We who live within get-the-shotgun distance of Grovers Mill, the spot in central New Jersey that Orson Welles chose for his panic-inducing “War of the Worlds” landing in 1938, are naturally reluctant to endorse the promulgation of fake alien arrivals via a broadcast medium. But there’s a darned good one in progress on the Science Channel, part of a month of programs on the theme “Are We Alone?”

The imaginary first contact is taking place on the two-part series “Alien Encounters,” which began last week and concludes on Tuesday night (preceded by a rebroadcast of Part 1). This isn’t the junk science that fills up large swaths of basic cable. It’s real scientists and other experts hypothesizing about how an encounter with visiting extraterrestrials might unfold, what technologies might get them here and enable us to see and listen to them, what their intent might be and how we humans are likely to react.

Part 1 introduced uninitiated viewers to the SETI Institute (the acronym stands for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and to an initiative it has called SETI@home that enables any computer user to help scan the avalanche of pulses, static and such, coming in from space, for a purposeful message. And it began a story line tracing what happens when one home-computer jockey picks up such a message.