We both know that space aliens dead set on overtaking Earth and armed with weapons shooting death beams are not about to attack. Well, at least not in the foreseeable future.

You need to feel a certain way to best understand today’s column, though, so let’s just say they do so tomorrow.

But don’t spend any time imagining the global chaos that would follow or even how terrified you and your loved ones would be. Instead, focus upon how surreal receiving the news would make you feel.

It would be like seeing Salvador Dali’s famous painting of melting clocks strewn across a barren landscape for the first time — or how I felt after reading both the press release about a study published by Cell Metabolism on Feb. 19 and the study itself.

What’s revealed in both could very well have the same effect on you if you do as I do and consume a fair amount of calorie-free carbonated water throughout the day. All three brands I consume (depending upon which one’s on sale) contain aspartame, the focus of the study.

It’s an artificial sweetener the World Health Organization says is “widely used,” but I’d call it ubiquitous, and cite the WHO’s list of items that can contain it to justify the nit-picking. Besides the previously mentioned calorie-free carbonated water, aspartame’s found in sugar-free soda, chewing gum, gelatin, ice cream, dairy products such as yogurt, breakfast cereal, toothpaste and medications such as cough drops and chewable vitamins.

The previously mentioned study — “Sweetener aspartame aggravates atherosclerosis through insulin-triggered inflammation” — found aspartame “markedly increased insulin secretion in mice and monkeys.” And while this finding isn’t nearly as terrifying as space aliens toppling your hometown, it is just about the opposite of what a prior study published in the March 2017 issue of the International Journal of Obesity determined.

That the effects of aspartame (and other non-nutritive sweeteners) on humans have “minimal influences” not only on total daily energy intake and after-meal blood sugar levels but also insulin secretion.

Now before you say the older study trumps the newer because it used humans instead of mice and monkeys, you need to know the newer provides a solid explanation for why epidemiological studies have observed higher rates of cardiovascular disease among people consuming artificial sweeteners. And that explanation, while maybe not upsetting as your new leader having green skin rather than orange hair, is potentially life-threatening.

This upset occurred after researchers led by Yihai Cao, Professor of Vascular Biology, Cancer Research and Metabolic Research at Karolinski Institute in Sweden, treated two groups of mice genetically modified to be more prone to heart disease just a bit differently during a 12-week study. While one group got the equivalent amount of aspartame you would by drinking three cans of sugar-free soda each day, the other didn’t and received 15 percent of their daily calories from sugar.

Throughout the study, the plasma insulin levels of the mice were checked 30 minutes after meals. When the groups’ results were compared, the levels of those ingesting aspartame were found to be “significantly increased,” so much so that by the study’s end they had developed “significant insulin resistance.”

On a lighter note, since these genetically bred mice “strongly prefer” aspartame over other sweeteners, the researchers administered it by dropping a mixture of water and aspartame onto their front paws, knowing that licking them is part of their incessant grooming. While this bit of laboratory ingenuity may cause you to smile, another discovery made in the lab will not.

By the four-week mark, the mice ingesting aspartame had developed atherosclerotic plaques in their arteries. The plaques were more abundant at the eight-week mark, and increased again by the 12-week mark, which was the first time any appreciable plaque was detected in the mice eating the 15-percent sugar diet.

A buildup of atherosclerotic plaques often causes atherosclerosis, which in turn leads to strokes, heart attacks, heart failure, and death. Enough death to make atherosclerosis the leading cause of it in the United States and the world, according to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Which means this is the $64,000 question: Do you need to clear your cabinets of the items that contain aspartame to avoid falling prey to the big three?

Not yet seems to be the opinion of Christopher Yi, a doctor not involved in the study but asked to assess its findings for a Medical News Today article about it. Though he does say the study adds to the “growing concerns” about aspartame and other artificial sweeteners.

Concerns that Cao and his researchers could either allay or confirm by a followup study with humans. One that’s especially important to conduct, as Cao notes in the presser, since “artificial sweeteners have penetrated almost all kinds of food, so we have to know the long-term health impact.”