Tech talk, cold comfort.

The people of planet Earth would be wise to raise their cosmic consciousness prior to contact with an extraterrestrial civilization, a new study shows.

"The scientific community now accepts to some degree that this contact may occur in the next 50 to 100 years," writes Gabriel De la Torre, a clinical neuropsychologist and human factors specialist at the University of Cádiz in Spain.

"Consequently, we are becoming more concerned about this possibility and its aftermath . Certainly the topic of contact with extraterrestrial civilizations raises a number of questions that are not easy to answer," De la Torre writes. "We estimate that this type of event will have not only a social effect, but also on both consciousness and biology as well."