The cliche of alien beings landing on Earth and uttering words to the effect of "Take us to your leader" is a cliche for a reason: It's entirely possible. Yes, it is entirely plausible, possible, predictable, and lots of other words ending in -able or -ible that intelligent members of a non-Earth species who arrive on our home world and can somehow approximate language that we humans can understand will assume that we have a leader and, more to the point, ask to be ushered into the presence of that leader.
If that happens, we need to be ready. And now, it seems, we are.
The United Nations (did you know this?) has an Office for Outer Space Affairs. It even has a catchy acronym — UNOOSA. UNOOSA has a leader, Mazlan Othman of Malaysia. She's an astrophysicist, a fact that will no doubt come in handy during the first discussions with alien beings who land on Earth and want to do something other than liquefy our defense systems.
Look at her picture: Othman is a kindly sort. At 58, she's been around the block a time or two in terms of astronomical research. She knows the chances of meeting a representative of an alien species (and she knows the chances are slim). However, she also knows that with the advent of the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Telescope, the International Space Station, and all manner of other hunks of scientifically enhanced metal orbiting Earth, humans' chances of detecting intelligent life anywhere other than most places on Earth are growing by leaps and bounds.This is undoubtedly not news to the U.N. scientific advisory committees, which will hear Othman's case very soon. If they agree that she and her office are the ones who should be put forward for a First Contact tete-a-tete, then (barring a no vote by the General Assembly), that is exactly what will happen.
Nightmares of alien overlords ruling the world? What nightmares of alien overlords ruling the world? We have a leader (or at least we will soon).
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