Internet Search Yields No Evidence of Time Travelers

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You can find anything on the internet, right? A new study reveals, however, that you can't find evidence of time travelers on the internet. Credible time travelers, that is.

The study was conducted by astrophysicist Robert Nemiroff who is part of the Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) team, along with some of his students from Michigan Technological University.

They did three separate types of searches, and developed a search strategy based on what they call "prescient knowledge." They looked for discussions on social media and various websites where there might be evidence of a mention of something or someone before people should have known about it. If they were able to find evidence of that, it could indicate that whoever wrote it had traveled from the future.

They selected search terms relating to two recent phenomena, Pope Francis and Comet ISON, and began looking for references to them before they were known to exist.

First, they looked for specific terms on Twitter, then secondly looked for "prescient" inquiries submitted to a search engine, and the third search involved a request for a direct Internet communication, either by email or tweet, pre-dating to the time of the inquiry.

The team used a variety of search engines, such as Google and Bing, and combed through Facebook and Twitter.

Their results? "No time travelers were discovered,"

says the abstract of their paper.

"In our limited search we turned up nothing," Nemiroff said in a

press release.

"I didn't really think we would. But I'm still not aware of anyone undertaking a search like this. 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."

So far, no lottery winners have confessed to using time travel to make their winnings.

In the case of Comet ISON, there were no mentions before it was discovered in September 2012. They discovered only one blog post referencing a Pope Francis before Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected head of the Catholic Church on March 16, but it seemed more accidental than prescient.

In the third part of their search, the researchers created a post in September 2013 asking readers to email or tweet one of two messages on or before August 2013: "#ICanChangeThePast2" or "#ICannotChangeThePast2."

No replies have been given ... yet.

And just in case you're wondering

credible

time travelers do not include the two "chrononauts"

who said they time traveled with a young Barack Obama.

Nemiroff and physics graduate student Teresa Wilson will present their findings today, Monday, Jan. 6, at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, DC.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com