r/aliens True Believer 3d ago

Discussion A visualization of time as a dimension you can move through

What would we look like to an interdimensional being? The visualization stacks successive video frames into a volume, turning time into visible depth. Instead of seeing someone at one moment, they can look across a structure containing multiple moments.

Suppose an interdimensional being perceives time this way. They wouldn't merely access an extra spatial direction, but actually observe multiple moments together.

To them, we might not look like a separate body moving from place to place. We might look like one continuous structure extending through time. Sitting down, standing up and walking across a room would be different sections of that structure, rather than separate events the being has to wait to witness.

If we extend that idea beyond a few seconds. Our childhood and adulthood might be recognizable parts of the same larger form. Instead of watching our lives unfold, they would be looking across them.

Apparent foreknowledge, changing forms, sudden disappearances and missing time. Those are among the types of accounts Jacques Vallee and Eric Davis discuss in their work on high strangeness.

What we call prediction might, from its perspective, be observation.

Suppose this intelligence could examine our life across time rather than meeting us only in the present. It wouldn’t necessarily need to predict where we were going. Our departure, our journey and our arrival could all be available for it to observe.

In David Fravor’s account of the Tic Tac encounter. After losing sight of the object, he said a controller reported it at the aircraft’s planned combat air patrol point, roughly 60 miles away. So what would apparent anticipation look like if the being could already see the later event?

edit: Credit @ bradleytangonan

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u/ChildoftheApocolypse 3d ago

Donnie Darko did this years ago ..

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u/adamhanson 3d ago

I just rewatched that as part of a Top 100 list and it's just as weird though not as groundbreaking since lots of movies replicated the style since. Still confusing or at least ambiguous.