Searching for Time Travelers, Scientists Look to Social Media

Space.com ^ | January 10, 2014 | Denise Chow

[12th_Monkey]

Time travelers, if they exist amongst us, have yet to betray their period-hopping ways online, according to a fun, new study aimed at finding visitors from another time, based on their digital footprints.

Theoretically, the idea of time travel forward in time should be possible according to Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. In fact, scientists have already sent teensy particles called muons forward in time. But sending a large object, such as an entire person, into the future remains in the echelons of science fiction, for now.

Even so, over a summer poker game, Robert Nemiroff, an astrophysicist at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, sparked an amusing discussion with his students by asking: If time travelers were living in our midst, would they leave traces of their presence online?

The researchers chose two recent events — the March 2013 election of Pope Francis to lead the Catholic Church, and the sungrazing Comet ISON, which was first spotted in September 2012 — to search for premature online references to time travelers. Perhaps careless time travelers made mention of Pope Francis or Comet ISON on Twitter or Facebook before they were supposed to know about them, the researchers said.

"The Internet is essentially a vast database, and I thought that if time travelers were here, their existence would have already come out in some other way, maybe by posting winning lottery numbers before they were selected," Nemiroff said in a statement.

Nemiroff and his students combed through results from search engines, such as Google and Bing, and social media sites, including Facebook and Twitter. Ultimately, their hunt came up empty.

"In our limited search we turned up nothing," Nemiroff said in a statement. "I didn't really think we would. But I'm still not aware of anyone undertaking a search like this."

The researchers did find one blog post that mentioned a "Pope Francis" before Jorge Mario Bergoglio, then-Archbishop of Buenos Aires, was elected to lead the Catholic Church, but they think the reference was accidental, rather than a message from a time-traveling visitor.

Nemiroff and his students even created their own special blog post in September 2013 that asked potential time travelers to email or tweet "#ICanChangeThePast2" or "#ICannotChangeThePast2" a month earlier, on or before August 2013. But, they again found no signs of time travel.

Still, Nemiroff, whose research typically covers more serious topics such as gravitational lensing and gamma-ray bursts, said the study, while focused on a seemingly far-out concept, was an enjoyable undertaking.

"I'm always doing stuff on space and time," he said. "This has been a lot of fun."

Nemiroff said the study was conducted during his students' own time, and without the use of any grant funding.

[NoLibZone]

If time travel was possible we would have l
known since day 1.

[ETL]

To travel INTO the future is comparatively easy vs going back in time. All one needs to do to travel ahead is gather enough energy to accelerate themselves to great speeds. The faster you go, the more you will have moved ahead in time when you ultimately come to a stop. This actually happens all the time, every time you're using some means of transportation, most noticeable (although in mere fractions of a second) is when you travel in an airplane.

Here's an explanation of time dilation that I wrote myself a few years ago. Hope it makes sense. The graphic I found on the Web.

First, from Wikipedia: "One second is defined as 'the duration of 9192631770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom'..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second

Now imagine, instead of a vibrating 'caesium 133 atom', we have a beam of light bouncing back and forth between two mirrors within a vertical tube. Now let's say, for the sake of argument, that it takes precisely 'one second' for the light beam to reach the top mirror (tick), reflect off it, reverse and reach the bottom mirror (tock).

Now let's say the light tube, or 'light clock', is resting on a flatbed train car, and on the flatbed is an observer who we will call "Observer A". To Observer A, who is moving along with the train and is therefore 'at rest' with respect to it, the light beam simply travels from the bottom of the tube *vertically* to the top of the tube and then straight back down again. From the relationship, speed equals distance over time, we get time equals distance over speed. So this is then how Observer A defines time (t=distance/speed). Important to note here, is, according to theory and supported by experimental evidence, light travels at the SAME SPEED for ALL observers.

Now let's say there is an observer B standing on the embankment alongside the train watching it pass by. From this observer's point of view, or frame of reference, the light beam does not simply travel vertically up and down but rather in a slanted or diagonal path, since the train is in motion, let's say from left to right as Observer B sees it. Now since the light beam travels a diagonal path between tick and tock, again, from OB's stationary point of view, the light beam therefore is traveling a LONGER distance (from OB's perspective). Therefore, since the light beam is traveling a longer distance (from OB's perspective) AND since light travels at the same speed for all observers, the light beam MUST take a longer time to bounce between the two mirrors (tick-tock). Therefore, the two observers (A and B) do NOT agree on what a "second" is.

http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/252/srelwhat.html

The mathematical relationship between the two paths is based on the Pythagorean Theorem for right-triangles that many of us used in high school.

-ETL

[ETL]

Here is that mathematical relationship (between time as perceived by the two different observers) that is derived from the familiar Pythagorean Theorem (a squared + b squared = c squared, c being the longest leg of the 90 degree (right) triangle depicted in the above illustration):

[InMemoriam]

If time travel were a scientific possibility, rather than a device of fiction, how could you magically find the earth when you got there? It is orbiting the sun, which is itself orbiting the galactic center, which may also be moving.

[ETL]

If time travel were a scientific possibility, rather than a device of fiction...

It is a reality. It's been proven with twin atomic clocks, one aboard an airplane, the other on Earth. The first such experiment was carried out back in 1975. The time was very small, but it was real. The effect is also used in GPS satellite communications. However, in both of these and other similar cases, there are TWO sources for time dilation. One is caused by the high speeds involved, the other by the gravitational field of the Earth. Clocks tick out time more slowly in a gravity field, as they do when they are in a state of rapid motion relative to a stationary observer.

[ETL]

http://www.uccs.edu/~rtirado/ChR%20SSM%20070828.pdf

[ETL]

“The Hafele–Keating experiment was a test of the theory of relativity. In October 1971, Joseph C. Hafele, a physicist, and Richard E. Keating, an astronomer, took four cesium-beam atomic clocks aboard commercial airliners. They flew twice around the world, first eastward, then westward, and compared the clocks against others that remained at the United States Naval Observatory. When reunited, the three sets of clocks were found to disagree with one another, and their differences were consistent with the predictions of special and general relativity.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele%E2%80%93Keating_experiment#Results

[ETL]

Of course for any significant time dilation to occur, speeds approaching that of light would be required. And that would require an almost unobtainable amount of energy, particularly for massive objects like human beings. Protons and other subatomic particles are another story.

[dr_lew]

Well gosh, I wonder if you’re thinking of the guy I heard on the show some years ago who was onto the UFOs as Time Machines trail, a la REPO MAN. He was very savvy actually ... had everything worked out. I recall particularly that when Art Bell commented that “Time is nature’s way of preventing everything from happening all at once,” he replied without hesitation, “everything IS happening all at once,” momentarily rendering Art Bell speechless.

[Greetings_Puny_Humans]

From the Titor website’s prediction page:

What is the extent of Presidential power in 2036?
50. The office of President is far more diluted and decentralized than it is here. The powers of the national government are more defined and reside more at the county and state level.

What is the new government like in 2036 compared to the current one?
51. I think the new government is good. However, since the concept of nationally subsidized welfare is gone, most people here may not appreciate it.

Looks like we win in the future.

[residentdragon]

If you accept the argument that
(1) Time Travel Exists
(2) People are capable of traveling back in time
(3) People are traveling back in time; then
(4) No evidence would exist of said time travel; because

Any responsible time travel program of the future would have policies to mitigate world ending things like paradoxes through commonsense rules such as not leaving smoking-gun evidence in the past informing those past generations that people from the future are visiting them. If there was no such oversight, and the person from the future was just "Doc Browning" it then there would already have been documented evidence since any oversight by any authority form any time in the future would most likely intervene in this scenario as well.

Thus, time traveler who traveled back in time, upon their return, would be able to verify that they did not leave any such evidence behind by simply checking their historical archives. If they did leave behind evidence that was noticed and documented, then using said records, he would know what said evidence was that he needs to retrieve, as well as when and where in time to he needs to go to retrieve it. Upon the time traveler's return, the disappearance of the record from the archives would verify that they were successful. This of course makes the assumption (that is quite common in science fiction) that the time traveler's memory is somehow protected during time travel from the effects and changes caused by his time travel allowing him to remember how things were before he changed them.

Lastly, given human nature, if said time traveler was researching the historical archives, and happened to come across an article such as this one, would he not be tempted to go back in time and mess with researchers by leaving some form of "obvious evidence" (obvious from a future perspective / but not out present) making them look foolish for the amusement of the time traveler and his friends.

[12th_Monkey]

That’s a pesky problem to have, good luck.

[12th_Monkey]

Next time your in 2020, take a picture of the WSJ stock pages.

[12th_Monkey]

Ha!

[12th_Monkey]

Mine ended up at the spanish inquisition, ever try to explain ones cell phone, tablet and electric razor to those guys? Geeze, what a bunch to tight asses!

[12th_Monkey]

it’s not bad if it wasn’t for the aging thing.

[12th_Monkey]

I’d keep it quit, government find a way to tax it.

[12th_Monkey]

the faster one goes, the slower time moves while a fixed observer will have normal time. Not really time travel in the since a person jumps from a moment of present time to the past or future.

And it takes a lot of energy to accelerate toward the speed of light, which is theoretically impossible in “normal” space.

[12th_Monkey]

Hawking is working on it....

[12th_Monkey]

which, proves these predictions are all BS. Unless a common sense virus is developed and released in the voting majority, ain’t going to happen....