It's a rare thing to finish a Steven Spielberg movie disappointed. The Hollywood maestro has been leaving audiences with a sense of awe and wonder for more than half a century and his latest film, Disclosure Day, is another technical triumph.

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It's visually stunning and relentlessly entertaining.

Slight spoiler alert: Disclosure Day follows an attempt to expose a decades-long conspiracy hiding the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life. But immediately after its thrilling climax, the movie fades to black.

Sorry, Mr Spielberg, but isn't the day after disclosure day when the story really begins?

For millennia we've gazed at the skies asking "Are we alone?" It's a question at the heart of human existence. Both answers have profound implications.

If we are alone then life on earth is surely the most precious substance in the universe. If not, then everything we believed about our place in the cosmos changes. The discovery of intelligent alien life would not just dominate headlines, but history.

So let's go forth where Spielberg dared not tread - the days after disclosure day. (Major spoiler alert: this is a tale starring human psychology, not alien biology).

Imagine waking tomorrow to the news that aliens exist. The evidence is irrefutable. The universe is heavily populated. Many lifeforms are more advanced than us. Some have already visited us. How would the world react?

Would humanity - as many optimists have suggested - put aside its petty differences, hold hands and launch into a global rendition of Kum Ba Yah? Or would the revelation fracture society even further?

Be honest. The answer is all around us.

We've never been more connected and informed. Yet we've never found it harder to agree on what is true. Within an hour of the startling news half the world would be screaming "Fake news!"

Deepfake AI footage would flood social media. Daily life would unravel on a scale that would make the panic buying and hoarding of the COVID pandemic pale in comparison. Mental health crises would spike.

Washington, Beijing and Moscow would race to curry favour with the aliens and gain control of their advanced technology. The global economy would plunge into chaos. Alien-worshipping cults would appear as traditional religions battled to adapt (although, having survived Darwin's theory of evolution and Copernicus's discovery that Earth is not at the........

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