Design method for detecting travelers in the network time

Two physicists of the University of Michigan published a paper that describes a practical methodology to find travellers in time, using the Internet. "Travel in time have captured the public imagination for much of the last century, but it has done little to find travellers in time", says the document published on arXiv.

The study evaluated three methods to make searches on the Internet looking for mentions 'clairvoyant' information not available previously. The first method covers searches on Twitter, the second in search engines like Google or Bing, and the third direct communications via the Internet, by e-mail or Twitter.

“If a time traveler from the future accessed the Internet from recent years, they could have left clairvoyant content that persists today,” note researchers Robert J Nemiroff and Teresa Wilson.

Two search terms were used: comet ISON and Pope Francis. The comet was discovered on September 21, 2012, so the name began to be used since then. The researchers looked for mentions of the comet prior to that date, as possible clairvoyant content from the future.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis was elected on March 16, 2013, being the first pope to use that name and therefore it is a relatively unique search term. As in the previous case, mentions of Pope Francis were searched before March 16 of last year.

After investigation, “no time travelers were discovered”, says the document. “Although the negative results reported here could indicate that time travelers from the future are not among us and cannot communicate with us through the modern Internet, it does not mean that it is proof,” the paper adds.

There may be other reasons why no traces of travelers were found, such as the possibility that it is physically impossible to leave information in the past by still unknown physical laws, or that travelers do not want to be discovered and are very good at covering their tracks, for example.

Link: Doc travelers in the network time.