Meeting aliens for the first time could trigger a world war on Earth, boffins say.
They fear the first nation to make contact with ET will suddenly become the most powerful country on the planet.
That could trigger a huge rift with rivals – including so-called super powers – who had not yet had a natter with extraterrestrials.
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According to a study by geophysicist Kenneth Wisian and religious studies expert John Traphagan, knowledge of alien technology "if wielded solely by one nation here on Earth might enable it to dominate the world".
Their report published in journal Space Policy said "controlling communication" with alien intelligence "could be the biggest 'prize' ever in international competition".
It could be enough to spark war as countries that had not made contact scrambled to find out where ET was so they could say hello.
If the country that makes first contact does not voluntarily share the information, their rivals may try to force it out of them.
Mr Traphagan told US news website The Daily Beast: "To think anything else is to be rather naive."
Boffins are increasingly convinced aliens exist and a first close encounter looms large.
Astrologist Douglas Vakoch told Newsweek: "There are billions of stars in our own Milky Way galaxy and the vast majority are orbited by planets.
"And there are billions of galaxies in the universe.
"It would be a miracle if Earth is the only planet in the entire cosmos that has life, and I don't believe in miracles.
"So life is almost certainly out there."
American philosopher Chelsea Haramia said governments need to prepare to meet ET.
"In the event of contact, things will likely move very quickly, and we may not have the time to carefully vet our reasoning," she said
"It's better to do what we can now – and to recognise what we can't do – with the knowledge that we have."
In a rival paper, US astrophysicist and astronomy professor Jason Wright played down the risk of alien contact triggering a human war.
"We argue that the specific scenario many people imagine, that the signal will contain 'advanced' physics and engineering that we can use to build new technologies, perhaps even military technologies, is pretty unlikely," he said.
"Even if it happens there's not much governments could do to get a monopoly on that information.
"A signal from space will be available to anyone on Earth with a satellite dish so there's not much point in, for instance, sending the army in to take over a radio telescope facility."
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He said the way people would react to aliens was hard to predict and governments might mistakenly think sending in the army is a good idea.
"We need to make sure policymakers and government officials are aware of what the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is and understand the nature of any signal that gets detected early," he said.
"There are some protocols in place that practitioners know and generally try to follow and these include widely sharing the details of any detected signal to make sure there are no misunderstandings."
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