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00:00 "Humankind enjoys free will.
00:03 Our species is in control of its own actions.
00:06 We have the power to construct our own thoughts.
00:09 Or do we?"
00:10 In this video, we take a closer look at three hypothetical scenarios in which, actually,
00:16 we're entirely under another entity's control.
00:19 First, we look at the possibility that our lives might only ever amount to an alien experiment.
00:25 Next, we imagine a supreme being on an altogether different plane of reality, to ask whether
00:31 they could be manipulating us from afar.
00:33 And finally, we head back down to Earth, to turn the focus onto our own governments, and
00:39 especially with the potential for time travel in mind.
00:42 This is Unveiled, and today we're answering the extraordinary question; Are we being experimented
00:48 on?
00:50 Do you need the big questions answered?
00:52 Are you constantly curious?
00:53 Then why not subscribe to Unveiled for more clips like this one?
00:57 And ring the bell for more thought-provoking content!
01:01 The universe seems like a vast and empty place, with billions of distant stars but currently
01:08 no substantial signs of intelligent life beyond our own.
01:12 But maybe there are much deeper and more insidious reasons than we even realise for our apparent
01:17 cosmic loneliness.
01:28 First off, what are the chances of alien life existing in the first place?
01:32 The Fermi Paradox, proposed by the 20th century physicist Enrico Fermi, summarises the problem.
01:38 It argues that, given the billions of stars not just in the Milky Way but across all the
01:42 universe, and the millions of Earth-like or potentially Earth-like planets out there (many
01:47 of which are much older than our own), it stands to reason that at least some of those
01:51 celestial bodies should have developed intelligent life, and even interstellar travel.
01:56 In fact, the Milky Way should have really been colonised already, a long time ago.
02:00 Clearly, though, as far as we're aware, no advanced alien race has yet to conquer
02:05 the entire galaxy, unless they're so advanced that they remain completely undetectable to
02:09 all of our technologies.
02:11 According to the paradox, this either means there are no aliens at all, or that the aliens
02:15 are purposefully avoiding or hiding from us.
02:18 As such, the idea that our lives could simply be an experiment carried out by an alien race
02:23 is a solid answer to the Fermi Paradox problem.
02:26 Because, if true, the alien experimenters wouldn't want to intervene by alerting us
02:30 to their existence as it would ruin the integrity of their study.
02:34 Which takes us neatly to the Zoo Hypothesis, another idea on why we seem to be alone in
02:38 the universe.
02:40 The Zoo Hypothesis suggests that there are many alien civilizations out there much more
02:44 advanced than us, but that the reason they haven't declared themselves to us is that
02:48 they're waiting for us to pass a certain point in our own evolution - be that technologically,
02:53 ethically or philosophically.
02:55 Only then will they make first contact so that humankind can finally integrate into
02:59 an interstellar community that we're currently unaware of.
03:02 Until then, we're like caged animals in a zoo, with our alien onlookers preferring
03:07 not to cross-contaminate between their lives and ours.
03:10 While this type of well-meaning observation could very easily fit the definition of an
03:15 experiment, it's not necessarily the active and nefarious brand of alien experimentation
03:19 we might expect.
03:21 The pseudoscientific Ancient Astronauts Theory claims to offer some kind of reason for what
03:25 the aliens' end goal is.
03:27 The theory, which by contrast isn't widely supported in academic circles, focuses on
03:32 ancient megastructures, which it says are the product of extraterrestrial intelligence.
03:37 The Pyramids of Giza, the Easter Island Statues, the Nazca Lines and Stonehenge all have been
03:42 linked to supposed "ancient astronauts" at some stage.
03:45 According to advocates, these buildings and monuments are callbacks to when aliens were
03:49 setting up their experiment millennia ago; they were left here to see how we, the puny
03:54 humans, would react to them.
03:56 Some versions of the theory even suggest that if we can one day solve the mysteries of places
04:01 like Stonehenge, only then will we be deemed worthy of the attention of our alien overlords.
04:06 Given that archaeologists and historians have more feasible explanations for most, if not
04:11 all of these structures, though, it's not an idea that has ever especially taken hold.
04:16 So, failing the ancient astronaut proposal, there's the theory of panspermia, which
04:21 argues that human life on Earth is actually extraterrestrial in origin.
04:25 This could mean that we just happened to grow from far-flung materials that by sheer coincidence
04:29 crashed down onto our planet; or that aliens from the distant past purposefully sent us
04:34 to Earth.
04:35 Once again to begin their experiment.
04:38 Otherwise known as "directed panspermia", the theory has had some high-profile supporters
04:42 - including Francis Crick and Carl Sagan.
04:45 And some recent discoveries have continued to stoke the debate, including in 2015 when
04:50 UK scientists found a microscopic, metallic, unknown particle during an otherwise routine
04:55 collection of space debris.
04:58 According to the theory, that particle was actually a seed sent to Earth to spread biological
05:02 material, and seeds like these could have been showing up for millions of years to essentially
05:07 create humanity.
05:09 As for where these aliens could have come from, regardless of whether they are, in fact,
05:13 us or they aren't, a couple of relatively close possibilities have been tabled in the
05:17 past.
05:18 First, there's Mars.
05:20 In one of the simpler theories around, humankind is but the remnants of an ancient Martian
05:24 race that fled its home when the Red Planet became impossible to live on billions of years
05:29 ago.
05:30 Second, here we have the very hypothetical Planet 5 - an apparently now non-existent
05:34 world which believers say was once a part of our solar system, before it disappeared
05:38 around four billion years ago amidst the late heavy bombardment.
05:42 In either case, humanity are the leftovers of an alien race that we no longer know about
05:46 because it no longer exists.
05:48 In this way, our lives essentially are a long-winded alien experiment in that we're actually
05:53 the descendants of ancient creatures that hopped off of their original planet rather
05:56 than perishing with it.
05:58 But those theories still bill us as the almost accidental after-effects of some sort of ancient
06:03 alien behaviour.
06:04 The more disturbing interpretation of the Zoo Hypothesis has us as the specifically
06:08 chosen guinea pigs or lab rats in an ongoing study conducted by higher beings.
06:13 And if that's the case, we have to wonder what the aliens' true intentions are.
06:18 Are they really just leaving us alone to develop at our own pace, or are they exerting some
06:22 sort of control like a real-life simulation game?
06:25 Are they manipulating our world from behind the scenes, perhaps to discover new truths
06:29 about their own existences?
06:31 And if they knowingly started the experiment, couldn't they willingly end it, too?
06:36 Perhaps they'll one day decide that it isn't going as they had hoped, or that they've
06:39 collected all of the data that they need.
06:42 What would happen to us, then?
06:43 Naturally, we'd never actually find out any of this, at least not without breaking
06:47 the bonds of the experiment itself.
06:50 But if our lives really did turn out to be an alien trial, that trial would never pass
06:54 even the most lenient ethics board in our own world.
06:57 With no consent agreement or any indication that we're even being studied, no right
07:01 to withdraw from an experiment we don't even know is happening, and no idea about
07:05 what will happen at the end of it because we didn't even realise it had started, we'd
07:09 be in a completely helpless situation.
07:12 The best we could really hope for is that the all-powerful aliens would at least grant
07:15 us a global Q&A to bring us up to speed with our own insignificance, once the experiment
07:20 concludes.
07:21 Of course, they could also just plain eliminate us and switch focus to another planet, galaxy,
07:26 or universe instead.
07:28 If we really are just the product of extraterrestrial intervention, being watched, controlled and
07:33 studied from the present day all the way back to when we first crawled out of the sea, then
07:37 the whole of human history could, well, feel quite meaningless.
07:41 But if these particular theories ever proved even half-true, it'd completely change everything
07:45 we thought we knew.
07:50 Do you ever wonder why it is that we're here?
07:53 How did it come to pass that we should be living and breathing on Earth, going about
07:56 our daily lives?
07:57 Thinking, feeling, laughing, crying, and everything else in between?
08:01 The question of our existence is one that has always intrigued the human mind, fascinating
08:06 and frightening us in almost equal measure.
08:09 But what if all of this is really just a construct of a much higher power?
08:14 As arguably the most famous theorised model for advanced civilization there is, the Kardashev
08:28 Scale needs little introduction.
08:29 But we're going to zoom through the basics, to recap, just in case.
08:34 First proposed by the Soviet astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev in the 1960s, it means to
08:39 measure the advancement of civilizations based on the amount of energy they could theoretically
08:44 harness.
08:45 The original Kardashev Scale had three levels, or types.
08:48 A Type One civilization can harness all the energy of its home planet; for Type Two, it's
08:53 all the energy of its home's star system; and for Type Three, it's all the energy of
08:58 its home galaxy.
09:00 Later versions of the scale, however, added a Type Four, which is all the energy of the
09:03 universe, and also a Type Five, which is what we're most interested in today.
09:09 Accepting that a Type Five civilization could exist requires many moves away from the more
09:14 conventional ways of understanding reality.
09:16 That's because a Type Five can harness all the energy from multiple universes.
09:21 In other words, it holds all the energy of the multiverse.
09:25 Briefly put, the multiverse is the idea that this universe isn't the only universe in
09:31 existence.
09:32 It may well be crammed full of planets and stars and galaxies and everything we've
09:35 ever known… but the general multiverse theory says that there are many more just like it.
09:41 And a Type Five on the Kardashev Scale is a civilization so advanced that it exists
09:46 on a high enough plane to see and access all of it.
09:49 In our minds, a Type Five is akin to a god.
09:53 It's all-seeing and all-powerful.
09:55 And while there are some theories that the Kardashev Scale could be extended further
09:59 still to Type Six and beyond, for this video, we're imagining there's nothing else above
10:04 five.
10:05 You've reached that point, and you truly have completed the game of not just life but
10:10 reality.
10:11 What would a Type Five's existence mean for us, though?
10:15 Humans are usually calculated as having reached just 0.7 on the Kardashev Scale to get to
10:20 this point.
10:21 We haven't even fully mastered our own planet yet, and according to some more cynical worldviews,
10:27 we might never get past Kardashev Type One.
10:30 Type Five will always be almost incomprehensibly far away from us, then.
10:35 So much so that some theories suggest that we could be under its control.
10:41 The shape and form of a Type Five is something that no one can really agree upon.
10:45 In that way, it's again like how we tend to picture gods.
10:49 In most basic pop culture depictions, gods are shown as though they exist above the clouds,
10:55 taking up a position that mere human eyes can never get to see.
10:59 And from there, they're able to pull the strings of life on Earth.
11:03 But it's also often said that God is all around us, or inside us.
11:07 There's a metaphysical quality to God, as though divine entities exist outside of the
11:12 conventional laws of physics, time and matter.
11:16 Again, a similar description could be given to a Type Five being.
11:21 They don't so much have to obey the laws of physics or nature; they are the laws of
11:26 physics and nature.
11:27 We can quite confidently say, then, that if a Type Five does exist, then humans will
11:33 likely never recognize it for what it is.
11:36 The distance between us and the top of the Kardashev Scale is just too vast.
11:41 But if we look hard enough, might we find hints to its existence?
11:45 In some ways, this is what we're trying to do whenever we search for alien life.
11:49 So far, across all of human history, there's no record of any life other than the life
11:54 on this planet.
11:55 But were we to finally discover an extraterrestrial presence somewhere, then we'd know that our
12:00 way isn't the only way.
12:02 We'd know that other civilizations and other civilization types were, without a doubt,
12:07 possible.
12:08 It's why, should we ever find one alien world, many scientists predict that we would
12:12 more quickly find a second, a third and more.
12:15 Our understanding, at least, of our place in the universe will have moved up a level,
12:19 which would force our technological development to catch up, to push us into the higher brackets
12:24 of the Kardashev Scale.
12:26 Then the thinking would be, if we can get to Type One or Type Two, then why not Types
12:30 Three, Four or even Five?
12:33 The fabled fifth level would seem to us much less of a, well, fable.
12:37 Instead, it would feel like a goal waiting to be achieved.
12:40 Sure, it could take us literally billions of years to get there, and we might need to
12:45 change our physical being in the meantime… but we'd more firmly believe that it was
12:49 possible.
12:51 But for now, we still haven't discovered alien life, nor any civilizations that are
12:55 more or even less advanced than our own.
12:58 So, where else could we go hunting for glimpses of a Type Five truth?
13:03 We could try searching for the equivalent of the miracles that feature so prominently
13:07 in some religions… or we could await with faith the arrival of some sort of Type Five
13:12 disciple or prophet onto Earth itself.
13:15 A Type Five being would absolutely be capable of travelling anywhere within the multiverse…
13:20 and wherever it was, it would always hold the total knowledge of the multiverse within
13:25 itself.
13:26 If, for some reason, it chose to manifest all of that into human form, then we'd have
13:30 our prophet.
13:31 Whether or not the rest of humankind would believe someone who claims to have come from
13:35 a Type Five world, though, is an altogether different matter.
13:39 Failing that, miracle-like events could be our only real sign that our Type Five overlords
13:44 were watching.
13:45 But, even then, would we humans really know or understand when a miracle was happening?
13:51 Say a Type Five power generously redirected an asteroid on the outskirts of Andromeda
13:56 so that it was no longer in line to strike us… we'd never realise that the momentous
14:01 event had never taken place.
14:03 Equally, were a Type Five to have stepped in behind the scenes at the time of the Big
14:07 Bang to ensure that conditions were just right for, say, oxygen on Earth… then we'd simply
14:12 never know that that had ever happened.
14:15 These things would all be taking place many planes of reality above our own, and would
14:20 therefore fail to register down here on our lonely planet.
14:24 But, finally, if our continued existence really was reliant on the far-off actions of a higher
14:29 power, then what if those actions were to grind to a halt?
14:33 What if the miracles stopped?
14:35 Perhaps the scariest part of imagining a Kardashev Type Five is the realisation of just how insignificant
14:41 Earth and human beings probably are to it.
14:44 Consider that there could be trillions of planets in our universe, and that this universe
14:48 would be one of many under its power… then why would it pay particularly close attention
14:53 to us at all?
14:55 Why should we ever hope to find proof of a Type Five's existence when we amount to
14:59 just a single grain of sand along the endless beach of its own reality?
15:05 If we are the creation of a Type Five civilization, then our insignificance would ultimately be
15:10 twofold.
15:11 That creator will have created so much before and since us that they may never look in our
15:17 direction again.
15:18 In their minds, our planet is buried beneath billions of others, kept in a universe amongst
15:24 millions more, and irretrievable unless there was ever a particular reason to dig it back
15:29 out again.
15:30 Second, while we generally consider life on Earth to be special, given that it's the
15:35 only life we ourselves know about, that more than likely wouldn't be the case at Type
15:40 Five… and the 300,000 years or so of the modern human could feasibly amount to a footnote
15:46 on a footnote in their own records.
15:49 Unless, of course, the opposite is true, and life is so rare and unique that our universe
15:55 holding our planet is actually treasured by Type Five.
15:59 It's certainly a more optimistic view to take.
16:02 Perhaps what's really happening is they peer down upon us.
16:05 They see us chiselling out our unlikely existence within an infinite multiverse, and they're
16:11 filled with hope.
16:12 Hope that one day, we might learn enough to join them at the top table of reality.
16:18 If and when that day comes, remember that you heard it here first.
16:26 If there's one thing in all of science that would truly change the world if or when it
16:31 gets invented, what would it be?
16:33 There are a few big contenders, including interstellar travel, biotech for immortality,
16:38 or a limitless energy supply… but for many, the true holy grail remains the same.
16:43 We want the ability to break through the fourth dimension, access another plane of existence,
16:48 and travel in time.
16:50 It's not too much to ask, is it?
17:00 Who here hasn't seen a time travel movie before?
17:04 Or read a time travel novel?
17:06 Everyone knows the basics by now, wherein humanity invents some way of manipulating
17:10 temporal reality to enable one person or many people to zap backwards and forwards in time,
17:16 to the past and to the future.
17:18 One moment they're having breakfast with a velociraptor, and the next they're test
17:22 driving a flying car with an AI companion ten feet above the surface of a different
17:26 planet somewhere.
17:28 From one extreme to the other, in the stories it's usually a wild, unpredictable but exciting
17:33 way to live.
17:34 Of course, in our mind's eye, not all time travel is the same.
17:38 Most variations of it involve a time machine or portal of some kind.
17:43 But these come in all shapes, sizes and states of matter.
17:46 There are predicted limitations, too, including that the traveller might only be able to travel
17:51 around in a time after the time machine was invented.
17:54 Or for backwards time travel, they might only be able to return to the moments within their
17:59 own lifetime.
18:00 Let's hope that if and when it does come, time travel will be as free as possible.
18:05 Although, according to some, that hope has already evaporated and it's already under
18:10 lock and key.
18:12 Here are some of the more spectacular claims that time travel already exists, it's just
18:16 that we're not supposed to know about it.
18:19 First, there's the fabled Montauk Project.
18:22 One of the leading time travel conspiracy theories out there.
18:25 Really though, Montauk covers most conspiracy bases, as there are also claims branching
18:30 from it of alleged links to first contact with aliens, mind control, human experiments
18:36 and faked moon landings.
18:38 The claims centre on Montauk Air Force Base, otherwise known as Camp Hero on Long Island,
18:43 New York, which theorists insist is actually a US national hub for top-secret government
18:49 activity.
18:50 Word-of-mouth stories started up in the early 1980s, but most of the details track back
18:54 to a book series started in 1992, The Montauk Project - Experiments in Time, by Preston
19:01 B. Nichols and Peter Moon.
19:03 The books, which are usually categorised as science fiction, chart the supposed beginnings
19:07 of Project Montauk as primarily a weapons development drive in the 1970s.
19:13 At the heart of the facility, though, a kind of hole in reality, a tear in space-time,
19:18 has allegedly opened up - a portal through which experimenters could step and supposedly
19:23 visit anywhere in time and space.
19:25 In the books, it's dubbed the Time Tunnel, and it's pitched as a two-way thing, with
19:30 it possible for extraterrestrial beings to visit us through the tunnel as well.
19:34 To date, the Time Tunnel hasn't actually been discovered or revealed to the public,
19:39 but there have been multiple claims made towards some kind of shady, inter-dimensional goings-on
19:45 happening on the site.
19:46 In recent times, Camp Hero famously served as the inspiration for the TV series, Stranger
19:52 Things.
19:53 There's more than just Montauk, though.
19:55 Another major time travel cover-up claim centres on Project Pegasus, another allegedly top-secret
20:01 US initiative, this time ranging across the late 1960s to the early 1980s.
20:06 The loudest and best-known voice within this conspiracy theory is probably the US public
20:11 figure Andrew Pachago, who has repeatedly claimed to have been involved in the project,
20:16 as a time travel test subject.
20:18 In various news and TV interviews, Pachago has said that he was sent back to the moment
20:23 of President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, back in 1863.
20:28 According to Pachago, there's even photographic evidence to prove that he was there.
20:33 The exact nature of Project Pegasus time travel is a little ambiguous, but Pachago implies
20:38 that it involved creating a holographic representation of the time and place you wanted to visit,
20:43 manipulating a kind of plasma gateway, and then stepping through that to arrive at the
20:48 destination.
20:49 The facility, said to have been stationed in New Jersey, was allegedly run by the US
20:54 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
20:57 But it gets weirder still, because Pachago also claims to have been involved in another
21:02 trip and this time to Mars.
21:05 According to him, he and several others were ported to the Red Planet in the early 1980s
21:10 on a series of reconnaissance-type missions to scope out our celestial neighbour.
21:14 But finally, and as part of what's surely one of the most bizarre conspiracy claims
21:19 of recent times, Pachago also alleges that former US President Barack Obama was part
21:25 of the same time-travelling team, as well.
21:28 That's right, according to him, Obama was a time traveller even before he was a politician.
21:33 Needless to say, the White House has denied this story.
21:36 And again, there's almost nothing beyond Pachago's accounts to prove that Project
21:40 Pegasus ever took place.
21:41 Finally, in the murky world of time travel cover-up, it isn't only the American government
21:47 that's implicated.
21:48 Other countries that allegedly have or are experimenting with time travel tech include
21:53 the UK, the Vatican City, and China.
21:56 In the UK, there's the case of the Man from 2365, wherein an anonymous, reportedly former
22:02 British government employee claims to have been sent to the future on a mission to learn
22:07 more about it.
22:08 Reports emerged in 2018 of his spectacular adventure, during which he supposedly beamed
22:13 to the top of a new-age skyscraper.
22:16 He also says that he saw flying cars, and that humans of the future were living alongside
22:20 robots and seemingly other potential alien species.
22:24 Naturally, there has been no move by the government to confirm the story, but the Man from 2365
22:30 says that time travel does become public knowledge in the year 2028, so mark your calendars.
22:36 In the Vatican City, there have long been rumours of a very peculiar time travel device
22:41 that's allegedly hidden away in history; the chronovisor.
22:45 The big reveal this time came in 2002, when a book, appropriately titled "The New Mystery
22:51 of the Vatican" by François Brune, revealed details of a contraption supposedly used to
22:56 view past events.
22:58 It's said that it was built in and around the 1950s and 60s by a team of the world's
23:03 best scientists, led by a one Father Pellegrino Ernetti.
23:08 According to various claims, the chronovisor worked a little like a television, only what
23:12 you saw on its screen wasn't a reproduction or a recording, it was the real thing.
23:18 Ernetti even said that he had used the chronovisor sometime in the mid-20th century to view the
23:23 crucifixion of Jesus Christ as it happened.
23:26 Ultimately, and unfortunately for anyone seeking irrefutable evidence that time travel exists,
23:31 it's claimed that the machine was dismantled before the end of the century as a matter
23:36 of security.
23:37 And lastly, time travel rumours have in recent times emerged out of China, too.
23:42 Most notably in February 2021, when a bizarre story briefly broke across the internet involving
23:48 a leaked PowerPoint document.
23:51 The document in question seemingly revealed private plans for a "space-time tunnel" - a
23:56 technology that, if it did exist, would enable the user to manipulate time in a number of
24:00 ways.
24:01 Significantly, though, and according to the reports, the PowerPoint also suggested that
24:05 while the tunnel was a private enterprise, there could be research links between it and
24:10 the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a state organisation.
24:14 Following up, it was next reported that the Chinese Academy of Sciences had promptly released
24:18 an official statement labelling the story as untrue… and the initial interest on social
24:22 media died down, as all signs pointed to it being a hoax.
24:26 But what's your opinion on this and the others featured in this video?
24:31 Projects Montauk and Pegasus certainly rank amongst the most infamous alleged government
24:35 time travel experiments… but could the United States really be hiding such mind-blowing
24:41 technology?
24:42 And then there's the man from 2365, who's really one of many smaller-scale time travel
24:47 claimants out there.
24:48 Plus, the Chronovisor, which if the claims are true, take time travel to the heart of
24:53 the Catholic Church.
24:54 Importantly, there's so far been nothing by way of solid, incontestable evidence that
25:00 any of these examples really do represent a cover-up.
25:04 But the stories behind them have certainly stirred the debate.
25:08 So, with everything in mind, do you think it's possible that we're being experimented
25:12 on?
25:13 Do you think it's more likely by alien life, by a higher power, or by our very own governments?
25:18 And if you do believe, then to what end?
25:20 [MUSIC]
25:50 Over the years, there's been a steady stream of rumour and theory to suggest that it's
25:55 at least possible that humankind is in some way being monitored and controlled.
26:00 These are ideas that start on our own lands and spread out to the stars.
26:05 But ultimately, they ask us to consider the true nature of our reality.
26:09 What do you think?
26:10 Is there anything we missed?
26:12 Let us know in the comments, check out these other clips from Unveiled, and make sure you
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