, that you heard about Frank and supporting women becoming students at NRAO. And so that's, that's my personal perspective. As a historian, it's slightly different
in the I see Frank, in some ways, as a philosophical pioneer, rather than a technical or scientific one.
There are people who will, who are you know, have a lot of authority to tell you about Frank's scientific and technical innovations throughout his life of which there are many, even outside of SETI, he was a very talented astronomer. But I think that what I find so interesting as a historian of SETI is how Frank shifted the character of the question in SETI. There was a reason why we call him the one of the first study pioneers, as opposed to someone else earlier in history who had some sort of question about the existence of extraterrestrial life in this in the universe.
Human beings have been speculating on the existence of life on other worlds, for pretty much as long as we have a historical record. Going back to the ancient Greeks, we know that there were there was speculation on what was what we call the plurality of worlds. And so it's an old question, Frank's not new or different for having come up with it. And he's not even you know, some people credit Project Ozma as being the first SETI search, and I would argue that it is, but with a lot of asterixes is next to it.
Because he's not the first person to conduct a search for life on other worlds. One could argue, for example, that Percival Lowell did that when he used his optical telescope to look at Mars to find what he believed were canals on Mars, righ. Tthat was a search, right, for extraterrestrial civilizations. And so Frank wasn't the first to do that he wasn't the first even to do it, within the radio - there was an Amherst astronomer back in the 1920s, who use naval listening stations, radio stations, to listen to signals from Mars. That's right, that's a search for extra terrestrial radio signals.
But what made Project Ozma different is I think, as it changed the character of the question, it made it one truly scientific in the sense that it was done by scientists in scientific institutions that had really never happened before, in the sense that like, while Percival Lowell, of course, was in observatory, it was one of the self funded, it was an individualist enterprise, or as Frank was working within a nationally funded institution. And his work was supported by other colleagues in his field.
And it was also I think, this moment in time, where I talk a lot about the Cold War in my research. And in the Cold War period, we have this, this shift in thinking about life on Earth, that I think really changed the character about how we think about life and space, because you have the onset of globalization. This is the first time in human history where we're really thinking about how we are affected by countries around the world outside of just like being invaded by them. Right.
Right after the end of World War Two, we have the development of the World Health Organization, because we realized for the first time with the development of things like airplanes and mass travel, that if there is a flu in Kazakhstan, that it won't stay there that it could spread around the world. And so we realize how connected we are, that's the first thing. The second thing is that we also realize that for the first time, we're not concerned about the fall of Rome, we're concerned about the fall, you know, the end of everything.
We've developed these these tools, these weapons, nuclear bombs, that are capable of destroying our entire world as we know it, right. And so it becomes an existential problem, right, literally, literally existential our existence is on the line. And I think that shift changed the way we think about the problem of communicating and seeking extraterrestrial life. And that's, that's Frank's big innovation, is he includes the variable L in his equation about longevity, because it's the first time we're wrestling with, maybe civilizations don't last forever.
And not just civilizations, like countries, but entire species, even if they are technologically intelligent, right, maybe intelligent, in some ways, doesn't mean intelligent and always. And he had insight into that. And then the second thing is also that we're connected, that we're a civilization, we're a species. And I think that that attitude, that that kind of Earthling perspective, that internationalism is what prompted him to cooperate again, across the Iron Curtain to recognize that this is an endeavor that's not, that can't cannot simply be done or shouldn't be done by any one person or any one institution or nation, but that it is a global issue.
And you can see Frank wrestle with that question and how to approach it throughout his entire career, right with, you know, with the creation of the Voyager Golden Record, and it's such a, it's such a fascinating innovation that I think he contributed to.
M: Yeah, there was a lot of that too. Wasn't there people reaching across the Iron Curtain during the Cold War? Because they recognized the value of science and of course, people who would say, “Is this your cover, being a physicist?” Carl Sagan, I believe, was the one who related that story. And he’s like, “No.” It's like, “But you're meeting with Soviet scientists!” “Yeah, cuz I'm a scientist!”
R: Yeah, it's, it's so complicated as a cold war historian, because there there is this kind of this cognitive dissonance, I guess, or this, this really nuanced thing happening, where on the one hand, you have this that right that internationalism, like let's work with scientists, and we're scientists and science should exist without borders, right?
But on the other hand, the conflict that's happening is not a direct one. It's a scientific technical competition, right? It's a scientific technical conflict. And so scientists were also soldiers, in a sense, right? They were sometimes intelligence gatherers, or working as spies. One of the ways that intel would be gathered was sometimes by sending scientists and exchange programs, this is really well documented. And it's, so, it's not an either/or situation.
It's not to say that oh, yeah, all physicists who are working with their colleagues were secretly spying on them. But in science is pure. But it's also not the opposite of that, either, that, oh, they didn't form genuine friendships. They were just spying on each other. No, a lot of them genuinely held these internationalist beliefs, that that really fueled their desire to cooperate with their peers, even in you know, nation states that were had hostilities with one another. So yeah, it's a really complex situation, which is fun for historian to study, because there's a lot of nuance to tease out.
M: Absolutely. So in terms of Frank’s accomplishments here. Project Ozma was the first attempt to look for extraterrestrial intelligence in the extra solar sense. And this This is often sort of a
confusing point when we talk about SETI, people tend to interpret Extra Terrestrial to mean, another star and other planets, when in fact, technically it just means beyond Earth.
R: Yeah, absolutely. There's their solar system SETI, there's extra solar, right? There's all SETI, it means a lot of different things, a lot of creative ideas happening in this field.
M: Now, to pivot just a little bit. Frank Drake was also integral to the first METI exercise or project or the Arecibo message. Yeah. And one thing I sort of been curious about is that the environment surrounding that there at the time, was it more amenable one might say, then say today? Because of course, anytime the subject of METI comes up – Oh, and a reminder to listeners, that stands for Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Yeah. There's a big controversy surrounding it. Like, is this smart? Is this dangerous? Is this ethical, and then all that. So yeah. Is it fair to say the environment was a little bit more cool back then?
R: So yes, and no. I'm gonna go with no, no, it wasn't. It's complicated. Frank's Arecibo message. It was conducted in 1974. This was when Frank was the director of the Arecibo Observatory. And interestingly, we've talked a little bit about Frank kind of building up women. Actually, He credits his administrative assistants, Jane Allen, with the idea of making the Arecibo message. So Frank, yeah, really supportive, kind person throughout his life. That is a big theme in Frank's life.
But anyway, so Jane Allen came up with this idea to use the Arecibo Radar, which had recently had some upgrades to it as part of this commemoration ceremony that was celebrating the upgrades to the telescope. And so Frank loved that idea. And he jumped right on it. And he started designing this message. So the Arecibo message was really simple. It was a consisted of a series of binary digits that represented a pictorial message that had basic information about humanity and our understanding of the Universe.
It had a visual of DNA is double helix structure, information on him current human population, that sort of thing. And the message was aimed at a globular star cluster in Hercules, M13, which is really, really far from Earth. This is, we're talking 25,000 light years away from Earth. And the message, again, was really not necessarily intended as a real attempt at messaging extraterrestrial intelligence, because it was done for this commemoration, it was kind of a last second thing, right that Jane came up with.
And because they didn't really take the time to really be careful, and we now know that the intended target of the message, it didn't actually end up making it that far because of the rotation of the galaxy. So it's not going to hit M13 after all, it's gonna go somewhere empty in space, I think. And so it wasn't real message in that sense. But it did have pushback, nevertheless. But it's actually it's the push backs and interesting story.
So Frank wrote an autobiography called does anyone out there but he published in 1992. And in it, he recounted what happened when Sir Martin Ryle, who was a Nobel Laureate believe he was the Astronomer Royal at the time in Britain. He apparently had written a letter to Sir Bernard Lovell, who was the vice president of the International Astronomical Union, basically saying that he had heard about Frank's experiment that it was horrible, that we had to be deeply worried because any extraterrestrial civilizations that might detect it might be “malevolent or hungry.”
That's the direct quote that Frank used. And Frank was very distressed by this response. And in fact, this has become that phrase, malevolent or hungry has been kind of popularized to describe anyone who has a problem with METI. And it's a little bit interesting because that was slightly mischaracterized. Because the term “malevolent or hungry” when describing extraterrestrial civilizations sounds silly, right? Like we can hear that phrase, we can think of Martin Ryle typing that and think, “Well, you sound a little bit silly. Martin,” right? Like, “Really? Aliens are going to eat us? And you sound a little ridiculous.”
But I actually as part of research for my forthcoming book on Cold War SETI, I actually found the original letter that Martin Ryle wrote to Sir Bernard Lovell, and he actually does not use that phrase at all. He does raise concerns about METI. And he does actually draw from – so, he was a British astronomer. He draws from Britain's colonial history as an example of why we might want to be concerned about making contact, because, of course, he sees that around this period of time is the the post colonial age. in Britain.
A lot of countries are gaining their independence from Britain, a lot of horrors of British colonialism are starting to come to light. And Martin Ryle sees this happening and says, “Okay, maybe it's not always a good thing, when we have civilizations interacting with one another.” So he does raise that as a concern. But it's a very mild concern. He never uses the phrase “malevolent or hungry.” What he does raise as a concern is that he doesn't like the idea of individuals, or nations, taking control of the messaging from Earth extraterrestrial civilizations.
So he actually asks the IAU to set up such something like a committee or a task force to take to have like a global democratic participation in METI, in messaging extraterrestrial intelligence. It doesn't end up happening. But I think that Frank kind of heard that feedback. And that when you look at, for example, say the Voyager Golden Record, which happened not too long afterwards, there was a much greater attempt to kind of synthesized a global view of Earth.
It wasn't perfect, because again, they were rushed. They didn't have a lot of time to put it together. This was a small team of people, but at least there was that recognition that METI, kind of by default, had to be a global effort.
M: A rich subject and one that I imagine we could spend days talking about. However, we'll have to save that for another episode. In the meantime, thank you Dr. Rebecca Charbonneau for joining us here on Stories from Space.
And for my listeners, be sure to check out Rebecca charbonneau.wordpress.com to learn more about her work at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the history of radio astronomy and SETI research. And please tune in next week when my guest will be noted Space Policy Analyst and Space Advocate Ruvimbo Samanga.
Thank you for listening. I’m Matt Williams and this has been Stories from Space.