ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Cold War Reiteration of the Plurality of Worlds: The Prague Spring and “Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligences”

• In Event: New Perspectives on the History of Science Diplomacy 2

English Abstract

This presentation describes the history behind what the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), an organization formed in 1960 to allow individual-based interdisciplinary cooperation in space science, called “the CETI Project.” In June 1965, Rudolf Pešek proposed bringing East and West together at a symposium on “Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligences”—later changed into “Intelligence”—in Prague. Even though the international symposium never occurred because of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the actions to enable it, including the legitimization of the subject, sometimes contested, over the preceding three years, show how CETI was intertwined with one of the most important events of the Cold War. Addressing the understudied diplomacy in the IAA, the presentation illuminates how CETI’s history is grounded in the scientific-political specificities of Czechoslovakia between 1965 and 1968 in its international context. 

CETI relied on a scientific breakthrough, the possibility of astronomy to see the Universe outside of the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Historians have so far documented CETI as part of radio astronomy, while its international astronautical dimensions remain mostly understudied. CETI was much more than a reiteration of the “plurality of the worlds” (astronomy’s age-old question of whether humans are alone in the Universe). It involved communication between Western and Soviet bloc states over the electromagnetic signals that could be used to communicate with extraterrestrials, employing new technologies from missiles and space exploration. This presentation underscores the historiographical importance of CETI, given its implications for nuclear and space diplomacy as a form of planetary solidarity. 

Author

• Gabriela Radulescu, Independent Scholar