3 Insane Ways We've Tried to Find Time Travelers [Science]

Source: YouTube

Do time travelers exist? If they exist, how do we find them? Those are the questions people have asked since the concept of time travel was first conceived. If people could travel through time, they should have been here by now, but it's possible they've been hiding. Several people have come up with ideas on how to find them, and here are three of the craziest.

1. Time Travel Convention - On May 7, 2005, Amal Dorai and other students at MIT threw a time travelers convention. The convention was to be the first and only one thrown, simply because the organizers argue any future time travelers can go back to the same party an infinite number of times. The invitation encouraged posting the coordinates on social media, and also on pieces of paper to put in time capsules and obscure books in the library. They roped off a section of the volleyball court to serve as the landing pad. About 450 people showed up, but none of them claimed to be time travelers or brought any future technology like cures for cancer or cold fusion. Although one guy did bring a DeLorean.

Arriving in style in a DeLorean

Why Didn't It Work? Maybe the time travelers have their own secret convention. The convention was also potluck and alcohol-free, so that might have put a kibosh on it as well. Come on, let the time travelers live a little.

2. Time Travel Party - Stephen Hawking wanted to meet time travelers, so he decided to throw a party to see if any showed up. On June 28, 2009, he created a rather beautiful invitation, put out some nice hors d'oeuvres, and served champagne. But how could he make sure only time travelers showed up? Easy: he didn't announce the party until after it was over. Ain't no party like a time traveler party 'cause a time traveler party don't stop! Well, apparently not, because no one showed up.
Why Didn't It Work? Giant Freaking Robot gave a pretty good overview of why the party may have failed besides "time travelers don't exist." They include anything from the invitations not lasting long enough to reach future time travelers to time travelers deciding not to show up. Maybe Hawkings' party wasn't cool enough.


3. Social Media - In the movies, one of the main ways time travelers are caught is when they accidentally mention something from the future. That may have been the thinking of Robert Nemiroff and Teresa Wilson. While working in the physics department of Michigan Technological University, they decided to see if time travelers slipped up the same way on the Internet. They searched Facebook, Twitter, and Google for any mention of things before they happened like "Comet ISON" before it was discovered in September 2012 or "Pope Francis" before his coronation in March 2013. They couldn't find any.

Internet-tested, time traveler-approved

Why Didn't It Work? Maybe time travelers are smart enough not to use modern social media to talk about their exploits. Not sure what they expected to find, maybe the following conversation on Twitter:
@MMcfly: hey, u going to coronation of Pope Francis?
@DrWho: that won't happen for another 5 yrs
@MMcfly: OMG my bad lol

Of course, there's also the possibility that all these tricks did work, but not in our timeline. In an alternate timeline, thousands of time travelers walked into Hawkings' party, the convention was mobbed with flying cars, and Twitter exploded with #fromthefuture messages from time travelers. We just live in a sucky alternate reality.

What do you think of these experiments? How would you find time travelers?

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