IT HAS been a good week for time travel fans.

Not only has long-running TV series Doctor Who announced it is returning soon with its “biggest episode ever”, a photograph has emerged that suggests time-travellers really do exist ....

The spooky picture-everyone-is-talking-about this week was taken by Swedish American documentary photographer Eric Hegg back in 1898 and it shows a group of children working in a goldmine in Canada’s Yukon territory.

It is not just the fact that children this young are working as miners which makes this image so striking - it’s the fact that one of them bears an eerie resemblance to Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.

Cue lots of theories that the teenage climate change campaigner is actually a time-traveller working her way through different eras in a bid to prevent catastrophes, and much mirth on social media about whether she really is on an eco-friendly boat heading back across the Atlantic, or is, instead, moving on to the next dimension in her bio-fuelled TARDIS.

I love a good conspiracy theory, and this is a cracker, not least because of the fascinating, truly uncanny likeness - pigtail, earnest stare and all - between Greta and the goldmine girl.

I’m not alone - scientists know that as part of our evolution, humans are programmed to make connections between seemingly random things because any theory, no matter how far-fetched, is easier for our brains to deal with than a weird collection of unconnected events.

Ann Fotheringham: Don't ditch the pink, it can be the colour of hope

It’s the reason urban legends spread like wildfire, and it’s why we love the idea that strange shapes on our burnt toast might actually be the face of Jesus and therefore, a message from another world.

It’s just so much more fun to think that Marilyn Monroe might really be alive and running a B&B in Thurso, or that Britney Spears was employed by the White House to distract the media by creating a scandal every time the Bush administration messed up. Hilarious.

Meanwhile, the return of time-travelling two-hearted alien Doctor Who is a festive favourite in our house. This year, thankfully, fans seem to have got over the galactic gender-related meltdown of 2017, although many are a bit miffed about the lack of a Christmas Day special (fingers crossed for New Year’s Day!)

Read more - Ann Fotheringham: Let's hear it for the completer-finishers

Nothing stays the same forever, and talk of who might take over from Jodie Whittaker is bound to start sooner or later.

But surely, Greta, the answer is obvious.....?

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