Ten Ways People are Searching for Time Travelers

deloreanThe primary problem with wondering if there will ever be time travel is the fact that there should already be time travelers. The thinking goes that if it is going to happen (even in distant remote futures), shouldn’t there already be evidence of time travelers littered throughout history? If there is not, then either it will never exist or as Doc Brown put it “You are just not thinking fourth dimensionally.”

Fourth dimensional thought is something that people have a real problem with. The assumption is that there is some sort of ‘Prime Directive’ about futuristic time travelers not messing with us primitive folk, so we have to catch these futuristic people. Here are some ways that people are trying to catch sneaky time travelers throughout time…

1) The Stephen Hawking Party

stephen hawking time travel party

On June 28th, 2009, physicist Stephen Hawking held a party for time travelers. No one showed up. Hawking actually sent out invitations to the party after the event. Presumably, this is a standing invitation for any time traveler to show up at Stephen Hawking’s house on June 28th, 2009. The party has now received enough attention so that weary time travelers can go there at any time and enjoy a good meal as well as more than a little good drink. A good tip of etiquette if you are planning to attend though… if you want to play Words With Friends; with Stephen Hawking, then let him win. The Big Bang Theory taught us that letting Hawking win is kind of a courtesy.

2) The Time Traveler Convention

time traveler convention

On May 7th, 2005, students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology decided that what time travelers really wanted was to compare notes with science nerds and possibly have a few burgers. So they too threw a party for time travelers. Apparently, despite Saturday Night Live announcing on Weekend Update that the party ‘sucked’ before it ever happened, about 450 people showed up to the ‘Time Travel Convention.’ No one was actually confirmed to be a real time traveler. However, if you are reading this and still looking for a spot in history for a good time, then this convention might be for you. After all, you have probably already told Stephen Hawking and Matt Lauer to “SUCK IT!!”

3) Scouring The Internet

trapped in 2013

Have you ever seen the movie PCU? In that movie, they state that you can major in Gameboy if you know how to BS properly. We are not entirely sure if researchers at Michigan Technological University were attempting to prove the Gameboy theory or if they were really trying to find time travelers with this study. Basically, they deduced that time travelers have nothing better to do than to troll the modern-day internet. After all, we have nothing better to do so why should they?

Researchers Robert J. Nemiroff and Teresa Wilson scoured Twitter, Facebook, and Google (with time stamps and hash tags) to see if anyone happened to have a tweet that stated a recent news story before it happened. One of the searches involved the recent election of Pope Francis. It turned up no evidence that a time traveler is sharing news of the future on the internet. It probably did manage to cover up the money they spent trying to prove that no matter when you turned on the TV, there would be a movie starring Gene Hackman or Michael Caine.

4) Old Photos

henry fonda iphone

There are several different versions of this particular thought. If you look at the right angle, you may see Henry Fonda holding an iPhone or a woman behind Marilyn Monroe taking a smart phone selfie. One of the best though is the shot of the ‘Time Traveling Hipster’ in 1941. The picture is real.

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There is a young man in a crowd in Golden Bridge, Canada wearing sunglasses and what looks like a T-shirt with an emblem on it. After all, Canada is so laid back that probably everyone knew he was a time traveler anyway. The trouble is that those sunglasses actually did exist in 1941 and the t-shirt appears to be a sweater with a sports logo sewn on it. The fashion appears to be a little ahead of its time, however there is no actual proof that the person is from another time.

5) Old Videos

the circus cell phone

The search for life on alien worlds is currently dominated by setting telescopes to scour the universe for the color blue. The search for time travelers throughout history seems to be captivated by the search for a smart phone before they were invented. Heaven help us all if someone ever took home a prop for Star Trek as a keepsake. One of the most famous examples of this was the woman on a ‘cell phone’ in the 1928 Charlie Chaplin film The Circus.

time-travel-chaplin

The major problem with the one is that no one in this day and age remembers exactly how bulky hearing aids used to be, which is exactly what this device appears to be. That is a real shame because ‘bulky hearing aids as a source of humor’ used to be a very real thing. Now, the joke seems to be on people that are looking for ‘cell phones throughout history.’ The other question would of course be how exactly she was getting a signal in 1928? Presumably to make a call, there would still have to be at least a cell tower?

6) First Hand Encounters

hakan

There is also the issue that arises when some one comes up to you and straight up says “I am a time traveler.” There are several ways to respond to this. One way might be “take me to your Delorean.” Another possible response is introducing the person to men in white coats who collect such heightened individuals for a conversation with representatives from the planet Jupiter.

Famous examples of first hand accounts include Hakan Nordkvist who claims to have crawled through a wormhole in time (conveniently located in his kitchen) to meet himself at 70 years old. Nordkvist even made a short video of himself with an elderly man who happened to be bald and has the same tattoo. The entire story seemed pretty conclusive. There is also John Titor who claimed to be a time traveler on a 2001 message board. At the turn of the twentieth century, there was Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain, they claimed to have taken a trip to France… during the French Revolution.

7) Temporal Cloaking

eldridge

The idea behind this one (and there are really serious experiments going on concerning it) is to be able to hide events or objects within holes in the space / time continuum created by projections of light. Since the scientists have presumably never seen or read any actual science fiction, the supposition is that nothing could go wrong. On the other hand, there might also already be objects within such holes which can be recovered.

That is almost the entire premise behind legend of the USS Eldridge and the famous ‘Philadelphia Experiment.’ The theory would follow that if we are just now starting to work on the possibilities of temporal cloaking, then it has been perfected to a larger degree in the future which might lead to a method of exchange with the future itself. Again, what could possibly go wrong? Just be nice to the kill-bots and they will be nice to you… as long as you are not on the list.

8) Physical Evidence

time travel watch

One of the more interesting finds was from archaeologists who opened a previously sealed tomb in China dating back to the Ming Dynasty. They appeared to find something that should not be there. It was a hundred year old ring watch which had been made in Switzerland. It also had the word “SWISS” on the back, and not in Chinese characters. It is mysterious.

If it is time travel, then what exactly are we trying to say? Did the Swiss invent time travel in some sort of steam punk lab over a hundred years ago and forget to tell anyone?  Did a time traveler from the future have a passion for Swiss Ring Watches and accidentally drop theirs in the tomb of a Chinese dignitary in the Ming Dynasty? Were the archaeologists just mistaken about everything? All we know is that the watch stopped at 10:06. Was that the time in which a time traveler was buried as a witch?

9) The Argument For Biblical Evidence

abimelech

There are a lot of fantastical stories in the Bible. There are pillars of fire. There are visions of the end times. There is the creation of the universe by the word of God in a day. It would seem to be a book where most anything is possible, but does it mention time travel? According to the show on the History channel Ancient Aliens as well as Chariots of the Gods author Erich von Daniken, then answer is an unequivocally, ‘maybe.’

The crux of the debate is over the eunuch Abimelech who is said to have slept for 66 years and still had the same fresh figs as when he fell asleep. There is an alternate story that he met strange soldiers in a strange city. The indication is that Abilemelech was a time traveler in the Bible. Abilmelech is mentioned in Jeremiah 38:7, however the actual story seems to come from Baruch 4. If you don’t happen to remember the Baruch in the Bible, it is generally because it is considered to be an apocryphal text.

Of course, you can believe that the Biblical prophets were all seasoned time travelers. They just don’t seem to have posted anything on Twitter. Keep this in mind though, people come back from the dead in the Bible yet they do not seem to travel through time. That puts resurrection above time travel on the believability scale.

10) The Pegasus Project

pegasus project

A lawyer in the Seattle, Washington area says that he was part of a top-secret government project called Pegasus in which the government was experimenting in time travel. The lawyer, named Andrew Basiago, claims that he was sent through time when he was a child. This was supposedly to test the effects of time travel on youth as well as adults in the late 1960s and early 1970s. One of the more spectacular claims that Basiago makes is that he can point himself out at Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Somehow, the United States government and DARPA have not been quick to validate his claims. There is also precious little word on what the current state of the experiments may be.