Why Don't They Do SETI?  May 08, 2008 by Seth Shostak, Senior
Astronomer  A widespread and popular impression of SETI is that
it's a worldwide enterprise. Well, it's not, and there's
something modestly puzzling in that.  The idea of communicating
between worlds is at least 150 years old. Victorian scientists
Karl Friedrich Gauss and Joseph von Littrow are both reputed to
have concocted schemes to establish rapport with Moon-men or
Martians by signaling them with light. Gauss was a German, and
von Littrow was Austrian. But within a century, the important
ideas about getting in touch with aliens were coming from the
western side of the Atlantic. The fundamental concepts for radio
SETI were first incubated and hatched in America.  For three
decades following Frank Drake's first modern SETI experiment in
1960, the American efforts had a strong and fertile counterpart
in the Soviet Union. The Soviet SETI work was frequently
brilliant, occasionally nutty, and pursued by researchers who
were active and enthused.  Th