Jump to content

Time-traveler UFO hypothesis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Vespro Latuna (talk | contribs) at 11:42, 16 November 2023 (→UFOs and initial explanations: changed main article link to main UFO page). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The time-traveler hypothesis, also known as chrononaut UFO, future humans, extratempestrial model and Terminator theory[1] is the proposal that unidentified flying object are humans traveling from the future using advanced technology. Some notable people endorse the hypothesis, such as retired NASA aerospace engineer Larry Lemke,[2] Wisconsin congressman Mike Gallager,[3] and American filmmaker Steven Spielberg.[4]

The time-traveler hypothesis is considered extremely implausible, not only by mainstream scholars who reject the theory that UFOs are the product of an alien intelligence, but also among fringe conspiracy theorists who argue that UFOs are extra-terrestrial spacecraft or perhaps even inter-dimensional vehicles.

Antecedents

Origins of time travel speculation

Main article: Time travel § History of the concept

The notion of time travel from the future to the past is thought to have been introduced for the first time in literature by French botanist and geologist Pierre Boitard in his popular 1861 book Paris avant les hommes (Paris before Men), featuring a man sent back to prehistoric Earth where he interacts with an ape-like ancestor,[5] A few years later, in 1887, Camille Flammarion published Lumen, a novel featuring an alien soul traveling through different worlds and historical periods.

Although traveling back in time is almost-universally considered physically impossible, theoretical research has explored whether it might be possible.[6] It has also been speculated by scientists such as J. Richard Gott, Ronald Mallet[7] and others[8][9] that humans may someday be able to time travel to the past.[10]

Speculation of future human evolution

Main articles: Speculative evolution § Future evolution, and Transhumanism § History

Many authors and researchers have speculated about the future evolution of mankind. In 1888 English author H. G. Wells published his famous science-fiction novella The Time Machine featuring a future evolution of humans and is generally regarded as one of the first modern instances of both time travel and speculative evolution. Other writers on speculative evolution include Edgar Rice Burroughs, British philosopher and science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon with his 1930 "future history" novel Last and First Men, American author Kurt Vonnegut in Galápagos, British writer Stephen Baxter in Evolution, Turkish artist and author Cevdet Mehmet Kösemen in All Tomorrows and others. Climate change,[11] the technological singularity, space travel and genetic enhancement have also been identified as potential factors capable of altering the evolution of humans in the future, leading to different transhuman and posthuman scenarios.

UFOs and initial explanations

Main article: Unidentified flying objects

Human beings have reported unknown objects in the skies since antiquity. In the 1890s, a wave of mystery airships sightings and was reported throughout the US.

The modern UFO era began in the Summer of 1947, days after the United States announced plans to re-industrialize Germany over strenuous Soviet objection, sparking the Cold War.[12] Amid fears of a Soviet response, civilian pilot Kenneth Arnold reported witnessing a formation of supersonic aircraft. Wartime prohibition of live "man on the street" broadcasts having ended, Arnold's sighting was covered nationwide on radio and print media. In the days and weeks following the Arnold sighting, a nationwide craze swept the nation as over 800 copycat sightings were published in the English-speaking press. 1947 sources speculated that the sightings resulted from novel US or Soviet technology, misidentification of mundane objects, or behavioral effects like mass hysteria; Fringe sources suggested that the sightings were a sign of the end of the world, were angelic or demonic, or were vehicles carrying people from another planet or from another "dimension".

Formation and spread

Implausibility of humanoid aliens

Contactee and Alien Abduction folklore often describe encounters with human or humanoid figures and abductors. In his 1964 article The Nonprevalence of Humanoids George Gaylord Simpson claimed[13] that it is extremely unlikely that there exists any form of extraterrestrial intelligence in the Solar System or elsewhere and that, even if they did exist, it was even more unlikely that they would be humanoids. His article was cited and analysed,[14] alongside evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky’s similar view on the implausibility of the evolution of humanoid extraterrestrial life forms, in the famous 2014 collection of essays Archaeology, Anthropology and Interstellar Communication edited by astrobiologist Douglas Vakoch and published by NASA in 2014. In the late 1980s, evolutionary biologist and historian of science Stephen Jay Gould put forth his famous thought experiment that if evolution was rewound and played back again it would likely take a very different course and humans would never evolve, which in addition to his declared view against human-oriented evolutionary teleonomy, helped shaped the established view that if intelligent extraterrestrials did exist, they would likely not resemble humans. Biologist Jack Cohen has assumed a similar position about the iconic representation of the Grey alien from reports of UFO abduction and close encounters, stating that extraterrestrials from an alien world could not have evolved a physiology so similar to humans'.[15]

Modern popularization

"UFO reports are not necessarily caused by visits from space travelers... If time and space are not as simple in structure as physicists have assumed until now, then the question ‘where do they come from?’ may be meaningless: they could come from a place in time."

Jacques Vallée, The Invisible College, page 29 – 1975[16]

It is unclear exactly when the hypothesis in its complete form was first proposed. Early versions surfaced between the '70s' pseudoscientific literature and the '90's internet culture, at times associated with the idioms "chrononaut UFOs", "time traveling humans" or simply "future humans". Examples include contributions by Jacques Vallée in his book The Invisible College, Radford University anthropology professor and former Forbes contributor David S. Anderson,[17] Jenny Randles' 2001 book Time Storms,[18] James Herbert Brennan's 1997 book Time-travel: a new perspective, which also draws parallels between the time travelers and elements of the pseudoarchaeological notion of ancient astronauts and Ooparts,[19] and many others.

On April 27, 2012 History aired the "Time Travelers" episode from season 4 of the series Ancient Aliens produced by Prometheus Entertainment, available on Netflix since 2022.[20] The two episodes feature, among others, ufologists Giorgio A. Tsoukalos, Sean David Morton, authors Erich von Däniken, David Hatcher Childress, Philip Coppens, and theoretical physicist Ronald L. Mallett, discussing the time-traveler hypothesis in the contexts of pseudoarchaeology and pseudohistory. In the same year, the "Time Benders" episode from season 18 of the same series aired on History, exploring other aspects of the concept and featuring more speakers, including American professor of biological anthropology Michael P. Masters from the Montana Technological University in Butte, Montana and British journalist and Ministry of Defence civil servant Nick Pope. Pope linked the Rendlesham Forest incident in the UK and the Cabo Valdés Case in Chile with the time-traveler hypothesis, a connection he also explored in his 2014 book (written with John Burroughs, USAF, Ret., and Jim Penniston, USAF, Ret.) Encounter in Rendlesham Forest: The Inside Story of the World's Best-Documented UFO Incident, published by St. Martin's Press.[21]

In 2013, the Huffington Post published an article[22] describing the time-traveler hypothesis and often referencing the Ancient Aliens episode. In the article, the author also reports an online conspiracy theory about how U.S. Navy Commander George W. Hoover allegedly revealed to his son, George Hoover Jr. and later to ufologist William J. Birnes, that the Roswell incident may have involved human beings from the future rather than aliens and that he believed those "beings" were not extraterrestrial, but rather "extratemporal" in nature. The article goes on linking Hoover's story to other alleged UFO sightings and UFO abduction accounts with similar statements and reports about aliens actually being "humans of the future who have found the technology to overcome the limitations of light speed and time travel paradoxes that keep present day humans from breaching the boundaries of time" and that their "often-humanoid appearance may suggest a link between the way we look today, and what we might look like thousands of years from now."[22]

In his 2019 book Identified Flying Objects: A Multidisciplinary Scientific Approach to the UFO Phenomenon and subsequent 2022 volume The Extratempestrial Model, Masters explored more in depth various aspects of the time-traveler hypothesis, including pseudoscientific ancient astronauts theories and possible future develoment scenarios of Human Anatomy such as brain growth, craniofacial evolution, bipedalism, paedomorphism and more.[23][24][2][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32] Masters and his theory were featured on various podcasts, such as Sean Patrick Hazlett's Through the Glass Darkly,[33] Kelly Chase's UFO Rabbit Hole,[34] and The Cryptid Factor co-hosted by New Zealand journalist David Farrier, comedian Rhys Darby, producers Dan Schreiber and Leon Kirkbeck.[35]

File:Stephen-Colbert-Steven-Spielberg-The-Late-Show-publicity-H-2023.jpg
Stephen Colbert and Steven Spielberg on The Late Show, where Spielberg commented: "What if it’s us, 500,000 years in the future, that is coming back to document the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st century because they're anthropologists?"[4]

In 2020 WatchMojo published a video on the topic.[25] In the same year, TNW also published an article about Masters' extratempestrial model.[36] In June 2022, British ESA astronaut Tim Peake mentioned the time-traveler hypothesis in an interview on Good Morning Britain.[37] In a 2023 interview with Stephen Colbert from The Late Show, American filmmaker Steven Spielberg also mentions the theory.[4]

In Gregory Benford’s 1980 novel Timescape, the fictional scientist Saul Shriffer and alleged colleague of Frank Drake during the SETI Project Ozma, believes that the signal is of extraterrestrial origin, while it's really being sent thirty-four years into the past by humans in the future.

In his 1984 science fiction/fantasy novel Birds of Prey American author David Drake describes six sterile and mutually telepathic sisters who time travel back in time to save humanity from an intelligent but monstrous alien species similar to social insects. The plot suggests that in the future humanity evolves to be quite different from its present form and that the six sisters, along with many other future humans, had become more similar to the insectoid aliens, somewhat of a hybrid between hominids and worker ants or bees, in their attempt to fight them for survival.

In Michael Crichton's 1987 novel Sphere (and subsequent film adaptation of the same name), what was thought to be an alien craft at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean turns out to be a ship sent by humans from the future.

In 1993, Syfy (at the time "Sci-Fi Channel") produced their first original TV film,[38] Official Denial, directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith and written by Bryce Zabel, in which a man named Paul Corliss, played by Parker Stevenson, is abducted by aliens who at the end of the movie are revealed to be humans from the future.

The English progressive rock band Yes wrote a song titled Aliens (Are Only Us from the Future) entirely dedicated to the subject. The track had been performed during Yes's In the Present world tour, but was never released, until the band's bassist Chris Squire decided to finally published it in 2012 together with English rock band Genesis’s guitarist Steve Hackett and Travis singer Fran Healy as co-writer,[39] calling it simply "Aliens", on their only studio album, A Life Within a Day.[40]

Jordan Peele's 2022 horror movie Nope contains a direct reference to "futuristic humans coming back in time to stop us from destroying the planet."[41]

The 2014 movie Interstellar contains deus ex machina beings, referred to by the characters of the movie as "they", who built the tesseract environment inside the supermassive black hole Gargantua and possibly placed the wormhole near Saturn that will lead the crew of the Endurance to three potentially habitable exoplanets. These "superior" entities, called bulk-beings by American physicist Kip Thorne in The Science of Interstellar,[42] are later revealed by the protagonist Cooper to be humans from the future who evolved to exist in five dimensions, guiding him and his daughter Murph through the necessary steps to crack the equation of quantum gravity and save humanity.

Criticism

The time-traveler hypothesis is considered pseudoscientific.[citation needed] UFO skeptic Robert Sheaffer criticizes Masters' work, stating that "there is nothing in this book to take seriously, as it depends on the belief that 'time travel' is not only possible, but real."[2]

British astronomer and science writer David J. Darling has stated that the extraterrestrial hypothesis and the time-travel hypothesis are equally reasonable yet highly unlikely and unnecessary and that, although certain aerial phenomena have indeed eluded identification, there is no apparent reason to justify the claim that they're artificial and/or not of this world. Furthermore, he added that "if some UFOs are 'alien' craft, it's just as reasonable to suppose that they might be time machines from our own future than that they're spacecraft from other stars. The problem is the 'if.' (...) Outside of the popular mythos of flying saucers and archetypal, big-brained aliens, there's precious little credible evidence that they exist. So, my issue with the (Masters') book is not the ingenuity of its thesis, but the fact that there's really no need for such a thesis in the first place."[2]

Referring to the Rendlesham incident, science writer and UFO skeptic Ian Ridpath wrote that time-traveling UFO allegations from retired sergeant Jim Penniston's hypnosis session may have been influenced by him watching the sci-fi film Official Denial (which aired in 1993 and released on video in May 1994, a few months before Penniston's claim surfaced in September of the same year), suggesting a Life imitates art situation, with the film causing Penniston's false memory.[43][44]

In February 2022, American futurist and science communicator Isaac Arthur discussed the odds against the time-traveler hypothesis on episode 23 Are Aliens Just Time Traveling Humans of the podcast It's Probably (not) Aliens, specifically debunking the concept as it was exposed on the ‘Time Travel’ episode of the Ancient Aliens series.[45]

When asked about the plausibility of UFOs being humans traveling from the future, quantum physicist Fabio Costa from the University of Queensland, Australia, said:[46] "In a sense, traveling back in time requires two doors, one in the future and one in the past. You can only travel back if someone has opened the door to the past. So, people from the future cannot visit us... unless someone has already invented a time machine and nobody knows! (...) That leaves open the question: where is the time machine?"

See also

References

  1. ^ Phillips, Aleks (June 28, 2023). "GOP Congressman Suggests UFOs May Be 'Ancient Civilization'". Newsweek. Newsweek Publishing LLC. Retrieved August 24, 2023.
  2. ^ a b c d David, Leonard. "Are the aliens us? UFOs may be piloted by time-traveling humans, book argues". Space.com.
  3. ^ Butler, Jack. "Wisconsin Representative Mike Gallager: UFOs Could Be 'Us from the Future'". National Review. Retrieved May 20, 2022.
  4. ^ a b c Zilko, Christian. "Steven Spielberg Has His Own Theory About Those UFOs: 'What If It's Us, 500,000 Years in the Future?'". Indiewire. Retrieved March 5, 2023.
  5. ^ Rudwick, Martin J. S. (1992). Scenes From Deep Time. The University of Chicago Press. pp. 166–169. ISBN 978-0-226-73105-6.
  6. ^ Fernandez, Elizabeth (Sep 9, 2019). "Could Quantum Gravity Allow Us To Time Travel?". Forbes. Retrieved September 11, 2023.
  7. ^ Street, Francesca (December 31, 2019). "Meet the scientist trying to travel back in time". CNN. Retrieved September 11, 2023.
  8. ^ Tobar, Germain (September 24, 2020). "Young physicist 'squares the numbers' on time travel". UQ News. The University of England, Australia. Retrieved September 11, 2023.
  9. ^ Tobar, Germain; Costa, Fabio (2020). "Reversible dynamics with closed time-like curves and freedom of choice". Class. Quantum Grav. 37 (20): 205011. arXiv:2001.02511. Bibcode:2020CQGra..37t5011T. doi:10.1088/1361-6382/aba4bc. S2CID 210064633. Retrieved September 11, 2023.
  10. ^ Zyga, Lisa (April 4, 2006). "Professor predicts human time travel this century". Phys.org. Retrieved September 11, 2023.
  11. ^ Solomon, Scott (Sep 7, 2018). "Climate change could affect human evolution. Here's how". NBC News. Retrieved September 13, 2023.
  12. ^ Wettig, Gerhard (2008). Stalin and the Cold War in Europe. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 116,117. ISBN 978-0-7425-5542-6.
  13. ^ Simpson, George Gaylord (1964). "The Nonprevalence of Humanoids". Science. 143 (3608): 769–75. Bibcode:1964Sci...143..769G. doi:10.1126/science.143.3608.769. JSTOR 1712603. PMID 17782833. Retrieved July 14, 2023.
  14. ^ Vakoch, Douglas (2014). Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication (PDF). NASA. pp. 190–200. ISBN 978-1-62683-013-4.
  15. ^ Cohen, Jack; Stewart, Ian (2002). Evolving the Alien. Ebury Press. ISBN 978-0-09-187927-3.
  16. ^ Vallée, Jacques (1975). The Invisible College What a Group of Scientists Has Discovered about UFO Influences on the Human Race. University of Michigan: Dutton. p. 29. ISBN 9780525134701. Retrieved August 2, 2023.
  17. ^ Jeff Barris, David Anderson. "Time Travel... and UFO connection". bibliotecapleyades.net. Retrieved July 30, 2023.
  18. ^ Randles, Jenny (2001). Time Storms – Amazing Evidence for Time Warps, Space Rifts and Time Travel. Piatkus. p. 261. ISBN 9780749921590. Retrieved August 4, 2023.
  19. ^ Brennan, James Herbert (1997). Time Travel: A New Perspective (First ed.). St. Paul, Minnesota: Llewellyn Publications. p. 155. ISBN 9781567180855.
  20. ^ Loftus, Jhonny. "SIOSI: 'Ancient Aliens' Season 4 on Netflix, Where Aliens Are The Source Of Everything All The Time". Decider.
  21. ^ Pope, Nick; Burroughs, John; Penniston, Jim (March 3, 2015). Encounter in Rendlesham Forest: The Inside Story of the World's Best-Documented UFO Incident. Manhattan, NY: St. Martin's Press. pp. 121–124, 239–242. ISBN 9781250063311. Retrieved August 1, 2023.
  22. ^ a b Szarek, Rob. "Are Ancient Aliens Really Futuristic Human Time Travelers?". Huffpost. Retrieved Dec 3, 2013.
  23. ^ Masters, Michael P. (March 2019). Identified Flying Objects: A Multidisciplinary Scientific Approach to the UFO Phenomenon (1 ed.). Butte MT: Masters Creative. pp. 148–159. ISBN 978-1-7336340-6-9.
  24. ^ Houser, Kristin (January 22, 2020). "Professor: UFOs May Be Time-Traveling Humans From The Future". futurism.com. Futurism. Retrieved July 25, 2023.
  25. ^ a b Johnson, Caitlin (2020). "What If Aliens Are Time Traveling Humans? | Unveiled". watchmojo.com. Watch Mojo. Retrieved July 25, 2023.
  26. ^ Fish, Tom (March 5, 2020). "Aliens are US: UFO are piloted by time travelling human 'distant descendants' – claim". www.express.co/uk. Express. Retrieved July 26, 2023.
  27. ^ Desk, Web (January 23, 2020). "UFO's maybe time-traveling humans from the future". Retrieved July 25, 2023. {{cite news}}: |last1= has generic name (help)
  28. ^ Delbert, Caroline (July 30, 2022). "¿Son los ovnis seres humanos del futuro que nos observan?". Retrieved July 25, 2023.
  29. ^ Nieves, Josè Manuel (January 27, 2020). "¿Están los OVNI pilotados por humanos del futuro?". www.abc.es. ABC. Retrieved July 25, 2023.
  30. ^ Khanna, Monit (January 25, 2020). "UFOs And Aliens Are Just Future Humans Visiting Us In A Time Machine, Say Scientists". Retrieved July 25, 2023.
  31. ^ Hamill, Jasper (February 10, 2020). "UFOs could be time-travelling humans visiting from the future, professor says". Metro. Metro.co.uk. Retrieved July 25, 2023.
  32. ^ Showbiz, Bang (April 9, 2022). "Aliens might be humans travelling back in time". Yahoo. Bang Showbiz.
  33. ^ Hazlett, Sean Patrick (July 31, 2023). "Are ETs Really Future Humans? (with Michael Masters)". Podcasters.spotify. Spotify. Retrieved August 2, 2023.
  34. ^ Chase, Kelly (June 22, 2023). "An Interview with Michael Masters: The Extratempestrial Model & The Future Human Past". uforabbithole.com. UFO Rabbit Hole. Retrieved July 26, 2023.
  35. ^ Farrier, David; Darby, Rhys; Kirkbeck, Leon 'Buttons'; Schreiber, Dan (April 4, 2019). "#042 The Time Travel Issue". podscripts.co. The Cryptid Factor. p. 40:00. Retrieved August 4, 2023.
  36. ^ Greene, Tristan (January 24, 2020). "Scientist says aliens in UFOs might be Earthlings from the future". thenextweb.com. TNW. Retrieved July 29, 2023.
  37. ^ Al-Sibai, Noor. "Astronaut Speculates That UFOs Are Time Travelers From The Future". Futurism. Retrieved June 15, 2022.
  38. ^ Griffin, Dominic (Nov 17, 1993). "Official Denial". Variety. Retrieved August 4, 2023.
  39. ^ Lyrics and credits at Genius.com. See info under 'View All Credits'.
  40. ^ "Yes Tour Statistics: In the Present Tour". Setlist.fm. Retrieved 31 May 2014.
  41. ^ Peele, Jordan. "NOPE" (PDF). awards.universalpictures.com. Universal. Archived (PDF) from the original on November 4, 2023. Retrieved Oct 24, 2023.
  42. ^ Thorne, Kip. "An 'Interstellar' Explainer: What Are Bulk Beings?". Medium. W. W. Norton & Company. Retrieved July 20, 2023.
  43. ^ Ridpath, Ian (March 2021). "Official Denial — the source of a false memory?". ianridpath.com. Retrieved August 4, 2023.
  44. ^ Zabel, Bryce (March 11, 2021). "What if Aliens are Us from the Future?". Medium. Need To Know. Retrieved July 30, 2023.
  45. ^ Tail, Owl. "Isaac Arthur's guest appearances". owltail.com. Retrieved August 13, 2023.
  46. ^ Delbert, Caroline. "Are UFOs Just Future Humans Watching Us?". Popular Mechanics. Retrieved July 20, 2022.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Time-traveler_UFO_hypothesis&oldid=1185388092"