Time Travelers predicting Pope Francis’ inauguration? Or the previously undiscovered Comet ISON? Not likely, researchers say.
Somewhere between Back to the Future pt. 2 and 3, a wild hypothesis was born. If time travelers from the future lived here today, had they slipped up on social media—and posted about something that hadn’t yet happened?
At least, that was the question at the heart of Michigan Technological University’s latest research.
From Mashable:
The strategy behind the study was relatively simple. The duo searched for terms that described items or events that had specific names, or events and items of historical importance. The study centered around two main search labels: Comet ISON and Pope Francis.
Comet ISON was discovered in September of 2012, and no other comet had ever gone by the same name, according to the study. The situation was similar in the case of Pope Francis. When the Argentinian priest was selected to serve as the leader of the Catholic Church, he chose the name “Francis,” the first time any pope had ever used that name. Any mention of “Pope Francis” before his inauguration would therefore serve as “potentially prescient evidence of time travelers from the future,” the study reads.
Researchers reported that using social networks like Facebook and Google+ were difficult to index. Not because of search terms, but privacy settings. Researchers looked on Twitter using keywords, and hashtags like #popefrances and #cometison. The objective was to find prescient tweets ahead of their time, where no one could have possibly known in advance.
Although the researchers admit the study, a first of it’s kind, wasn’t the final answer on the subject. Citing different search times, and an objective definition over what future-based information a potential time traveler would have leaked, (or the premise that a time traveler would have posted on a social media site at all) researchers admitted they can’t rule out potential time travelers, in our time, definitively—giving us a cool, fresh premise for Terminator 5! (Erm, no, Terminator 5 is set to come out in 2015)
So, it looks like there were no significant, time-traveling voices posting hints from the future on Twitter. Although it’s a bit of a bummer, a Delorean Limo still makes us hopeful about Time Travel:
…wait, did you say ‘Delorean Limo’? This changes EVERYTHING!