#3: Are We Alone? / Time Travel

I was watching a tv show on the Discovery Channel (or something like that,) and it reminded me of my curiosity about life on other planets. I think we've pretty much established that there is no life on other planets in our solar system. At least that's what we think. There might be plants, but I think that's about as far as it goes. However, the universe goes on for who knows how long. It could be endless, really. How it could begin, I don't know; how it couldn't end, I don't know. But it has to be one or the other, I suppose. But I digress. If there is so much universe that we have yet to see, and if there are so many planets out there that we have yet to touch, then there really must be life on other planets. Maybe they know we exist, or maybe they are just as lost as we are. Maybe they are some kind of animals and don't have a brain capacity like ours. Or maybe their brain capacity is much larger than ours. What if they know we exist, and they are waiting to contact us? Or what if they are waiting to attack us? Wow, that would be just like a movie... If you read my note "Dodger Logic #1: Do "Facts" Really Exist?", you know that I posed the idea that our "universe" is in a tiny test tube of a huge world that is so huge that we can't see it. These are the questions that haunt me...

I really wonder if aliens will ever visit us. No, I don't mean green, slimy things with antennas. I mean another species from another solar system. I should think they are unable to do so, because as we've seen in the past, it takes at least a lifetime to travel outside of our own solar system. So how would the aliens be able to do it if we can't?

Well, that brings me to another point. In order to travel fast enough to get out of our solar system in a lifetime, assuming these aliens don't have a much longer lifetime than we do, we would have to be able to travel at the speed of light (A.K.A. We would have to be able to travel through time.) While Einstein proved that time travel is theoretically possible, it is impossible for anything that is composed of matter. Anything that is composed of matter can not travel through time, because only energy can travel at the speed of light. And you can't travel through time if you can't travel as fast as light can.

So, if an alien species from another solar system were composed of only energy, instead of matter, maybe that species could travel the speed of light, which means that species would be able to travel to another solar system, such as ours.

Let's say this species does exist. Have they been looking for us? Have they already found another species in another galaxy? Maybe they've been searching since the dawn of time. Maybe they walk amongst us... Maybe we just can't see them because they're only made up of energy. Can we see gravity? No. Can we see ghosts, if they exist? No. Can we see oxygen? No. So who's to say they aren't here with us right now? Maybe the beings that we think are ghosts, are actually aliens from another galaxy, but we can't see them, because they're composed of only energy. Maybe we're the ones who have the smallest brains out of every species in the universe. And I thought we were brilliant...

Anyway, here's another point: time travel. Will we ever figure out a way to change our bodies into a matterless state so that we can travel through time? Will we ever find a way to travel through time without changing states? If so, then there's another problem. In order to time travel, we have to be carried in a capsule that transports us somewhere in time. So, if we figure out how to make ourselves travel through time, then we'll have to also figure out how to make a capsule (that obviously is made of matter as well) travel through time. If all this is something that will happen in the future, then should we already have been visited by a time traveler? My dad says we probably will never figure out how to travel through time, because then someone from the future would have already visited us. But I don't think that, because maybe someone in the year 3000 has figured it out, but he/she can only travel as far back as the year 2500, for example. In that case, humans won't come across time travelers for about 490 years. Or maybe we will only ever figure out how to travel into the future. (That actually doesn't make any sense, however, because we have only proven that traveling backwards in time is theoretically possible. I won't explain it here, but if you read up on how to travel through time theoretically, you'll see why we haven't proven the theoretical possibility of traveling forward in time. But you get my point!) Or think about this: Maybe when we find out how to time travel, we will travel through time as we please, but maybe we will end up on other planets or in other dimensions. And then, of course, there's always the possibility that someone has traveled through time and simply not told anyone who they are or what they're doing, for fear of the government capturing them and testing them. Or maybe they believe no one will believe them, so why even go through the trouble of telling someone? Or maybe someone has traveled through time and told some people, but maybe it's a secret only amongst a few people, or maybe no one believed the guy. I'm sure there was some huge blowout on the news at some point about some crazy guy who thought he was from a different time period. Or maybe you lose your memory when you time travel. OR! What if the government found some time travelers, is testing them, and is not releasing the information to the public? Keep in mind, I don't necessarily believe any of these theories. I'm simply throwing some thoughts out there. I have absolutely no idea what's going on with this stuff. I just try to keep an open mind and simply think about certain possibilities and ideas, just for curiosity's sake.

Anyway, if we find out how to travel through time, maybe we'll find a species of aliens out there somewhere. Who knows?

My note "Dodger Logic #1: Do "Facts" Really Exist?" also included some information about the potential existence of ghosts. Well, if ghosts exist, then they must only be leftover energy from when humans were alive, no? Well, I wonder if ghosts can travel through time - IF they exist, of course.

Thoughts?