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00:00The whispers of alien life have never, ever been louder.
00:03There are whistleblowers on Capitol Hill.
00:06There's a tidal wave of official UAP videos.
00:09Our technology has never been as advanced as it is today.
00:13And we're finding more and more exoplanets almost every week.
00:17We could be on the brink of the single greatest discovery of modern times.
00:21But if and when we get there,
00:23will alien life be anything like we expect it to be?
00:27Or will an extraterrestrial being be something that's completely different?
00:34One of the biggest questions that believers in UFOs and extraterrestrial visitations have to answer is why?
00:40Why would aliens go to so much trouble to travel so far across the universe
00:44to come and abduct just a handful of random Earthlings?
00:47Is Earth special to them? Have we been targeted?
00:50Or is every alleged alien encounter in history simply the result of random chance?
00:55These problems, though, are eliminated if we consider for a second
00:58that flying saucers aren't far off spacecraft, but that they're time machines instead…
01:03filled not with otherworldly creatures, but with humans from the future
01:07who we might reasonably assume would know that the Earth is here.
01:10This isn't yet a widely accepted theory,
01:13and there are many other, far more mainstream predictions on what alien life will or could look like.
01:18But there are growing numbers of scientists and professors lending their thoughts to it, too.
01:23Most notably one Michael Masters, a professor who published a book in 2020
01:27on what he calls a multidisciplinary scientific approach to UFOs.
01:31In it, he discusses the possibility of future humans returning to the here and now,
01:36and being mistaken for aliens.
01:38And, regardless of where you stand, it does make for an interesting thought experiment.
01:43Because, if you were given a working time machine,
01:45wouldn't you want to go, yes, to the future to see what becomes of humanity,
01:49but also to the ancient past, to see some of your favourite historical periods up close?
01:54And, when you arrived in the ancient past,
01:56wouldn't you imagine that you might be greeted with wonder, suspicion, or fear?
02:00All of the same emotions you might expect to exhibit upon meeting an alien.
02:04If we, in the present then, would love a time machine to visit the past,
02:08the same would probably be true of humans in the future.
02:11Only, for them, our present is their past.
02:14Time travel is arguably the most talked-about sci-fi concept of all,
02:18with all manner of high-profile figures making predictions about whether it will or will never exist.
02:23But, if backwards time travel specifically is to exist at any time in the future,
02:28then we're just as likely to encounter it now as at any other time in history.
02:32All it would take would be a future time traveller keying in to a specific date, and there you go.
02:37If they were spotted, some would call UFO.
02:39And, if they were spoken to, some would call alien.
02:42From the time traveller's point of view,
02:44Going to the ancient world would be, in some ways, just as foreign or alien as going to a different planet.
02:50They'd be faced with a completely different society and way of life.
02:53Long-forgotten customs, languages, foods, and technologies…
02:57But the basics, the building blocks of life and survival, would be pretty much the same.
03:02If you were travelling backwards from the present day, for example,
03:05you wouldn't need to undertake rigorous studies just to test whether the air in ancient Egypt is safe to breathe.
03:10You'd just need to remember to pack enough water, and maybe some sunscreen.
03:14In this way, in the hypothetical future when both exist,
03:17time travel technology could actually be the safer option compared to interstellar space travel.
03:22But, why would these travellers want to visit the 21st century, specifically?
03:26In recent years, we have seen a general increase in the number of UFO sightings reported.
03:31And there are a number of explanations for this, but in the context of today's question,
03:35would there be anything in particular pulling time travellers to this specific time period?
03:40Considering that future humans, from a time where backwards time travel exists,
03:44will also most likely have moved away from Earth, across the solar system and perhaps further,
03:49it could still be as simple to them as just wanting to know where they came from.
03:53This interstellar immigration could be a search for cosmological roots
03:56that leads them all the way back to present day Earth.
03:59These humans could have been raised on a newly terraformed Mars,
04:03or in the clouds of Venus above the oceans of Europa and Titan,
04:06or on centuries-old generation ships just drifting through the void.
04:10If you were them, wouldn't you want to see the planet where humans originally lived?
04:14This effectively means that all those UFO sightings we so often hear about on the news or on the internet
04:19would actually now be tourists. Time tourists.
04:23It's still not likely we'd take them at their word, though.
04:26Until we actually develop time travel technology for ourselves, if that's even possible,
04:30then the majority of people would be at least hesitant to believe anyone claiming to have genuinely come from the future.
04:36But it's also true that often the aliens that people allege they've seen
04:40aren't actually that alien in description.
04:42The stereotypical extraterrestrial in sci-fi and most abduction claims is really quite humanoid.
04:48They may have grey or green skin, they might be a little shorter,
04:51and they often have larger heads and eyes,
04:53but they're still fairly close to us with four limbs and recognisable features.
04:57And this human-like appearance ties into today's question,
05:01with the suggestion being that if these strange creatures are actually just highly evolved humans from the future,
05:06that's why they look a bit like us.
05:08If we assume that future humans will have gone to live on different planets,
05:11they could have also begun to evolve at unprecedented speeds and in unprecedented ways,
05:16simply to adapt to and survive wherever their new home was,
05:20meaning larger eyes, bigger heads, and longer fingers for any number of reasons.
05:24Of course, what's more generally accepted as the likeliest explanation
05:28is that alien abduction claims feature these physical tropes
05:31because science fiction has steadily perpetuated this particular aesthetic.
05:35Still, for as long as we don't have any concrete proof that life exists on other planets,
05:40which we still don't,
05:41and for as long as we know that humans on Earth are interested in developing working time travel,
05:45which we still are,
05:47the idea that the two could marry up can't quite be totally dismissed.
05:51So, let's imagine for a moment that we live in a future time
05:54when this far-fetched theory is a real-world reality,
05:57and it's been uncovered that UFOs really are time machines.
06:00Should we be worried?
06:02Well, countless studies and thought experiments
06:04have shown that travelling back in time could have terrible consequences.
06:08Anyone doing it could breach a variety of paradoxes
06:11and prevent important events from happening,
06:13accidentally cause horrible things to happen,
06:16or even stop themselves from being born.
06:18But, perhaps, herein lies another reason to believe that UFOs are time travellers?
06:23If the dicey history of UFO reports proves one thing,
06:26it's that these vehicles rarely hang around for long enough to be proved or disproved themselves.
06:31But, in a world where they're actually piloted by time travellers,
06:34maybe this is just an exercise in damage limitation?
06:37The high risk involved with time travel could mean that,
06:40if we ever did invent it, it would probably be strictly regulated.
06:44Anyone travelling back in time would be under strict command
06:47not to alter anything about the past and not to be seen.
06:50For the most part, then, it works fine.
06:53But, every so often, a present-day human encounters flashing lights
06:56or stumbles across a levitating disk and the cover is blown.
07:00That is, unless the travellers can disappear quickly enough
07:03or make their appearance incredible enough so that it'll never be believed.
07:06It offers one explanation as to why so many alien abduction claims
07:10include instances of missing time or memory problems.
07:13That part is a traveller's last-ditch attempt to fix their mistake.
07:17If you accept a deterministic model of the universe,
07:20one in which everything will always inevitably happen however it's supposed to,
07:24then, really, none of this should be of any concern to you.
07:27If UFOs are piloted by extraterrestrials or time travellers,
07:30or if they're a total myth, it makes no difference.
07:33And, as for all of the dangers that time-travelling UFO pilots could bring with them,
07:37well, they're not dangerous at all.
07:39Because whatever changes they do or don't make,
07:41always were or weren't meant to be made.
07:44However, if you're more inclined to free will, you don't not believe in UFOs,
07:48and you have even a sneaking suspicion that, one day, time travel might be possible,
07:53then today's question is one meeting place for all of those things.
07:56We repeat, it's not yet a widely accepted theory,
07:59but it is an eye-catching thought experiment.
08:02And that's what would happen if aliens were time-travelling humans.
08:06What do you think? Is there anything we missed?
08:08Let us know in the comments, check out these other clips from Unveiled,
08:11and make sure you subscribe and ring the bell for our latest content.