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