In 1974, the world's largest radio telescope (located in a jungle basin near Arecibo, Puerto Rico) relayed a message to the rest of the galaxy, containing information about Earth and its inhabitants: what we looked like, where we were located and, most significantly, the DNA sequences that make up the human cell. Twenty years later, the inconceivable happened...the message was answered. Someone--or something--knows where to find us... The reply contained a DNA sequence and the friendly instructions to combine it with our own. It was, perhaps, the inviolable dominance we have enjoyed for time immemorial that allowed our curiosity to overcome our fear. We believed we were in control; we presumed we could handle the result; we assumed we would always be dominant. We were wrong...
