I am unsure about your reasoning regarding the effect of airplanes, seems like there are many dots missing. Firstly, link about the temperature drop from no aircraft? That is curious and I wonder if it has a much greater effect because of the altitude at which the gases are released (though the long-term result may be the same despite the immediate evidence, that is all the ground level gas released is just as damaging as that from the airplanes).

Secondly, What is the effect of noctilucent clouds on on our atmosphere? Is it clear? Could they be protecting us/earth from some solar radiation? Or are they having the opposite effect (increasing the greenhouse-effect, and/or reflecting more solar radiation into our atmosphere)?

Idea: Nanoparticles (or other charged dust) blasted beyond the stratosphere that we can control! Keep it where it can block the sun, occasionally produce festive light shows, and keep the alien's from reading our collective thoughts!

His device clearly works but I think he just couldn't figure out how it worked and just came up with the clearly bogus colliding "alcohol molecules explanation." The real way it works, clearly, is that the aging device is a time-machine! It's quite normal for discoveries to be the unexpected reward for inventiveness and research in sometimes completely unrelated fields.