SkepticSteve
Member
This seems to be it:
https://www.researchgate.net/public...nomena/link/60a619aa92851c43da034d41/download
Unfortunately, I don't have much more time to go through it.
Claim: Time-Travelling Humans are Causing Close Encounter Experiences
- Thread starter SkepticSteve
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This seems to be it:
https://www.researchgate.net/public...nomena/link/60a619aa92851c43da034d41/download
Unfortunately, I don't have much more time to go through it.
Thanks for the link to that study. It was based on the results of an online MUFON survey in English: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NQBXTBJ
No wonder that the majority of respondents were from English speaking countries. But there were respondents from other countries as well and the data seems to be consistent over the various countries.
JMartJr
Senior Member.
Arguably it is having a resurgence. Both in the world at large and specifically in my now-uneditable post #79.
Apologies for the poor communication skills there, typed while more than a little jet-lagged. Should read "What if crows want to move something bigger than they can carry in flight?" and "Not human speech."
NorCal Dave
Senior Member.
That's quite the survey. There are 118 questions so the respondents are going to be likely limited to serious believers I would think. As for any information that can be gleaned regarding the frequency of "Greys" in these encounters, the survey itself is front loaded with the notion that Greys are one of the aliens someone is going to see. Question 57 lists Greys as the first choice for ET's working with the military:
Of course there's also the MiB and Black Helicopters. Later in question 105, the respondent gets to check a box about the alien they encountered. The survey has already primed the respondents that Greys might exist and work with the military and now the first 3 choices are Greys:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NQBXTBJ
If this was then used to make some sort of "report", I would imagine that it's not much better than the meaningless NICAP "report" I covered in post #33.
So, if Masters is basing his theory that Greys are future humans on some MUFON and NICAP "reports" along with a number of very questionable case studies, it seems to have very shaky primary source material.
Well, it seems difficult to claim they are humans based on answers to the question "Did the non-humans you observed fit into any of the following categories"
The NICAP file was not a report, just a catalogue. I'm glad that some people took the time to build these catalogues (often in their spare time), since at least they give some data to validate all kinds of speculations.
That is a very interesting observation. Fire needs at least 12% oxygen in our atmosphere (and this number varies a bit with pressure), so this may promote successful evolution of technological beings (I won't call them 'intelligent' anymore) in oxygen-rich atmospheres. I wonder if there is an upper limit to the amount of oxygen as well.
Note: this relates to the accidental discovery of fire via lightning or via friction.
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I've found an interesting article written by prof Simon Conway Morris in 2005.
Title: Aliens like us?
Abstract:
https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/2005A&G....46d..24M/D000024.000.html
Title: Aliens like us?
Abstract:
The content is a bit more serious and pretty interesting, though a similar tongue-in-cheek provocative statement can be found here and there.So, what are they going to be like, those long-expected extraterrestrials? Hideous hydrocarbon arachnoids, waving laser cannons as they chase screaming humans, repulsively surveying the scene through empathy-free compound eyes? Or maybe laughing bipeds, chatting away, holding a glass of wine, a bit like us?
https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/2005A&G....46d..24M/D000024.000.html
Eburacum
Senior Member.
On an Earth-like planet with forests on the surface, too much oxygen would increase the risk of fire considerably, reducing the production of oxygen by photosynthesis. So there may be an upper limit on the amount of oxygen that can persist on worlds similar to ours. The maximum level of oxygen in our atmosphere seems to have happened in the Carboniferous, when it was about 31-35%.
But this upper level might not be significant on a world with a different kind of biosphere that we are not familiar with, and there may be oxygen-rich worlds in various systems that have no life at all. Oxygen can be produced on a life-less world by photolysis of water, for example.
Scaramanga
Senior Member
It's of course a bit of a stretch to debunk one "unknown" which has been made up to explain another "unknown", but I felt that the argument has reached a level of sophistication that it needs closer scrutiny before it expands into another conspiracy theory or is used to substantiate new ones.
Dr. Michael P. Masters is a biological anthropologist and professor at Montana Tech who has written about his theories on the nature of UFO sightings in his books "Identified Flying Objects: A Multidisciplinary Scientific Approach to the UFO Phenomenon" and "The Extraterrestrial Model".
In his work, Dr. Masters argues that many UFO sightings can be explained by a time-travel hypothesis. He suggests that the UFOs may actually be advanced time-traveling vehicles that have been built by future humans, and that the sightings of these craft are being misinterpreted as extraterrestrial in origin. Dr. Masters also draws on his expertise in biological anthropology to support his hypothesis. He argues that if humans were to continue to evolve over thousands or millions of years, they would likely develop physical features that resemble the classic "grey alien" archetype commonly associated with UFO sightings.
Further arguments and evidence he brings forward in favor of a "time-travelling human hypothesis" are:
There is certainly a lot to unpack here. However, I think it could interesting to consider whether or not Michael Masters has been cherry-picking information. E.g. distorting CE cases such that they fit his hypothesis, misinterpreting and misunderstanding scientific work and concepts he cites to validate his ideas, etc. I also highly question whether his concept of time-travel considers that planets and star systems actually move through space and not just stay fixed...
- Experiencers reporting containment procedures during their encounters
- Missing time being caused by the propulsion method of UAPs distorting spacetime
- Frequently reported UFO silence being caused by an infrasound shift due to distortion of spacetime
- Interspecies breeding compatibility i.e. "hybrid babies" being only possible if both species being related
- The commonly reported "flying saucer" being alledgly an optimal shape for a time-travel vehicle
- The bipedal template not succeeding in simulation studies under gravitational forces resembling those of the more common "super earths"
- Aliens / ETs having a couple of times a slip of a tongue and telling abductees straightforward they are just humans from the future
- ...
Frankly I think one can instantly dismiss backwards time travel because it leads to absurd paradoxes. Being able to shoot one's grandfather and thus prevent oneself ever being born being not the least of them.
And why postulate time travelling anyway, or extraterrestrials for that matter, when the many worlds theorem argues for a gazillion parallel worlds where the dinosaurs could still be around or Mr Bean is president of the USA. It's not hard to postulate an alternate such world in which the dinosaurs never died out and went on to evolve into little grey 'aliens'....who discovered how to switch between dimensions or realities.
One can postulate endlessly. But the crux of the entire matter is....what is the actual evidence that anything is going on. Never mind where 'they' are from....I still see no definitive evidence that 'they' even exist.
Rationalman
New Member
Remember the movie Back to the Future? It's one reason out of many as to why time-travel is so improbable is the laws of causality, which dictate that cause and effect must follow a linear sequence, pose a significant challenge to time travel. If we were to travel back in time and change even the smallest event, it could create a paradox or contradiction. For example, the classic "grandfather paradox" arises when a person goes back in time and prevents their own birth by killing their grandfather. This paradox leads to logical inconsistencies and undermines the very concept of cause and effect.
Secondly, our current understanding of physics, particularly Einstein's theory of general relativity, suggests that time travel into the past would require the existence of exotic matter or energy with negative mass or negative energy density. While speculative theories such as wormholes and cosmic strings have been proposed as potential avenues for time travel, they rely on these hypothetical and currently unverified forms of matter and energy. The creation and manipulation of such exotic substances would require technologies far beyond our current capabilities.
Moreover, the concept of time travel raises paradoxes related to the conservation of energy and entropy. Traveling back in time could potentially violate the laws of thermodynamics, leading to situations where energy is created from nothing or where entropy decreases, contradicting the arrow of time as we understand it.
Furthermore, we have not observed any concrete evidence of time travelers. This absence of evidence adds to the improbability of the time-travel hypothesis.
Secondly, our current understanding of physics, particularly Einstein's theory of general relativity, suggests that time travel into the past would require the existence of exotic matter or energy with negative mass or negative energy density. While speculative theories such as wormholes and cosmic strings have been proposed as potential avenues for time travel, they rely on these hypothetical and currently unverified forms of matter and energy. The creation and manipulation of such exotic substances would require technologies far beyond our current capabilities.
Moreover, the concept of time travel raises paradoxes related to the conservation of energy and entropy. Traveling back in time could potentially violate the laws of thermodynamics, leading to situations where energy is created from nothing or where entropy decreases, contradicting the arrow of time as we understand it.
Furthermore, we have not observed any concrete evidence of time travelers. This absence of evidence adds to the improbability of the time-travel hypothesis.
FatPhil
Senior Member.
From a GR perspective, one person's time travel is another person's faster than light travel. At the moment, there's no way to transition across the light-like cone, so you can't flip between normal behaviour and FTL/time-travel - once a tachyon, always a tachyon. Technically, negative, or even complex, mass and energies aren't needed, they would just provide initial conditions that would propagate in the intended way. And just because they can be contrived the currently used mathematical model doesn't mean they're physically realisable - we know the model's not perfect - it breaks down at corner cases - so there's absolutely no reason to put any faith in its presently uncreatable mathematical corner cases matching reality. (This is one of the few places where I disagree with Sabine Hossenfelder - when it comes to all other fields of physics she adopts a "just because you can contrive maths that allows something doesn't mean it represents anything in reality until you have some evidence for the existence of such things" stance, yet when it comes to FLT she's singularly the exact opposite - the maths permits it, so it's possible!)
From a QM perspective (with an unsolved measurement problem), you can't enter a closed timelike loop, as before any point in the loop, you're already in the loop, so the loops must have existed eternally, and there's no "enterring" possible. There are many-worlds-like wiggles that can be adopted to explain yourself out of that paradox, but such interpretations are not able to be studied scientifically, as at the moment none of them are disprovable.
However, I don't find the entropy/thermodynamic argument against it convincing, as that argument would disappear at the heat death of the universe, and I think valid reasons should transcend time.
Eburacum
Senior Member.
I suspect that the 'many-worlds-like wiggles' are the only answer to the paradoxes caused by time travel. If you can go back in time and yet you can't change history, that means you don't really have free will; such a model shows so-called Novikov Self-consistency, and seems the most rational and easy to explain model of reversed causality.
But to me there seems to be three different possible models of time-travel, and consistency is only one option.
1/ No Time Travel is possible. This is the easiest option to understand, and the most likely (and the most boring) one.
2/ Novikov Self-consistency; you may go back in time, but you can't change history. If there is a closed loop you can't change it, and it does indeed exist eternally.
3/ Many-worlds-like wiggles, which take a variety of forms, but all of which create new timelines with different series of events. In some, or most of these wiggles, the old, original timeline continues to exist unchanged, but many science fiction writers imagine (for some reason) that the old timeline must be destroyed somehow, or perhaps it 'fades away gradually', which seems unlikely and paradoxical in itself.
I expect the boring option #1 is the one that applies, but who knows.
PublicStranger
Active Member
If we ever mastered time travel in the future, technically time travellers would have already visited or currently be here. I remember Stephen Hawking conducting a joke 'time travellers reunion' where he sent invites to future time-travellers, nobody turned up, he even had cake!
Maybe in the future we won't have to travel in time physically, perhaps we can find way to look into the past, like some kind of remote-viewing.
Maybe in the future we won't have to travel in time physically, perhaps we can find way to look into the past, like some kind of remote-viewing.
GeekFurious
New Member
And maybe we'll be wizards riding dragons and fighting each other with lightsabers while violating basic science by reversing time with a paradox musket.
But seriously, I bet we will be able to "look back into the past" when we create an AGI that can recreate history with high accuracy using some super advanced prediction model. It won't be 100% accurate "remote viewing" but it will probably be better at retelling accurate history than our subjective history books.
JMartJr
Senior Member.
My recollection is he issued the invitation the day after the party, so only time travelers could attend.
Sci-fi author Larry Niven had a neat argument against time travel -- In a given universe, either time travel into the past is possible, or it is not possible. If the later is the case, then no time travel happens. If the former, and "people" (defined broadly to include aliens) never figure it out, then no time travel happens. If it is possible and people DO learn how, then time travelers start going back into the past -- and every one risks changing the time line, the Universe is in flux, timelines constantly change all over the place -- it's chaos! Until, at some point, the timeline changes to one in which nobody invents time travel, and we're locked in that Universe forever, with no time travel!
There are a few holes in that, but it's a clever argument anyway.
PublicStranger
Active Member
Makes sense but I guess any super intelligent civilization would probably find ways to regulate the use of time machines so you could avoid potential paradoxes or it's back to Novikov's principles where paradoxes are self-fulfilling so we couldn't change the timeline even if we tried.
Ann K
Senior Member.
Since it's a guess, "any super intelligent civilization" would do whatever the sci-fi writer thinks would make a good story. I think we are deeply into the realms of fantasy here.
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