As technologies of flight evolve, so do the descriptions of unidentified flying objects. The pattern has held in the 21st century as sightings of drone-like objects are reported, drawing concern from military and intelligence officials about possible security threats.

While puzzling over the appearance of curious things overhead may be a constant, how we have done so has changed over time, as the people doing the puzzling change. In every instance of reporting UFOs, observers have called on their personal experiences and prevailing knowledge of world events to make sense of these nebulous apparitions. In other words, affairs here on earth have consistently colored our perceptions of what is going on over our heads.

Reports of weird, wondrous, and worrying objects in the skies date to ancient times. Well into the 17th century, marvels such as comets and meteors were viewed through the prism of religion—as portents from the gods and, as such, interpreted as holy communications.

By the 19th century, however, “celestial wonders” had lost most of their miraculous aura. Instead, the age of industrialization transferred its awe onto products of human ingenuity. The steamboat, the locomotive, photography, telegraphy, and the ocean liner were all hailed as “modern wonders” by news outlets and advertisers. All instilled a widespread sense of progress—and opened the door to speculation about whether objects in the sky signaled more changes.

Yet nothing fueled the imagination more than the possibility of human flight. In the giddy atmosphere of the 19th century, the prospect of someone soon achieving it inspired newspapers to report on tinkerers and entrepreneurs boasting of their supposed successes.

The wave of mysterious airship sightings that began in 1896 did not trigger widespread fear. The accepted explanation for these aircraft was terrestrial and quaint: Some ingenious eccentric had built a device and was testing its capabilities.

But during the first two decades of the 20th century, things changed. As European powers expanded their militaries and nationalist movements sparked unrest, the likelihood of war prompted anxiety about invasion. The world saw Germany—home of the newly developed Zeppelin—as the likeliest aggressor. Military strategists, politicians, and newspapers in Great Britain warned of imminent attack by Zeppelins.

The result was a series of phantom Zeppelin sightings by panicked citizens throughout the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand in 1909, then again in 1912 and 1913. When war broke out in August 1914, it sparked a new, more intense wave of sightings. Wartime reports also came in from Canada, South Africa, and the United States. In England, rumors that German spies had established secret Zeppelin hangars on British soil led vigilantes to scour the countryside.

In the age of aviation, war and fear of war have consistently fueled reports of unidentified flying objects. A year after Nazi Germany’s surrender, Sweden was beset by at least a thousand accounts of peculiar, fast-moving objects in the sky. Starting in May 1946, residents described seeing missile- or rocket-like objects in flight, which were dubbed “ghost rockets” because of their fleeting nature. Rockets peppering Swedish skies was well within the realm of possibility—in 1943 and 1944, a number of V-1 and V-2 rockets launched from Germany had inadvertently crashed in the country.

At first, intelligence officials in Scandinavia, Britain, and the United States took the threat of ghost rockets seriously, suspecting that the Soviets might be experimenting with German rockets they had captured. By the autumn of 1946, however, they had concluded it was a case of postwar mass hysteria.

The following summer, a private pilot by the name of Kenneth Arnold claimed to have seen nine flat objects flying in close formation near Mt. Rainier. Looking back on the event years later, Arnold noted, “What startled me most at this point was the fact that I could not find any tails on them. I felt sure that, being jets, they had tails, but figured they must be camouflaged in some way so that my eyesight could not perceive them. I knew the Air Force was very artful in the knowledge and use of camouflage.”

Given the name “flying saucers” by an Associated Press correspondent, they quickly appeared throughout the United States. Over the following two weeks, newspapers covered hundreds of sightings.

News of these reports circled the globe. Soon, sightings occurred in Europe and South America. In the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, atomic bomb tests, and tensions between the United States and the USSR, speculation ran rampant.

Finding themselves on the front line of the Cold War, Germans on both sides of the Iron Curtain considered the United States the most likely culprit. West Germans thought the discs were experimental missiles or military aircraft, while Germans in the communist Eastern bloc considered it more likely that the whole thing was a hoax devised by the American defense industry to whip up support for a bloated budget.

Others had more elaborate theories. In 1950, former U.S. Marine Air Corps Major Donald Keyhoe published an article and book titled The Flying Saucers Are Real, in which he contended that aliens from another planet were behind the appearance of the UFOs. Based on information from his informants, Keyhoe contended that government authorities were aware of this, but wished to keep the matter a secret for fear of inciting a general panic.

Such a claim about UFOs was new. To be sure, at the turn of the century during the phantom airship waves, some had speculated that the vessels spotted might be from another planet. Already at that time, people were deeply interested in reports of prominent astronomers observing artificial “canals” and structures on Mars. Evidence of Martian civilizations made it seem conceivable that our interplanetary neighbors had finally decided to pay us a visit. Still, relatively few bought into this line of reasoning.

But by going further, Major Keyhoe struck a chord in a timely fashion. In the aftermath of World War II and over the course of the 1950s, it seemed that science and engineering were making remarkable strides. In particular, the development of guided rockets and missiles, jet airplanes, atomic and hydrogen bombs, nuclear energy, and satellites signaled to many that there were no limits—not even earth’s atmosphere—to technological progress. And if our planet were on the verge of conquering space, it would hardly be a stretch to imagine that more advanced civilizations elsewhere were capable of even greater feats.

But all this raised a question. Why were the extraterrestrials visiting us now?

Keyhoe believed that aliens had been keeping us under observation for a long time. Witnessing the recent explosions of atomic weapons, they had decided the inhabitants of planet Earth had finally reached an advanced enough stage to be scrutinized more closely. Still, there was no reason for alarm. “We have survived the stunning impact of the Atomic Age,” Keyhoe concluded. “We should be able to take the Interplanetary Age, when it comes, without hysteria.”

The flying saucer era had begun. Not everyone would remain as sanguine as Keyhoe. As concerns over global nuclear annihilation and environmental catastrophe grew during the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, claims about UFOs took on ever more ominous tones.

Times changed. And so, again, did the UFO phenomenon.

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The signal, which only came to public attention in late August, may be a product of interference from Earth or have some other non-alien origin—it’s only been observed once, for four seconds, at a single location. Even though the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence believes the signal to be from Earth and says the likelihood that it is an extraterrestrial attempt at contact “is not terribly promising,” the imagination runs wild—maybe aliens are reaching out to us, perhaps the Kremlin is in cahoots with them, or maybe this is more evidence of governmental cover-ups and conspiracies.

The lack of verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence forms the basis of the Fermi Paradox. Given the high probability of intelligent life elsewhere, based on the billions of sun-like stars in the Milky Way (not to mention other galaxies), and the likelihood that planets orbit at least some of these stars, and life exists on at least some of these planets, the silence seems strange. In 1950, physicist Enrico Fermi reasoned that aliens should have already contacted Earth, leading him to ask, “Where is everybody?” Nicola Tesla suggested using radio waves to look for alien life in 1896 and we’ve been looking ever since. Perhaps intelligent life isn’t common in the cosmos or is still too far away. Perhaps aliens have visited Earth without our knowledge. Or perhaps aliens have intentionally kept their distance.

But what would happen if this signal were proven to come from intelligent aliens? To call it a game changer is an understatement. What would we do? How would we react? Regardless of what this signal turns out to be, it’s also worth thinking about why aliens might attempt to contact us and what they might have already picked up from our transmissions.

Science fiction offers countless thought experiments in response to these questions. In these stories, the knowledge that humans aren’t alone in the cosmos often causes society to unravel. The discovery of intelligent extraterrestrial life would shift paradigms, particularly within certain religions, political systems, and cultures, and those shifts would be messy. Some people might flee or fight, while others welcome an alien species. Perhaps most of all, sci-fi suggests that a signal from an alien life may threaten humankind—not because of anything the ETs might do, but because of the way such a game-changing encounter would highlight and exacerbate existing divisions within humanity, forcing open those cracks. We can’t control what actions aliens might take or what motives might bring them to Earth, but three stories—two novels and one movie—offer compelling guidance about how humans themselves should react to signals from space.

In Close Encounters of the Third Kind, UFOs abduct people, cause electrical disturbances, and attempt to communicate with humans using via a five-note melody. Throughout most of the film, the government denies these occurrences, positioning itself as the voice of reason and authority in the midst of chaos. In one of the film’s most famous scenes, Richard Dreyfuss’ character uses mashed potatoes to construct an image he can’t get out of his mind. His obsession alienates his family, but eventually leads him to Devils Tower, where the spaceship lands. The ship releases people who had been abducted or had gone missing years earlier, all of whom appear both unharmed and unaged, and the aliens appear peaceful and non-threatening.

While it’s never entirely clear why the aliens abduct humans, their benevolent nature suggests curiosity, and since it can no longer deny their existence, the government sends 12 officials to board the ship, but in the end, the aliens permit only Dreyfuss to accompany them to their home world. As in Spielberg’s subsequent film E.T., the aliens aren’t the villains—if anything, the government that chooses not to believe its citizens and to withhold the truth is. The aliens underscore this point by opening their doors only for a true believer, as though humans must prove themselves worthy of aliens, rather than the other way around.

In Carl Sagan’s 1985 novel Contact, humans receive from the star Vega a transmission consisting of prime numbers, which astronomers eventually decode into a visual message—Adolf Hitler commencing the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. The Vegans had been monitoring adjacent planetary systems and sent back the image of Hitler—the first indication of intelligent life (oh, the irony) from Earth that the aliens were able to pick up. They beamed the message back in receipt. “What are they going to think of us?” wonders astronomer Ellie Arroway, worried about Hitler serving as Earth’s “ambassador.”

Later, one of the Vegans—a simulacra of Arroway’s father—explains why they made contact upon receiving the broadcast:

The picture, of course, was alarming. We could tell you were in deep trouble. But the music told us something else. The Beethoven told us there was hope. Marginal cases are our specialty. We thought you could use a little help. … You’ve got hardly any theory of social organization, astonishingly backward economic systems, no grasp of the machinery of historical prediction, and very little knowledge about yourselves. Considering how fast your world is changing, it’s amazing you haven’t blown yourselves to bits by now. That’s why we don’t want to write you off just yet.

Imagine what extra-terrestrials would discern about human civilization if they detected one of our transmissions. What would they pick up? BBC broadcasts? Talk shows? Fox News? Cartoons? What would they conclude about humanity based on those glimpses of our culture?

Before he wrote Contact, Carl Sagan chaired a committee tasked to decide what to include on the “Golden Record,” a copper disc carried by the Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977. (Voyager 1 is now beyond the solar system.) The Golden Record contains 115 images and sounds, including music, animal calls, greetings in 55 different languages, human brain waves, and images of DNA, the Solar System, maps, humans, and wildlife. This carefully curated time capsule could serve as a helpful introduction to the human race—depending on who or what receives it.

Might aliens determine, based on our signals, that they don’t want contact with earthlings? Might they see them as a call for help? In Liu Cixin’s 2008 book The Three-Body Problem, a disillusioned astrophysicist transmits a message into outer space asking for assistance. The message is picked up by the Trisolarans, aliens looking to settle a planet with a stable orbit. The responder warns that its race will invade Earth, but the astrophysicist figures nothing could be worse than the havoc humans have wrought on the planet, so she persists. Some humans plan defense strategies, while others welcome the alien overlords. These opposing factions spend centuries attempting to outwit one another, each trying to save Earth.

In Contact, Sagan also explores the fracturing of the human race in the aftermath of the discovery that humans aren’t alone. International politics become a free-for-all, as astronomers from around the world work to harness and decode the signals amid fears that countries with tepid relationships with the U.S. might withhold or alter data. America and Russia compete to build the spacecraft depicted in the transmitted blueprints. International debate rages over who will comprise the five-person crew and countries trade seats for other privileges. The heightened tensions culminate in the bombing of the first craft and crew, for which dozens of international political, religious, and military organizations take credit. The schism between science and religion manifests in distrust. Arroway consults a religious leader who asserts that the “scientists and the politicians and the bureaucrats are holding out” on and deceiving them. “Do you want people like that to decide the fate of the world? … Do you want a pack of unbelievers to do the talking to God?” he asks.

Sagan brings up a good and difficult question that could easily get lost in the furor over proving the origin of an extraterrestrial signal. Who should serve as ambassadors for the human race in the event that aliens want to communicate?

Close Encounters, Contact, and The Three-Body Problem offer answers here. They suggest that the curious and open-minded humans make the best liaisons. Our earthly ambassadors should be people who embrace the unknown, believe the impossible, and who don’t shy away from the crucible of alien contact despite its dangers. Perhaps it’s a moot point—we may have unwittingly picked our intergalactic liaisons already. The prospect of intelligent life requires that we consider our legacies not just on Earth, but throughout all space and time, just in case.

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