Physics: Do artifacts exist that prove time travel is real?
Skeptics have pointed out that if traveling through time ever became possible that we would see evidence of it all around us. Indeed, time travelers would be walking amongst us! They argue, correctly, that once time travel has been achieved that it will have always existed because the event occults causality.
Their argument is logical and must therefore lead to the question: does evidence exist that time travel is real?
There are clues that time travel exists—trails that wind their way back into the misty dawn of creation. These hints, scattered throughout the eons, lead inexorably to one answer: the reality of time travel is a definite maybe.
The field of science—especially physics—is not based on a dogmatic belief system. Believing that something exists simply because there is a desire for it to exist does not create insight or add to human knowledge. As an example, most of the so-called “science” of the paranormal falls into this category.
Yet dismissing the possibility of something out of hand is just as dogmatic. Any scientist that arbitrarily dismisses the possibility of anything is a bad scientist. Everything must be weighed by probability. The probability that a meteor is going to crash into your backyard in the next five minutes is exceedingly slim, yet it’s still possible.
Timeless mysteries
Countless articles and books have been written over the decades about impossible artifacts: technologies that seem out of place in certain historical eras; anomalous depictions of future technologies within art and literature describing machines that wouldn’t exist until hundreds or thousands of years in the future; machined artifacts discovered in quarries and coal mines millions of years old.
Author and researcher Michael Cremo has written several books cataloging anomalous discoveries and documenting them with eyewitness accounts, original newspaper articles and unaltered photographs. Many of the “impossible” artifacts discovered over the past 200 years still exist: they are gathering dust in the basements of some of the world’s most prestigious natural history museums!
What is one to make of a machined screw found embedded in a lump of coal estimated to be 60 million years old? How did the screw get there? Who dropped it in a swamp bed that became a coal bed tens of millions of years later?
There can only be three possible answers:
Non-humans visiting the planet accidentally dropped it, or,
The science of the history and origins of Mankind is completely wrong and the human race existed many tens of millions of years ago and had a very advanced society that collapsed into barbarism, or,
Time travelers from the future surveying the prehistoric past accidentally lost a screw. Sixty million years later coal miners discovered it by accident.
One could make an argument that the discovery of the screw was an elaborate hoax, yet that would fly in the face of the actual documented facts. And the screw is not the only anomalous object discovered in “impossible” places. Bells, jewelry, machined alloys, remnants of unknown languages dug up in rock quarries, these and other artifacts have been tripped over by workmen, miners and excavators for hundreds of years.
With so many artifacts, fossils and discoveries made that are obviously out of place with the time line accepted by orthodox science, it tends to lend credence to the hypothesis that the existence of these objects is due to time travelers that unintentionally left traces of their passage.
Future past
Artifacts are one category of anomalous discoveries. The arts are another clue. One of the most famous examples are the reliefs found at the temple of Abydos in Egypt.
While much controversy has erupted over these images, it is fair to say that debunking them as misinterpretations is tantamount to sweeping the visual proof under the rug as it doesn’t conform to the established hierarchy of knowledge. And while a strong case can be made that DaVinci’s diagrams and blueprints of future technology came from an especially creative, fertile mind, no such argument can be made for the artists that left their singular visions on a wall at Abydos. Archaeological experts do not contest their authenticity, just that what they depict is not what they depict.
Other examples abound and can be found in ancient art on display at many of the great museums of the world.
The gullibility factor
A factor that hurts serious investigation of anomalies that point to possible proof of time travel are the odd artifacts that do have a very easy explanation. Unfortunately, many untrained, gullible people will take the most extreme view with no knowledge of a subject. They tend to automatically believe the most sensationalized claim and fail to exercise any critical thinking.
A case in point is the ongoing argument over the photo of an alleged time traveler spotted in a black and white archival photograph taken in Canada sometime between 1940 to 1941. [photo]
When the photo came to light in March, 2010, many ‘researchers” immediately jumped on the band wagon and saw a time traveler where none exists.
At first glance the photo does look odd. A man is in the crowd of onlookers watching a bridge re-opening ceremony that seems not only out of place, but out of time. His clothes look odd, a pair of sunglasses look like a style from the 1980s, and he seems to be carrying a modern 35mm camera with a large telescopic lens—a type of camera that didn’t really come into vogue until the early to mid-1970s.
The first question that a curious investigator might ask is, “Why would a time traveler be attending the re-opening of a bridge outside of a small community in Canada?” The obvious answer is that unless something remarkable happened at the event, he probably wouldn’t be there. A quick check proves nothing remarkable happened.
So why does he look so out of place? Why does his clothing, sunglasses and camera look so futuristic? The answer is they don’t. Everything he is wearing and the camera he is carrying all existed during the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Kentoro Mori has done an excellent job deconstructing the sensationalism some “researchers” have brought to this rather innocuous photograph. Step-by-step he analyzes it and pretty much proves that the ” … man with what appears to be very modern sunglasses seems to be wearing a stamped T-shirt with a nice sweater, all the while holding a portable compact camera!” is just an ordinary guy from that time period who happens to be wearing a Montreal Maroons hockey team sweatshirt—[logo here] a team that disbanded in 1938. He goes on to dispel the uproar over the glasses by explaining that sunglasses of that type were being sold then and different styles were worn by mountain climbers, motorcyclists and welders.
Because of the shadow, the camera is a bit difficult to make out. At first glance it does resemble a modern 35mm camera. But diligent investigation on his part reveals that what the “time traveler” is clutching is nothing more futuristic than a Kodak Folding Pocket camera available since the early part of the last century. For his complete and excellent analysis of the time traveler who never was go here.
Muddying the waters: hoaxes
Hoaxes are always a problem, whether the anthropological “Hoax of the Century” of the Piltdown Man, or Dr. Frederick Cooks’ bogus claim of reaching the North Pole.
Probably the biggest hoax to emerge in the research to determine if time travel and time travelers are real is the ongoing case of “John Titor.” (explanatory website here]
Back in November of 2000, a person identifying himself as John Titor began posting on several newsgroups. He claimed he was from the year 2036 and on a mission to the past (our present at the time). He immediately created a huge following; many of the participants were scientists in the fields of physics, information technology and cybernetics.
His main contention was that he had to go into the past—back to the 1970s—to procure an obsolete part for an obscure IBM mainframe computer. Although he was immediately challenged on this, several old-timers in the computer industry claimed that what he was seeking actually did exist back then, but only a relative handful of computer engineers knew of it. This shot his credibility way up.
Then he posted, at the urging of the people conversing with him on the newsgroups, several photographs of his time machine that he said used two micro-black holes created by the CERN accelerator (which just powered up late last year). The time machine, that he designated as a “C204,” was manufactured by General Electric.
He produced a photo of a pocket laser aimed near the time machine unit. The light ray bent from the gravitic effect of the mini-black hole …or so he claimed.
The photos caused a sensation and a furious debate broke out between the followers of John Titor. After spending almost five months posting to the groups and responding to questions about the future, he announced that his stopover with his parents (who were younger than him in the time line) had ended and he was returning to the future. His last post was March 21, 2001. After that no one has ever heard from him again.
The controversy over this amazing episode in the existence of actual time travelers has still not ended. Yet, almost all of his “predictions” have fallen flat. A short video reviewing the hoax has been produced. You may see it here.
Does time travel exist?
The probability of time travel existing is unknown; the possibilities are endless. As has been pointed out, if time travel is ever accomplished then it exists throughout time. Knowing that it is possible and that the universe is already billions of years old, it is conceivable that some other civilization has already manipulated time and perhaps even found ways to travel though it. If that is the case, then time travel already exists.
We are a young race orbiting a third generation star on the outskirts of our galaxy. To declare that time travel is impossible—or that almost anything is impossible—would be shutting the doors on reason and imagination. It would also be the height of arrogance.
In a sense we are all time travelers, like flotsam drifting with the current of the Mississippi River. When we learn how to swim upstream then we will have the answer to the question.
Links
Museum of forbidden archaeology
Michael Cremo
Anomalous artifacts
Out of place artifacts site <http://s8int.com/>
Abydos
Time traveler caught in museum photo?
John Titor
