A healthy chunk of the population believed, enough to impact national policies. Some of the first efforts at what we now call radio astronomy were attempts to

A healthy chunk of the population believed, enough to impact national policies. Some of the first efforts at what we now call radio astronomy were attempts to listen for Mars signals. Just over a century ago "the big listen" saw large parts of the planet, including the military, turn off their transmitters in order to listen for Martians.