Contact Assume that we have discovered extraterrestrial life! The signals from a foreign civilisation have been captured and it looks as if they come from an advanced culture. The experts are working to decipher the binary code and they are making some progress. The astronomers tell us from which direction the message came and they are trying to figure out from which celestial object: a planet around a star in our neighbourhood, or perhaps much farther away? Could it be from another galaxy, far beyond our own Milky Way? Nevertheless, the question of course arises: shall we answer and if so, how are we going to do it? Let us then consider how we might attempt to get into contact with another civilisation. Which problems must be overcome and how might one realistically achieve an intelligent communication? The first problem is the simple fact that the distances between the stars are truly vast - the nearest star being 4 x 1013 km away! Even that "astronomically short" distance is a bit too far to travel, unless we move extremely fast! So a "visit" to that other civilisation may not be easy and may have to await the development of radically new technologies. Read more about interstellar travel and also about possible, future human expansion into space. We would probably have to start by communicating, for instance by means of a powerful radio telescope. In that case, we must also give some thought to the form of the messages we will be sending. How can we be sure that our partners out there can understand what we are saying and how can we understand them?