What If Aliens Are Time Traveling Humans? | Unveiled

What if Aliens Are Time Travelling Humans?

For generations, we’ve pondered what it would be like to meet aliens. What would happen if an extraterrestrial visitor arrived on Earth tomorrow? Would we greet it, fight it, or run away in terror from it? Well, according to some theories, there might not actually be that many differences between us and them.

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; what if aliens were time-traveling humans?

One of the biggest questions that believers in UFOs and extraterrestrial visitations have to answer is “why?”… Why would aliens go to so much trouble to travel so far across the universe to come and abduct just a handful of random Earthlings? Is Earth special to them? Have we been targeted? Or is every alleged alien encounter in history simply the result of random chance? These problems, though, are eliminated if we consider for a second that flying saucers aren’t far-off spacecraft; but that they’re time machines, instead… filled not with otherworldly creatures, but with humans from the future who we might reasonably assume would know that the Earth is here.

This isn’t yet a widely accepted theory… and there are many other, far more mainstream predictions on what alien life will or could look like. But there are growing numbers of scientists and professors lending their thoughts to it, too - most notably one Michael Masters, a professor who published a book in 2020 on what he calls a multidisciplinary scientific approach to UFOs. In it, he discusses the possibility of future humans returning to the here and now, and being mistaken for aliens. And, regardless of where you stand, it does make for an interesting thought experiment. Because, if you were given a working time machine, wouldn’t you want to go, yes, to the future to see what becomes of humanity… but also to the ancient past to see some of your favourite historical periods up close? And, when you arrived in the ancient past, wouldn’t you imagine that you might be greeted with wonder, suspicion or fear? All of the same emotions you might expect to exhibit upon meeting an alien.

If we in the present, then, would love a time machine to visit the past, the same would probably be true of humans in the future. Only, for them, our present is their past. Time travel is arguably the most talked about sci-fi concept of all, with all manner of high-profile figures making predictions about whether it will or will never exist. But, if backwards time travel (specifically) is to exist at any time in the future, then we’re just as likely to encounter it now as at any other time in history. All it would take would be a future time traveller keying in today’s specific date, and there you go. If they were spotted, some would call “UFO!”. And if they were spoken to, some would call “alien!”.

From the time traveller’s point of view, going to the ancient world would in some ways be just as foreign or alien as going to a different planet. They’d be faced with a completely different society and way of life. Long forgotten customs, languages, foods and technologies. But the basics, the building blocks of life and survival, would be pretty much the same. If you were travelling backwards from the present day, for example, you wouldn’t need to undertake rigorous studies just to test whether the air in Ancient Egypt is safe to breathe; you’d just need to remember to pack enough water and maybe some sun cream. In this way, in the hypothetical future when both exist, time travel technology could actually be the safer option compared to interstellar space travel.

But, why would these travellers want to visit the twenty-first century, specifically? In recent years we have seen a general increase in the number of UFO sightings reported… and there are a number of explanations for this, but in the context of today’s question, would there be anything in particular pulling time travellers to this specific time period? Considering that future humans (from a time where backwards time travel exists) will also most likely have moved away from Earth, across the solar system and perhaps further… it could still be as simple as them just wanting to know where they came from. This interstellar immigration could be a search for cosmological roots that leads them all the way back to present day Earth. These humans could have been raised on a newly terraformed Mars, or in the clouds of Venus, above the oceans of Europa and Titan, or on centuries old generation ships just drifting through the void… if you were them, wouldn’t you want to see the planet where humans originally lived?

This effectively means that all those UFO sightings we so often hear about on the news or on the internet would actually, now, be tourists - time tourists. It’s still not likely we’d take them at their word, though. Until we actually develop time travel technology for ourselves, if that’s even possible, then the majority of people would be at least hesitant to believe anyone claiming to have genuinely come from the future. But, it’s also true that often the aliens that people allege they have seen aren’t actually that alien in description. The stereotypical extraterrestrial in sci-fi and most abduction claims is really quite humanoid… they may have grey or green skin, they might be a little shorter, and they often have larger heads and eyes, but they’re still fairly close to us with four limbs and recognizable features.

And this human-like appearance ties into today’s question… with the suggestion being that if these strange creatures are actually just highly evolved humans from the future, that’s why they look a bit like us. If we assume that future humans will have gone to live on different planets, they could also have begun to evolve at unprecedented speeds and in unprecedented ways, simply to adapt to and survive wherever their new home was… meaning larger eyes, bigger heads and longer fingers, for any number of reasons. Of course, what’s more generally accepted as the likeliest explanation is that alien abduction claims feature these physical tropes because science fiction has steadily perpetuated this particular aesthetic.

Still, for as long as we don’t have any concrete proof that life exists on other planets, which we still don’t… and for as long as we know that humans on Earth are interested in developing working time travel, which we still are… the idea that the two could marry up can’t quite be totally dismissed. So, let’s imagine for a moment that we live in a future time when this farfetched theory is a real word reality, and it’s been uncovered that UFOs really are time machines… should we be worried?

Well, countless studies and thought experiments have shown that traveling back in time could have terrible consequences. Anyone doing it could breach a variety of paradoxes, and prevent important events from happening, accidentally cause horrible things to happen, or even stop themselves from being born. But, perhaps, herein lies another reason to believe that UFOs are time travellers? If the dicey history of UFO reports proves one thing, it’s that these vehicles rarely hang around for long enough to be proved or disproved themselves. But, in a world where they’re actually piloted by time travellers, maybe this is just an exercise in damage limitation?

The high risk involved with time travel could mean that, if we ever did invent it, it would probably be strictly regulated. Anyone travelling back in time would be under strict command not to alter anything about the past, and not to be seen. For the most part, then, it works fine… but every so often a present-day human encounters flashing lights, or stumbles across a levitating disc, and the cover is blown. That is, unless the travellers can disappear quickly enough, or make their appearance incredible enough so that it’ll never be believed. It offers one explanation as to why so many alien abduction claims include instances of missing time or memory problems… that part is a traveller’s last-ditch attempt to fix their mistake.

If you accept a deterministic model of the universe - one in which everything will always inevitably happen however it’s supposed to - then, really, none of this should be of any concern to you. If UFOs are piloted by extra-terrestrials or time travellers, or if they’re a total myth, it makes no difference. And, as for all of the dangers that time travelling UFO pilots could bring with them, well, they’re not dangerous at all… because whatever changes they do (or don’t) make, always were (or weren’t) meant to be made.

However, if you’re more inclined to free will, you don’t not believe in UFOs, and you have even a sneaking suspicion that, one day, time travel might be possible… then today’s question is one meeting place for all of those things. We repeat; it’s not yet a widely accepted theory, but it is an eye-catching thought experiment. And that’s what would happen if aliens were time-traveling humans.