Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers

Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey.

Two physicists from Michigan Technological University, Robert J Nemiroff and Teresa Wilson, have written an article, Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers.

Abstract:

Time travel has captured the public imagination for much of the past century, but little has been done to actually search for time travelers. Here, three implementations of Internet searches for time travelers are described, all seeking a prescient mention of information not previously available. The first search covered prescient content placed on the Internet, highlighted by a comprehensive search for specific terms in tweets on Twitter. The second search examined prescient inquiries submitted to a search engine, highlighted by a comprehensive search for specific search terms submitted to a popular astronomy web site. The third search involved a request for a direct Internet communication, either by email or tweet, pre-dating to the time of the inquiry. Given practical verifiability concerns, only time travelers from the future were investigated. No time travelers were discovered. Although these negative results do not disprove time travel, given the great reach of the Internet, this search is perhaps the most comprehensive to date.

(ht: Maureen Eckert)

Curves in spacetime violate Heisenberg's uncertainty principle

Curves in spacetime violate Heisenberg's uncertainty principle

Jay Mark Johnson’s unusual camera emphasizes time over space

Jay Mark Johnson’s very unusual camera emphasizes time over space.:

The abstract-seeming images here are not the result of some wacky Photoshopping. Jay Mark Johnson’s photos are actually incredibly precise. The reason they look like this is because he uses a slit camera that emphasizes time over space. Whatever remains still is smeared into stripes, while the motion of crashing waves, cars and a Tai Chi master’s hands are registered moment by moment, as they pass his camera by. Like an EKG showing successive heartbeats, the width of an object corresponds not to distance or size, but the rate of movement. Viewing the left side of the picture is not looking leftward in space but backward in time.

Rian Johnson Builds a Better Time Machine - NYTimes.com

Rian Johnson Builds a Better Time Machine - NYTimes.com

A Conversation With My 12 Year Old Self: 20th Anniversary Edition

The Most Horrifying "Crawling Over a Pile of Your Dead Alternate Selves" Scene Ever Filmed

From io9.com: The Most Horrifying "Crawling Over a Pile of Your Dead Alternate Selves" Scene Ever Filmed:

The clip actually comes from 2009's Triangle, which I'd actually thought was just a standard "trapped on a boat with a killer" movie, with a bit of weirdness here and there. The movie starts out that way, and then turns into a trippy film about a time-loop in which a woman keeps running into her slasher self from another version of the loop. (That's Jess, watching her alternate self kill another alternate self in the clip above.)

The Doctor explains how time works

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff.

?sdrawkcab gnivil

@keithfrankish: How do you know you're not living backwards, with amnesia and precognition?

Harold Ramis Responds on Groundhog Day

Harold Ramis Responds on Groundhog Day:

"A writer at Wolf Gnarls calculated that Bill Murray spent exactly 8 years, 8 months and 16 days stuck in a time loop in the movie Groundhog Day. According to Heeb Magazine, the writer and director of the 1993 film Harold Ramis disputes those findings.

“I think the 10-year estimate is too short. It takes at least 10 years to get good at anything, and, alloting for the down time and misguided years he spent, it had to be more like 30 or 40 years… People [i.e. spaz] have way too much time on their hands. They could be learning to play the piano or speak French or sculpt ice”

Duncan Jones' SOURCE CODE drops a trailer

Duncan Jones' SOURCE CODE drops a trailer:

When decorated soldier Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up in the body of an unknown man, he discovers he’s part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. In an assignment unlike any he’s ever known, he learns he’s part of a government experiment called the “Source Code,” a program that enables him to cross over into another man’s identity in the last 8 minutes of his life. With a second, much larger target threatening to kill millions in downtown Chicago, Colter re-lives the incident over and over again, gathering clues each time, until he can solve the mystery of who is behind the bombs and prevent the next attack.

Bootstrap paradox

Bootstrap paradox

The bootstrap paradox is the paradox arising, if time travel is possible, relating to the existence of information and objects not created at any specific instant of time but instead traveling in a time loop. In simpler terms, an object is brought back in time, and it becomes the object that was initially brought back in time in the first place. Numerous science fiction stories are based on this paradox, which has also been the subject of serious physics articles.

The term "bootstrap paradox" refers to the expression "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps", based on a Munchausen story; the term was popularized by Robert A. Heinlein's story By His Bootstraps.

Andy's Anachronisms -- Time Travel Reviews

Andy's Anachronisms -- Time Travel Reviews: "On the net since 1999, Andy's Anachronisms is devoted to exploring the themes of time travel and alternate history in books, movies, television, and pop culture in general."

Is this evidence that we can see the future?

Is this evidence that we can see the future?: "A controversial paper claims to provide experimental evidence for human precognition – and it's been accepted by a leading social psychology journal

"

Time Machines (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Time Machines (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Temporal Consciousness (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Temporal Consciousness (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

The Man Who Folded Himself - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Quotes:

The Man Who Folded Himself - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Daniel Eakins inherits a belt from his uncle that allows him to travel in time. This results in a series of time paradoxes, which are only resolved by the existence of multiple universes and multiple histories. Eakins, who repeatedly encounters alternate versions of himself, finds himself in progressively more bizarre situations. Much of the book deals with the psychological, physical, and personal challenges that manifest when time travel is possible for a single individual at the touch of a button. Eakins repeatedly meets himself; has sex with himself; and ultimately cohabitates with an opposite-sex version of himself. He spends much of his own contorted lifetime at an extended party with dozens of versions of himself at different ages, before understanding the true nature of the gathering, and his true identity.

This message was sent to you by petemandik via Diigo

Time Travel and Modern Physics

Updated article from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Time Travel and Modern Physics

[Revised entry by Frank Arntzenius and Tim Maudlin on December 23, 2009.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
Time travel has been a staple of science fiction. With the advent of general relativity it has been entertained by serious physicists. But, especially in the philosophy literature, there have been arguments that time travel is inherently paradoxical. The most famous paradox is the grandfather paradox: you travel back in time and kill your grandfather, thereby preventing your own existence. To avoid inconsistency some...

Reality Jockey TimeCruising

YouTube interview about the production of the RjDj TimeCruising scene
in coop with techno legend Carl Craig: http://bit.ly/VfUiL

http://twitter.com/rjdj/status/3403247508

Sent from my iPhone

Palindromy and Time-Reversals

Anyone who watched a film run backwards is well aware of the phenomenal differences that temporal orderings make. However, as Egan explored magnificently in Permutation City, the time-reversal of one's own mind need not give rise to any introspectible differences.

Here's a palindromic film: playing it backwards would yield the same film experience.



Though not palindromic, I can't help but be reminded of the "Patience" episode of Wonder Showzen. (Warning, if you've never seen Wonder Showzen before, "Patience" may not be the best introduction.)

MTV Shows

Mr. Freeze, the Iced-Time Demon

Fear of a Blue Planet


Originally uploaded by Pete Mandik

1. Meet Mr. Freeze

Mr. Freeze is an iced-time demon. Mr. Freeze exists outside of my subjective time. He has the power to change the amount of objective time it takes for subjective time to pass. Among other things, Mr. Freeze can freeze my subjective time without my noticing. Mr. Freeze might freeze subjective time by not just freezing me, but also anything in my perceptual environment (clocks, etc.). Thawed time occurs when subjective time is in perfect step with objective time. Iced time comes in two flavors. The first occurs when subjective time is frozen relative to objective time. The second occurs when objective time is frozen relative to subjective time.



2. Iced Time: Flavor the First

Between any two subjective instants (subjective temporal units of zero duration) Sn and Sn+m, Mr. Freeze can insert a non-zero amount of objective time without my noticing. And he can insert two non-zero duration units of objective time without my noticing. And he can insert three. Leaping inductively, it follows that Mr. Freeze can insert an infinite amount of objective time between any two subjective units without my noticing. Suppose that it is now subjectively noon. How much objective time will pass before subjective noon+m? An infinite amount. Will I notice that noon+m objectively effectively never arrives? No, I will not. How much objective time needs to pass for me to have a subjective experience as of time passing? None at all. Effectively, no objective time needs to pass at all for me to have a subjective experience as of the passage of time.



3. Iced Time: Flavor the Second

Just as Mr. Freeze can insert units of objective time between my subjective units, he can remove them. Between any two subjective instants (subjective temporal units of zero duration) Sn and Sn+m, Mr. Freeze can remove a non-zero amount of objective time without my noticing. And he can remove two non-zero duration units of objective time without my noticing. And he can remove three…[insert inductive leap here]. Mr. Freeze can remove an infinite amount of objective time between any two subjective units without my noticing. Now it’s objective time that has been frozen and my own life can pass, in its entirety, in (objectively) no time at all.



4. Objective Time: Who Needs It?

If certain assumptions of multiple realizability and the computational theory of mind are true, then my entire mental life can be structurally isomorphic to a computer program which, when run, will have phenomenal consciousness just as I do. And if the stuff about Mr. Freeze and iced time in 1, 2, and 3 are true, then whatever structures are realized by objective temporal relations can be realized by non-temporal relations. Thus, the program doesn’t even need to be run. Just sitting, inert, written on a (very large) disc, the static un-run program suffices for the instantiation of the entirety of my time consciousness.