Professor, without knowing precisely what the danger is, would you say it’s time for our viewers to crack each other’s heads open and feast on the goo inside?

There are so many stars out there, that if one believes that human life was generated on Earth through evolutionary processes, that it is entirely logical to believe that, there are other planets orbiting other stars that not only have life on them but have civilizations which are thousands of years more technologically advanced than Mankind. Our present scientific knowledge can not build a spacecraft with the interstellar capabilities of Star Trek’s Enterprise and our present scientific capabilities can not even produce a theoretical model of how a spacecraft could travel across such huge distances in the relatively short time periods as the fictional Enterprise is capable of. It could be, it is simply impossible to build a spacecraft with the capabilities that the Enterprise has or alternatively we simply might presently not have knowledge which would indicate a logical way of building such a spacecraft. If Roman scientists had attempted to build a heavier than air powered flying machine to carry a human pilot and human passengers, they might have concluded that, whilst it was possible to use a wing to sustain the aircraft in flight, neither galley slaves nor domesticated animals could provide enough appropriate forward propulsive force to lift the aircraft off the ground and to sustain powered flight and therefor it was simply impossible to produce such a vehicle. The internal combustion engine is a game changer on that problem. Likewise there may be a technology that is not currently developed, which could allow spacecraft of the Enterprise’s capabilities to be built. If such space craft can be built other civilizations may have them and there is no inherent reason such civilizations might not have very nasty attitudes about other species. In view of the fact that even being a couple of decades or so more advanced in military technology can be decisive, for example one F-4 Phantom II of the USAF of the 1980s era could easily destroy destroy dozens of World War II Luftwaffe Me 262 jetfighters in repeated engagements with little risk to itself, which would mean that an alien civilization which was in any way was military competent and had a starship construction capability and hostile intent towards Earth would likely be a catastrophic threat. On the other hand there are issues which could seriously degrade an an Alien civilization’s military capability and with that in mind, it is legitimate for military organizations to be alert to a potential Alien threat and the need to have strategies in place to fight a military conflict with an Alien civilization.