Identified Flying Objects cautiously examines the premise that ‘UFOs’ and ‘Aliens’ are simply our distant human descendants, returning from the future to study us in their own hominin evolutionary past.
This text provides a novel approach to addressing unanswered questions pertaining to a poorly understood aspect of modern global culture. Michael Masters teaches biological anthropology and interdisciplinary topics at Montana Technical Institute.
Really appreciate your taking the time to do this interview. As you’re aware, I’ve read your new work on identified flying objects. The subtitle is “A Multidisciplinary Scientific Approach to the UFO Phenomenon.” Can you briefly explain the basic underlying premises and conclusions of your decades-long research?
Thanks for asking me to do the interview. I enjoy discussing this research, which, as you mentioned, involved investigating a question I have been interested in for over three decades. Simply put, this study cautiously examines the premise that the UFO phenomenon may involve our distant human descendants using the anthropological tool of time travel to visit and study us in their own hominin evolutionary past. It explores how the persistence of long-term biological and cultural trends in human evolution, if they are to persist into the future, may ultimately result in us becoming the ones piloting these disc-shaped crafts, which are likely the very devices that allow our future progeny to venture backward across the landscape of time.
An important aspect of any scientific hypothesis is that it must be testable and falsifiable. The question of whether intelligent extraterrestrial humanoid life exists beyond our solar system does not lend itself to falsifiability. However, this proposed time-travel model is different, in that the continued existence (or extermination) of humanity on this planet innately allows this hypothesis to be tested and falsified. Importantly, this model does not hinge on any modern verified proof of the existence of UFOs or alien beings.
If we continue to evolve both culturally and biologically on this planet, or elsewhere nearby, and we eventually develop the ability to travel backward in time, we would expect to see our distant descendants in this, as well as other past and future periods of human existence. Even though there are countless reports provided by sound-minded individuals who describe eerily similar beings and crafts, these cannot be considered as scientific evidence. These eyewitness testimonies would be allowed in a court of law, however, they do not constitute scientific evidence. I personally feel that we should believe these people, and acknowledge the consistency among their accounts as well as the ubiquity of them across time and space, but neither this nor any other explanation of this phenomenon should hinge on such reports.
Although they do not constitute scientific evidence, if we consider the reports provided by those who claim to have had a close encounter with UFOs and “aliens,” the descriptions of these crafts and their occupants are entirely consistent with what we would expect to see in the anatomy and technology of our distant progeny. For instance, these “extratempestrials” are ubiquitously described as bipedal, large-brained, pentadactyl, hairless, human-like beings, who communicate with us in our own languages, and who possess technology advanced beyond, but seemingly built upon, our own. These accounts, coupled with a thorough understanding of the past and modern human condition, point to the continuation of established biological and cultural trends here on Earth, long into the distant human future.
How has the book been received both inside and outside academia? You do a lot with logic and even dedicate a chapter titled “Occam’s Razor.” More philosophically speaking, how have the rational and respectful debates about the conclusions of your research gone over?
I have been very pleased with the response to this book, and not just among members of the UFO community and general public, but also among my academic colleagues and peers. This has been especially true of my institutional colleagues, who know me and know my past research, and who understand that this is a very grounded scientific approach to the question.
I have also been contacted by multiple physicists, engineers and other scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, SpaceX, and numerous institutions of higher education who read the book and were excited about the conservative approach used, but also the way in which this research pushes the boundaries of our current knowledge in an attempt to help explain a mysterious phenomenon.
Of course, there are others who actively ignore this research, perhaps because of the knee-jerk reaction many people still have when anything involving UFOs or aliens is mentioned. It is unfortunate that this stigma still exists, and particularly considering how much information has recently come out from the US government and military acknowledging the reality of this phenomenon. It is especially unfortunate and unscientific when scientists choose to ignore research, and researchers, who are investigating things that do not fit their preconceived notion of reality.
It is the role of scientists to investigate questions such as these, and rather than being dismissive, we should be at the forefront of this research. My fellow academic colleagues who choose to ignore this question aren’t doing their jobs, and are not upholding the mission of science. It is up to us to use our knowledge and skills to study the structure and behavior of the natural and physical world, and we should not be put off from this task simply because a particular subject has been deliberately stigmatized.
What concerns you most, temporally speaking or related? What do you think is possible when you factor in advanced artificial intelligence over the next decade or two? In other words, aliens take robots, technologically and with advanced, lived emotional experience, right?
Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) will undoubtedly continue to shape human culture and biology into the future. Although, recently, some notable inventors, entrepreneurs and scientists have been somewhat vocal about the potential dangers of AI. These perceived risks should certainly be taken into account in assessing the utility of AI, though the benefits of this technology are likely to outweigh the costs in the long term. I am hopeful that we will develop AI and other advanced technologies in a responsible and ethical manner as we continue to adapt to new cultural and physical environments here on Earth, and potentially elsewhere in space or around the solar system.
The potential benefits of artificial intelligence to humanity are vast, and our distant descendants are likely to develop forms of AI that are far more advanced than anything we can imagine today. This technology could be tremendously useful in helping us explore deep space, or in the creation of a backward time travel device, considering the dangers associated with each of these pursuits, and particularly during early stages of development and testing.
So, you believe backwards causation is possible, logically and otherwise. You have chapters dedicated to time and related topics, with some conclusions that are similar to philosophers G.W. Hegel and Henri Bergson I noticed. Some of the topics covered in your research, including consciousness, advanced energy mechanics, and the law of conservation, as well as on some of what you feel are limits, lead to some logical conclusions regarding the reality of telepathy and related experiences. How does this relate to what you call more intertemporal interconnectedness? What are some of the implications macroscopically if you are correct?
I feel like this is a good time in the interview to point out that there are some things we cannot yet know the answer to, and I certainly don’t claim to know anything more than anyone else regarding aspects of consciousness, precognition, telepathy, the mechanisms of time travel, etc. I find these areas of interest to be fascinating, and for this research project I attempted to gather as much current knowledge regarding some of these issues from as many credible scientific sources as possible, though many mysteries still remain.
With regard to my personal experience, I, among numerous others, would seem to have some ability to know certain things before they happen. This precognitive awareness of future events also appears to occur through the subconscious for most people, and often through dreaming. We are accustomed to thinking of time as a unidirectional force in which a past cause always results in a future effect and not the other way around. However, with backward time travel technology, or a consciousness able to break free of the shackles that bind us to this arrow of time, it becomes possible for a future cause to elicit a past effect.
Although this may seem paradoxical, there is nothing in logic or the laws of physics that actually prohibits backward time travel. Rather, the discomfort we feel when presented with the idea that something can be created from nothing, and with no actual individual creator, is only problematic in that it flies in the face of our enculturated views of linear time.
Taking a block time view of the universe in which all of time and space exists as one massive four dimensional entity encompassing every moment throughout the existence of the universe, it is easy to see how self-consistency is preserved in instances of intertemporal interaction. This remains true even when faced with this bootstrap “paradox,” in which something from the future aids in its own creation by means of interjecting information into the past. However, there is no actual paradox because visiting the past is non-disruptive, meaning that anything and everything that resulted from someone visiting and interacting with the past had already occurred prior to that person ever leaving from the future to visit it. By going into the past, they are simply doing what had always already been done.
If information is transmitted from the future to the past, and that information results in the creation of something in the future, what was created and what was disseminated backward through time had always been a part of each period, and whoever transmitted the information to the past had and always will do so. The future can dictate events occurring in the past because the future, present and past are all one, and none are ahead of or behind the other in the presence of a time machine, or a liberated consciousness.
Although we still do not have a complete grasp on what time is, it has long been a vexing question among philosophers, physicists, anthropologists, psychologists, and many others. My personal view of time is that it exists as two separate but highly integrated entities. There is the corporal structure of time and space in which physical processes are generally time reversible. However, I feel as though there may also be a separate but highly integrated element of biorelativistic time. It could be that the physical mind of conscious beings imposes an evolved species-specific linear progression of events upon the natural world to make sense of it and to survive in it. Perhaps our consciousness is a quantum superposition of states, in which quantum entanglement exists between the energy of our consciousness and the living tissues of the brains of biological organisms.
If there is no such thing as “now,” we are left with only a highly subjective conceptualization of what the present is and how any series of events pass relative to any others. Everyone and everything on this planet experiences approximately the same force of gravity, and the same relative motion through space. However, we also seem to perceive the passage of events with a high level of intra-species variability. Additionally, considering all of the other animals on this planet, an even higher degree of variation may exist in the rate at which the brains of different biological organisms perceive and respond to events that occur in their local environments, which I refer to a biorelativity. In this sense, a synergistic relationship may exist between physical time, and a separate sense of ethereal time imposed on this physical world by conscious beings.
From the future evolution of the species into another distant alien species, through Euclidean quantum gravity and the language we use affecting how we ‘think about the world,’ to time travel and philosophical understanding of place, various logical fallacies and problems in physics, or how you ask “whether entropy is time-based or whether time is entropy based,” I have not found any significant logical errors in your work. Have you gone over it more recently and found any possible concerns yet remaining? I imagine it only created new, even more precise questions?
Since publishing the book earlier this year I’ve been contacted by a number of physicists, philosophers, anthropologists, and countless other academics and industry professionals. Following numerous discussions with these and other informed individuals on the subject, I’ve yet to encounter an argument that derails the overall model. Rather, these discussions have resulted in some gaps being filled, and insights given regarding certain things I may have overlooked, which only seemed to help bolster the arguments in support of this extratempestrial hypothesis.
For instance, in a recent discussion of the limitations of long-distance space travel, we realized that because of the time dilation effects of high-speed travel between solar systems–and the fact that time would pass much faster on Earth relative to those embarking on this interstellar voyage–perhaps one of the only ways interstellar travel may be possible is with the concomitant development of backward time travel technology.
In other words, if a 10 year round-trip journey in a spacecraft traveling at even half the speed of light results in many hundreds of years passing on Earth, then backward time travel would not only allow the astronauts to return to Earth, but also near to the time at which they left. Otherwise, because of the effects of time dilation, these space voyagers would be forced to bid farewell to everyone they had ever known, and to the culture associated with their own time. If interstellar exploration is to take place in the human future, we may also be required to develop time travel technology in association with it. Furthermore, if acquire the ability to travel backward in time to return to our own time, what would stop us from going farther back to explore other periods of the deeper past? This is just one example of how contact and conversations with other academics have contributed to further growth of the idea and other ways of conceptualizing it, which is part of why I have always referred to this as an “evolving project.”
I worked on issues of time and free will for a few years and I’ve always remained intimately close to the philosophy of consciousness, bringing in entropy and AI for some of my earlier philosophy research. Let me present a paradox: If humans have real free will, and if we can use conscious thoughts to create realities that benefit us and the planet, including our souls, if this could all be proven metaphysically and otherwise, does any of it complicate your current working theory of IFOs and extratempestrials?
I don’t believe the issue of free will complicates this model at all. No matter how we feel about the decisions we make or what consequences may result from these choices, there is only evidence of one actual outcome, and only one history recorded, in spite of what appeared to have been endless possibilities. In looking from the past toward the future, it certainly feels as if there are a multitude of potential effects that could result from our thoughts and actions. However, in looking back from the future toward the past, there in only one perceptible thread of world lines permeating throughout one collective history for all of humanity, which encompasses all of the events that had ever transpired leading up to that moment in time.
If there are other universes, and other histories that exist as a part of them, as per the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, those choices we make and the latent and manifest outcomes we freely will into existence, may exist somewhere else as part of a separate universal reality. However, without any evidence for the existence of parallel universes, and potentially no way to ever test whether or not they exist, it is currently impossible to know whether what we feel we choose to do could ever manifest itself in any other way. Though again, I don’t see this question of free will as integral, or even overly relevant to this extratempestrial model.
What do you mean by ‘cultural anthropology through deep time’ and cross-temporal ethnographies? What fascinates you about these possibilities the most?
Cultural anthropologists have always been limited by the amount they can know about a cultural group because they are only able to study living peoples, where and when they exist. Ideally, these observations would hopefully have taken place before any sort of outside influence, such as with European colonialism, or something as seemingly unobtrusive as a film crew for the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy visiting and essentially destroying the indigenous culture of the !Kung San/Juǀʼhoansi tribe of the Kalahari.
Prior to the advent of ethnographic methods and the origins of true cultural anthropological research (as opposed to the armchair anthropology of the 17th and 18th centuries), information about past groups was derived from archaeological research, and the material culture left behind by past peoples. However, there is only so much that can be inferred from these material cultural remains, therefore we are left to speculate about the nonmaterial aspects of their lives, with regard to such things as belief systems, symbolism, and behavioral elements of the group that do not preserve through time.
At some point in the future, if we were to develop the knowledge, materials, and technology to return to the past, it would allow us the tremendous opportunity to perform ethnographic analyses on long-extinct groups during a time at which their traditional lifeways remained intact. Beyond the cultural implications of the anthropological tool of time travel, we would also be afforded the luxury of answering many hotly debated questions in paleoanthropology with regard to hominin speciation events, introgression, the advent and proliferation of tool use, the origins of agriculture, and any number of other vexing questions pertaining to the hominin past.
What aspects of time and/or temporality would you like to see researched more heavily and openly?
Personally, I find it very interesting, and I would be fascinated to see more scientific research specifically related to the question of consciousness and the perception of time varies across individuals and demographic groups of humans, and in relation to various other animal species. There is no reason to assume that other organisms perceive time at a faster or slower speed than us, despite their divergent rates of activity relative to our anthropocentric pace of life. Rather, a hummingbird likely perceives time at the same relative speed as humans, but simply sees us and most other living creatures moving quite slowly by comparison. Tortoises, sloths, and other slow-moving creatures may also experience their own actions at an adaptively adjusted relative speed similar to our own that developed in association with the requirements of surviving in their local environment, as the rest of the world goes whizzing by around them.
As mentioned above, I refer to this perceived variability in temporal acuity within and among species as Biorelativity. I see it as analogous to Einstein’s Special Relativity in the physical sense, but also in the context of how living organisms may perceive events at variable rates relative to other conscious creatures with divergent speeds of cognition and biometric characteristics. Unfortunately, a number of current challenges may hinder our ability to research the speed at which living organisms perceive the passage of time, including the vexing question of how to quantify the duration of now. Though as we continue to peel back the layers of opaque complexity that circumscribe time, as we develop a better understanding of consciousness, and as we advance technologies to better quantify brain activity, research into the relative perception of time within and among human and nonhuman animals may develop further in the future.
Finally, do you believe crop circles are ways in which advanced technological species might be communicating with us, among other ways and have you seen the documentary Unacknowledged (2017)? I realize by the time of this interview that you may see it.
I haven’t seen this yet, but just added it to the watch list.
Although I haven’t researched crop circles much, I do find them fascinating. While some crop circles are undoubtedly hoaxes, it is certainly possible that others could have been made by a more advanced technological species, and perhaps even our own species that exists in a more technologically advanced state in the distant human future. However, if these are an attempt to communicate with us, they don’t seem to be very effective, given how vague and ambiguous these symbols are. The essence of communication is speaking and understanding, and if we don’t possess the capacity to understand these complex symbolic representations, nothing has really been communicated at all.
Chris Rawls
Chris Rawls teaches philosophy full time at Roger Williams University. Chris received her Ph.D. in philosophy in 2015 from Duquesne University writing on Spinoza’s dynamic epistemology. Chris recently co-edited an interdisciplinary anthology Philosophy and Film: Bridging Divides with Routledge Press’s series Research on Aesthetics (an experiment for the ages!) with Diana Nieva and Steven Gouveia. Chris also studies/teaches within the Critical Philosophy of Race and Whiteness Studies since 2006 and helped co-found the Society for Women in Philosophy (SWIP) archive at the Pembroke Center for Feminist Theory, Brown University.
Michael Masters
Michael Masters teaches biological anthropology and interdisciplinary topics at Montana Technical Institute.
