The Search for Time Travelers

I recently discovered a creative study conducted by the Physics Department at the Michigan Technological University titled "Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers". Although I doubt this was the paper's intended reaction for readers, I lol'ed multiple times while reading.

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1312/1312.7128.pdf

For their study, they searched the Internet for any digital signatures left by time travelers from the future. They specifically searched Twitter for "prescient" tweets, which were defined to be tweets regarding content that should have not been known at the time of the posting. After much deliberation, they chose to search for any tweets containing #cometison made before Sept 2012 or #popefrancis before March 2013.

Unfortunately, they found nothing.

Undeterred by their failures, they decided to try a different, more active approach to find time-travelers. During September of 2013 they published a message to all potential time travelers on a publicly available online bulletin. Time travelers were requested to respond with a tweet including either #ICanChangeThePast2 or #ICannotChangeThePast2 on or before August of 2013. If the time traveler tweeted #ICannotChangeThePast2, the traveler would be indicating that he did not have the ability to alter his own past (the "fixed history" theory). If the traveler tweeted the other term, he would be telling them that he did indeed have the ability to alter his own past (the "plastic history" theory). For any shy time travelers, they also included the option to email either of the 2 hashtagged terms to home.nemiroff@yahoo.com.

Again they received a total of 0 tweets/emails dated before August of 2013. However, as they made sure to include in their paper, they will NOT give up and "will continue to search, on occasion, for active tweets and emails involving potential time travel".

Aa;lskdkjvcx.

I just thought of something that I really want to attempt now. Would it not be insanely comical if I sent an email to home.nemiroff@yahoo.com with a message saying:

Dear Reader of the Year 2014:

#ICanChangeThePast3. Hello. I am from the Year 2078. While browsing online during a visit back to the year of 2014, I found a notice posted online on April 6th, 2014 addressed to all time travelers. In this post, you requested for any time travelers reading your post to send an email to this address with this hashtagged term. I understand you have not posted this notice yet, but you did.. or will. But you probably will not anymore. Because as I indicated with my #ICanChangeThePast3 term, I can change the past. So by writing this email, it is highly probably that I just made you not publish this post anymore.

Time travel was just released as a publicly available recreational activity yesterday in my time (01/01/2078), and in the last 24 hours, all hell has broken loose. The following are just a few of many results stemming from terrible time traveling mistakes made over the last day alone: Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on January 30th, 1933. Miley Cyrus was chosen for the role of Hannah Montana. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated on June 28, 1914 (WWI was never supposed to happen until 2027). Whitney Houston was found dead on February 11th, 2012. None of these events were supposed to occur.

Anyways, I am writing you an email right now for one reason and one reason alone. I decided to rewind the clock back exactly sixty-four years, exactly back to the day Michelle A. Tran (17) first seriously contemplated the idea of time travel. You must find her or the world as I have come to know it will be damaged beyond repair. She was the one who started this mess, and only she will know how to fix it. My modern version of Michelle disappeared a few years back to some unknown year to some unknown part of the world. I thought that my only chance to save the world would to come back to this year. 17-year-old Michelle is alive now, and her brain is working at its prime.

I cannot release my identity to you. I broke into Michelle's computer and am sending you this email from her address, but, no, I am not her. Please use this IP address to find Michelle. Whether she knows it or not yet, she holds the answers that can either save or destroy the universe. It's all up to whether you do something about it. Find Michelle, please. And you must hurry, because someone else might come before me and change history and end the world before you have the chance to do so. The universe is counting on you.

Good luck,
Anonymous Traveler from 2078

Lol. I really want to send this email.

Also, a few minutes ago I decided to look for any twitter posts containing the hashtagged terms #ICanChangeThePast2 or #ICannotChangeThePast2 and discovered a few recent humorous ones from fellow readers of this paper including the following:

LOL. I should really stop poking fun at this study though.

For anyone potentially offended at my jokes, please consider this blog post as further publicizing in favor of the Michigan Technological University's Physics Department. Yes, that's right. I am just continuing to spread the word around the Internet about this study so it will be easier for time travelers to stumble across the below instructions.

FOR ANY TIME TRAVELING READERS OUT THERE: In order to prove your existence to the world, please go back in time to sometime before August 2013 and tweet #ICanChangeThePast2 or #ICannotChangeThePast2 or send an email to home.nemiroff@yahoo.com.