What if there was something out there?

Over the years I’ve thought a lot about flying saucers! There’s barely a week goes by that we don’t hear or read something about them. They are intelligent beings from another part of the universe; they have come here to either find out how we live, or to show us how we should live, or they beam up members of the human race, for what reason is anyone’s guess.

Now, I’m quite happy to accept the fact that there possibly is something going on. There have been thousands of reported sightings over the years and I can’t believe that all the people making these reports are plain idiots. But travellers from outer space?

Unless these ‘travellers’ have knowledge of some form of propulsion completely unknown to us, then it would take them an awfully long time to get here from even the nearest star to Earth. I remember reading somewhere that Alpha Centauri, is two and a half light years away. That’s travelling at 186,000 miles per second, for a period of two and a half years, just for that comparatively short distance! Without the unknown propulsion mentioned above, it would take many years to get here, and for what? After all, what on earth (pardon the pun!) could we teach them that they wouldn’t know already? And why, when they do get here, do they only stay for a few minutes, and then they clear off?

Now here’s where a bit of ‘old man’s meanderings’ come in! Just suppose for a moment, that these strange craft haven’t come from outer space at all and hold on to that idea for a moment.

Now imagine Earth, in perhaps two hundred years’ time; a great deal can happen in two hundred years on Earth, and it is happening faster now than it ever did in the past, so here are some “what-if’s” to conjure with.

What if, by the year 2222 the secret of time travel has been discovered, and perfected? And what if, in order to travel in this manner, it is necessary to ride in, and stay in a special vehicle, made for the purpose, with death being the immediate result of trying to get out of its protective shell? What if time travel journeys can only last for a very short period of time, perhaps fifteen minutes, before the machine explodes or something, again killing the occupant? And what if these time travelers, rather than wanting to visit famous places tend generally to want to visit apparently unimportant sites?

I believe all these what ifs, when added together, present us with a very reasonable hypothesis, certainly no more outlandish than travellers arriving from stars, light years away.

Time machines, which could quite easily need to be disc shaped for some reason we do not comprehend, provide us with the flying saucers so many people claim to see. The fact that getting out of these vehicles results in the death of the occupants, explains why they never land. The trip, necessarily having to be for short periods of time, due to the limitations of their technology, accounts for their fleeting moments hovering over us. And finally, they often come to out-of-the-way places to look at, rather than major centres, simply because that is where their ancestors happen to have lived. I’d certainly be more interested in seeing my ancestors, even if only from a distance, rather than examining big cities just for the sake of it! And don’t forget, in two hundred years’ time these travelers will most likely have with them, all sorts of exotic electronic equipment to help them ‘get closer’ to the ancestors, so that they can see them really well.

So there you have it, a perfectly reasonable explanation of the flying saucer phenomenon, if you can accept a few simple leaps of faith regarding the technological capabilities of our descendants!

However outlandish, to me this idea makes at least as much sense as the notion of space travellers. It’s amazing the weird goings-on evident in the mind of an old man isn’t it?

Do you think there’s something out there? What do you think it is or they are? Share your best theories below!