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36 Most radio astronomers interested in interstellar communication either dismissed or ignored Bracewell’s arguments. His direct contact scenario came back to haunt them 15 years later. In 1962, Soviet astronomer Iosif Shklovskii published a book in Russian called Universe, Life, Mind, popularizing the question and providing a broad context for the search. Another Soviet astronomer, Nikolai Kardashevy, called the first USSR-wide meeting on this subject in 1964. Kardashev proposed three levels of alien technology reflected by the power of signals they could emit: Type I, a planetary technology comparable to that of Earth; Type I, a technology exploiting the energy of a star; Type III, disposing of energy comparable to that of an entire galaxy. That theory supported a Soviet strategy of looking for powerful signals from a few civi- lizations vastly more advanced than our own. This approach required far fewer transmitting societies than the American strategy, which assumed abundant civilizations with a modest radio transmission capability.’* There were false alarms. The Soviet news agency TASS announced in 1965 that Soviet astronomers had detected rhythmic fluctuations in a pow- erful radio source called CTA 102 that might be the beacon of a supercivi- lization. That source turned out to be a recently discovered phenomenon known as a quasar.'® A 1971 conference of American and Soviet scientists at the Byurakan Observatory in the USSR endorsed the idea of CETI (Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence), declaring that recent discoveries had transferred this subject from the realm of speculation to a new realm of experiment and observation. The Byurakan resolutions laid out proposed research directions and suggested the types of instruments that would be needed. Recognizing the interdisciplinary character of CETI, the confer- ees agreed that “a wide circle of specialists, from astrophysicists to histo- rians, should participate in the planning of this research.” Sagan commented at the time that the Byurakan conference made the subject of communica- tion with extraterrestrial intelligence scientifically respectable.” Meanwhile, news about the search began to spread beyond the radio astronomy community. The New York Times science editor Walter Sullivan’s 1964 book We Are Not Alone brought the search to the attention af a Leanne 21 dine en te th Td Ons of a broader audience in the United States. — Sagan collaborated with Shklovskii on an expanded version of his book, published in English in 1966 as Intelligent Life in the Universe. That Searching for Intelligence From Russia with Theories American Initiatives