bhaskar saikia

We humans like to believe that time flows in one steady, predictable stream. Seconds become minutes, minutes become hours — and life marches on. But the universe doesn’t exactly play by those rules. Thanks to Albert Einstein, we know that time is a lot more flexible than we once thought.

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity tells us that if you were to travel close to the speed of light, time wouldn’t flow the same for you as it does for someone standing still. The faster you move, the slower time moves for you. This mind-bending idea doesn’t just make for great science — it opens the door to wild possibilities like time travel.

Let’s imagine this further: if an astronaut zooms through space at near-light speed, for him only an hour might pass inside the spacecraft. Meanwhile, back on Earth, days — maybe even weeks — could tick by. It’s a fascinating phenomenon, and the world of quantum physics agrees.

Now, here’s where the fun starts.

Let’s assume there are intelligent alien races scattered across the universe (it’s a big place, after all) and that — according to some conspiracy theorists — we humans have been secretly fighting them. If that’s true, those wars must be happening near Earth. Why? Because, so far, humans haven’t built spaceships that can zip across the stars in days or weeks. If there were battles happening light-years away, we’d have no way to reach the frontlines. So it’s safe to assume the aliens are the ones doing the traveling.

But space isn’t a short trip. To cross the unimaginable distances between stars, alien ships would need to travel at or near the speed of light, or use hypothetical shortcuts like wormholes. Either way, one thing is certain: for those poor aliens, time inside their spacecraft would slow to a crawl compared to their home world.

Now picture this — an alien fleet leaves its home planet to attack Earth. By the time they arrive, the team back at mission control may have aged, retired, or even died. Whole new generations of commanders might now be in charge, trying to communicate with the same assault team that hasn’t aged a day! Imagine the chaos of trying to sync battle plans when your clock runs at an entirely different speed. That’s problem number one for the invaders.

And here’s problem number two: life expectancy.

On Earth, humans measure their lives by revolutions around the Sun. Eighty to ninety of those trips, and our bodies usually give in. But an alien species might hail from a world where one revolution takes hundreds or even thousands of Earth years. They could live far longer than us. So when the aliens retreat after their first failed attack, they return home to regroup — and when they finally come back to Earth for round two, centuries might have passed here, but only a blink of an eye for them.

And here’s the kicker: humans don’t sit still. We invent. Fast. By the time the same alien crew shows up for another battle, humans might have leaped forward in technology. The aliens come prepared to face World War II-era V2 rockets — only to find Earthlings now wielding high-energy pulse beam weapons that can vaporize their shiny saucers in a heartbeat.

So if you think about it, the odds really aren’t in the aliens’ favor. They may have mastered interstellar travel, but thanks to the curious quirks of time and human ingenuity, they’d always be a few steps behind.

Who knew the ultimate defense strategy was just… letting time do its thing?