HeptapodsAlien visitors who remember the future

Could a visitor's language change how it thinks? This page covers Fermat's principle, least action, language and thought, and the arrow of time.

If an alien visitor's language had no before and after, would its sense of time be different? The "Heptapods" channel in the game borrows the premise of Ted Chiang's 1998 story Story of Your Life: could learning a completely alien language change the way you perceive time?

This page covers the real science behind the premise: how a ship would be spotted, how to communicate across an unfamiliar language, why Fermat's principle and the principle of least action seem to have a "purpose", several real experiments on language and thought, and the "arrow of time". In the game, "remembering the future" is fiction, and it is marked as such below.

How a decelerating ship would be seen

In 1995 Robert Zubrin calculated that a large ship decelerating with an antimatter rocket could be photographed by the 5-meter Palomar telescope from 20 light-years away. Its light would have no hydrogen lines, unlike a star's. This is the real starting point of the game's "Deceleration flare".

How to communicate across an unfamiliar language

Faced with a completely unfamiliar language, a field linguist's first step is usually to point at things and ask "what is this called?", recording one word at a time. Another clue comes from how writing systems are classified. In 1985 the linguist Geoffrey Sampson divided writing into two kinds: scripts that record speech, and scripts that express meaning directly without going through speech, such as mathematical notation and musical scores.

As for "seven legs", there is a real counterpart: starfish and sea urchins are radially symmetric, with no front and back, only an oral side and an aboral side.

Why light "chooses the fastest path"

  • Fermat's principle: in 1662 Pierre de Fermat pointed out that light going from one point to another always takes the path that needs the least time. Refraction can be described as "light bends when it hits the water" or as "light chose the fastest route". Both descriptions give exactly the same results.
  • Least action: from Maupertuis, Euler and Lagrange in the 18th century to Hamilton in 1834, all of mechanics was rewritten as "the action takes an extreme value". It does not ask what happens next but looks at the whole path. Feynman's physics lectures have a chapter on it.

The story therefore uses it as an example of "seeing the world by purpose rather than by cause". Fermat's principle of least time can indeed describe a light path in terms of "purpose" rather than "cause", but whether language can change time perception is fiction.

Does language really affect thought

  • Color: a 2007 experiment found that Russian splits light blue and dark blue into two basic color words, and Russian speakers are indeed faster at telling the two blues apart. Add a verbal interference task and the advantage disappears.
  • The future behind: the Aymara language of South America puts the past "in front" and the future "behind". A 2006 study found that elderly Aymara speakers gesture forward when speaking of the past and point behind themselves when speaking of the future.
  • Time in the east: the Kuuk Thaayorre of Australia use north, south, east and west, not left and right, to describe positions. In a 2010 experiment, they laid out picture cards in time order from east to west, whichever direction they were facing.

Why we remember only the past

The microscopic laws of physics are almost all symmetric in time, yet we remember the past and not the future. This "arrow of time" is usually traced to the extremely low entropy of the early universe. The game's "remembering the future" reverses this real asymmetry as a thought experiment.

The idea in the game

What follows is game lore. The channel is discovered by unlocking "Cosmic language" in the Tree of the Beyond and building a "Mars base" in the interstellar-civilization era. In the scenario, a few years ago a deep-space telescope saw a bright light with no hydrogen lines: a ship was decelerating. It arrived at just the right time, when humanity had learned to teach a language from scratch using mathematics and logic. Working back from its speed, when it set out, nobody on Earth had invented writing.

The mechanic is nonlinear time. You can "foresee" a node you have not yet unlocked and unlock it ahead of time for twice the cost. All the nodes before it that are not yet unlocked become "fated", and can be unlocked afterward at half price. Until the fated path is finished, the strain on causality cuts output to 60%. The final chapter waits until every fated path is complete.

In the scenario, the visitors do not land. A translucent "Looking glass" hangs in orbit. The seven limbs form a ring, and the eyes are arranged in a ring too, so every direction looks the same. Their speech is a trill a human mouth cannot produce, and their writing is one shape per whole sentence, so the whole sentence must be thought out before the first stroke. A person who learns this writing becomes, like them, aware of the beginning and the end of an event at once, and starts to remember things that have not happened yet. The channel's two endings are "Choosing anyway" and "Not looking". All of this is fiction.

  • Story of Your Life (Ted Chiang, 1998): a linguist learns the writing of the alien heptapods and gradually comes to think as they do. Time is not a line that flows in one direction.

The studies below concern language and relativity. They are related real science, not evidence that language can change the sense of time.

  • The FOXP2 gene, linked to language, underwent distinctive changes in the human lineage (Enard et al., Nature, 2002).
  • The expansion of farming populations carried their languages to many regions and shaped today's distribution of language families (Diamond and Bellwood, Science, 2003).
  • Time and space are not absolute. This idea came from one of four papers published within a year by a junior patent office clerk (Einstein, Annalen der Physik, 1905).

Real basis

  • Deceleration flare: In 1995, Zubrin calculated that a large ship decelerating with an antimatter rocket could be photographed by the 5-meter Palomar telescope at 20 light-years; its light has no hydrogen lines, unlike a star's.

  • Seven legs: Starfish and sea urchins are radially symmetric, with no front or back, only an oral side and an aboral side.

  • Heptapod A: Faced with a completely unfamiliar language, a field linguist's first step is usually to point at things and ask “what is this called?”, recording word by word.

  • Heptapod B: In 1985 the linguist Sampson divided writing systems into two kinds: those that record speech, and those that express meaning directly without going through speech, such as mathematical formulas and musical scores.

  • Fermat's principle: In 1662 Fermat pointed out that light travelling from one point to another always takes the path of least time. Refraction can be described as “light bends when it hits the water” or as “light chose the fastest route”. Both descriptions give exactly the same result.

  • Least action: From Maupertuis, Euler and Lagrange in the 18th century to Hamilton in 1834, all of mechanics was rewritten as “the action takes an extremum”: not asking what happens next, but looking at the whole path. Feynman's physics lectures have a chapter on it.

  • Language and thought: A 2007 experiment found that Russian splits light blue and dark blue into two basic color words, and Russian speakers really are faster at telling the two blues apart; with a verbal task as interference, the advantage disappears.

  • The future behind: The Aymara language of South America puts the past “in front” and the future “behind”. A 2006 study found that elderly Aymara speakers gesture forward when talking about the past and point behind them for the future.

  • Time in the east: The Kuuk Thaayorre of Australia use north, south, east and west, not left and right, to describe positions. In a 2010 experiment, they laid out pictures in time order from east to west, no matter which way they faced.

  • Remembering the future: Almost all microscopic laws of physics are symmetric in time, yet we remember only the past and not the future. This “arrow of time” is usually traced to the extremely low entropy of the early universe.

  • Story of Your Life (Ted Chiang, 1998), the science: Fermat’s principle of least time really can describe the path of light in terms of “purpose” rather than “cause”; whether language can change the perception of time is fiction.

Related research

These studies relate to this topic but are not direct proof of this page.

  • The language gene: The FOXP2 gene linked to language underwent special changes in the human lineage.

    Source: Enard et al., Nature 2002, "Molecular evolution of FOXP2, a gene involved in speech and language"

  • Farmers and languages: The expansion of farming populations carried their languages to new places and shaped today's distribution of language families.

    Source: Diamond & Bellwood, Science 2003, "Farmers and their languages: the first expansions"

  • Special relativity: Time and space are not absolute. A junior clerk at a patent office published four physics-changing papers in a single year.

    Source: Einstein, Annalen der Physik 1905, "Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper"

Game lore (fictional)

  • Node “Deceleration flare”: Their deceleration flare was seen years ago.
  • Node “Looking glass”: They did not land. Translucent “looking glasses” hang in orbit; stand in front of one and you can see the Heptapods on the other side.
  • Node “Seven legs”: Heptapods have no front or back either: seven limbs in a ring, eyes in a ring too, so every direction is the same.
  • Node “Heptapod A”: Their spoken language is like waves of wet trilling that a human mouth cannot produce.
  • Node “Heptapod B”: Their writing is of the latter kind. A whole sentence is one figure, and to make a single stroke the whole sentence has to be thought out first.
  • Node “Simultaneity”: Those who learn Heptapod B become aware, as they are, of the beginning and end of an event at the same time.
  • Node “Remembering the future”: You begin to remember things that have not happened yet.
  • Node “Gift”: They left something behind. It took the main civilization a long time to understand what it was.
  • Node “They leave”: The looking glasses go dark one after another. No farewell: they had always known they would leave today.
  • Channel ending “Choosing anyway”: You knew how it ended, and walked there step by step anyway. The Heptapods’ language has no word for “could have been”. They say that knowing the destination does not stop anyone from walking with care.
  • Channel ending “Not looking”: You didn’t ask. The day the looking glasses went dark, you were one of the few who still didn’t know tomorrow. You felt that was just as well.
  • Summary of the novel Story of Your Life: A linguist learns the written language of the alien Heptapods and gradually comes to think their way: time is not a line flowing in one direction.
See it in the game