Imagine for a moment that humankind intercepts an alien probe, sent from countless lightyears away.

Our scientists would study it, Universe Today's Evan Gough predicts, doing their best to unlock its secrets and eventually stashing it away in a museum when they were done.

Perhaps we'd send out own probe back where it had come from. But then, due to the annoyingly slow speed of light, we would have nothing to do but wait, for decades or perhaps millennia, for a followup spacecraft.

If it ever came, according to a recent paper published in the International Journal of Astrobiology and spotted by Gough, our top minds might be in for a mind-bending surprise: that second probe may actually have been launched prior — and hence be much less interesting — than the first.

"If a space-faring civilization embarks on a program to send probes to interstellar destinations, the first probe to arrive at such a destination is not likely to be one of the earliest probes, but one of much more advanced capability," wrote University of California astronomer Graeme Smith in the paper.

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