If we encounter ex terrestrial intelligences, they're not going to be just ahead of us. The chances of another sentient being being a perfect evolutionary parallel time frame with us is pretty much zero. If they're way behind us, we'd have to encounter them by going some place. What would we call a being that's cap of doing these super advanced things, well, you don't know the technology, you call it god.
In this AMA Dr. Michael Shermer answers your questions about evolution and creationism, intelligent design theory, the hard problem of consciousness, the origins of morality, how science deals with anomalies, to what extent humans are naturally rational or irrational / skeptical or gullible, and why there is something rather than nothing.