Are such visits occurring at this moment? Dr. Allen Hynek has made a study of reported UFOsightings and concludes that several are unmistakably UFOs --Unidentified Flying Objects. He cannot say whether these unidentified objects have come from another star, but there are goodreasons for believing that such extraterrestrial contacts -- either visitors or messages -- are more probable today than ever before in the history of our planet. Since about 1960, television stations scattered across the Earth have been spraying their signals into space at a million-watt level. In the course of the last 20 years, that expanding shell of television signals, moving away from the Earth at the speed of light, has traveled 240 trillion miles; it has now swept past more than 40 stars in the neighborhood of the Sun. Old Jack Para programs, moving away from the Earth at the speed of light, have carried the message tothese stars that intelligent life exists on this planet. These television signals make the Earth the brightest radio star in our neighborhood of the galaxy at TV frequencies. For the first time in 4.6 billion years, our planet is a notable object in the heavens.

If any of those 40 nearby stars harbor intelligent beings, our presence is now known to them. As it took 20 years for our signals to reach these stars, it must take 20 years for their reply, traveling at the same speed, to get back. Unless man is alone in the cosmos, we can expect to receive a message—or a visit - by the end of this century.

And would these superior beings bother to talk to us? "In their eyes," one observer notes, "Einstein would qualify as a waiter and Thomas Jefferson as a busboy."

1 think they would. They are jaded: they have lived a billion years; they have done nearlyeverything; they are eager for fresh experiences. After all, where else in the galaxy have they seen a creature like man before?