What if…? December 3, 2008 at 12:36 pm
I’ve thought for a while that we know time travel will never be possible because nobody has ever visited us from the future. It’s a fairly simple argument once you get your head around it, but I think (hope?) it logically holds up.
Anyway, today I had the sudden thought that that might not be true after all and that things we explain away as “alien encounters” might actually be people from the future visiting us. This would explain why: a) these encounters almost always display a level of technology far above what we currently have, b) why sometimes these “alien spacecraft” seem to appear and disappear at random: if it’s people traveling through time they would appear and disappear in our 4 dimensions at what seems like random times.
Of course, this theory presents some interesting questions, like the age-old question of how traveling back in time can affect your current age: if this theory is true and a lot of (or all) “alien encounters” are actually just people from the future time-traveling, how have they affected and changed their own time by the fact that we’ve seen them in our time?
Hmm.
-j
Connie Willis has a novel called The Say Nothing of the Dog that explains how time-travelers go to great pains to disguise their travel in order that historical people will not guess.
Hmm. Good point.