Try and Catch a Time Traveler
On March 25, 2024, we will be watching the night sky for a penumbral lunar eclipse and incoming time machines. All are invited.
Note: Critical Time Traveler information in this story, has been updated and is now current in our August 2024 story for Medium.com, “On the Night of the Total Lunar Eclipse”. Please visit @KronoMoon there first.
Making contact with an extra-temporal or extra-dimensional being — human or humanoid — is not a difficult thing for one to imagine. We’ve seen it many times in many movies: The Time Machine (1960), La Jetée (1962), Back to the Future (1985), 12 Monkeys (1995), The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009), Interstellar (2014), A Wrinkle in Time (2018), Tenet (2020), Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022). Wikipedia.org lists hundreds of films on the subject, with new ones materializing every year. You could say there’s a big future in time travel.
Our modern conception of time travel was invented by H.G. Wells in his groundbreaking novel, The Time Machine, in 1895. More than a century and a quarter later, the idea of navigating through time still feels utterly remote, something in which we could never actually be involved, other than as science fiction. In the movie “Everything Everywhere”, and elsewhere in contemporary culture, the sense of being locked in one’s own time is an effect of one’s individual worldline or dimension. All of the worldlines together form a hypothetical multiverse. If constructs like “multiverse” are of interest to you, then you should also check out block universe theory, superdeterminism, Buddhism, and other models of time. Time travel stories are about leaping or teleporting from one moment to a nonadjacent one, especially from a later time to an earlier one. In speculative writing, “backwards” movement is termed retrograde. The late theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking once dubbed retrograde time travelers as “tourists from the future”. Here we will be calling them krononauts.
Even top thinkers have suggested the possibility of tourists from a future venturing back to our epoch (which to them would be ancient history). This is what the Krononaut Moon project is about — providing them, and you, a gentle nudge to give it a try. This is community time travel research, the citizen science and conceptual art of krononautics. Citing references on Wikipedia, the New York Times and other reputable sources, this article will introduce you to five independent (and counting), receptions, conventions, or landing parties for “Inhabitants of the Future”, that took place over the past four decades. They were located in five towns on three continents, beginning with the first in 1982 in Baltimore, Maryland, US, which was organized by local colleagues and me. These different communities were hoping to see their guests of honor make an appearance by stepping out of a time ship. An important distinction here is that these experiments are not science fiction. They are designed and carried out with the knowledge that a non-zero chance exists that time travelers could actually show up. If they don’t show up, they could transmit to us some kind of signal. The organizers and attendees are taking a role in a real-world test — whatever their individual motivations might be. Another important point is that this webpage, plus your reading and sharing of it, is integral to the information loop that is necessary for the delicate krononautical logic to work — in real time, so to speak. The research goes on, including right here.
Long-distance communication across time
What if we could reach out to these potential sightseers with some kind of text or letter of introduction, and schedule a meet-up? In theory, there is a simple method for transmitting a greeting to destinations arbitrarily deep into the future. Burying a time capsule is a practice as old as recorded history. Ancient burials have filled whole museums with ideas and objects that have weathered through thousands of years. They show that immense time is not necessarily a barrier to getting one’s word across. For future explorers, one need only to post a notice of when and where for them to show up. With a little luck, they will be there. It’s a logical thought experiment, but to date we have no tangible evidence proving that it can actually work. Nor do we have any proof that it can’t.
For anyone who doubts that symbolic language can persist for thousands of years, take a look at the Lascaux Cave Paintings in France. From only simple drawing tools, their beautiful images of horses, reindeer, bisons and extinct aurochs have been migrating steadily toward the postmodern era from the early days of Magdalenian culture — a span of 17,000 years. That’s 170 centuries, or the length of time between now and the year 19,023. You can do this.
Three basic steps for time traveler invitations
- Compose an appeal to sentient beings who do not yet exist, and who have gadgetry and time traveling machines that you can’t even imagine. You could begin it with, “Welcome Visitors from the Futures”, or some variation on that.
- Inscribe it on a gold or bronze plaque, carve it in stone, and lock it away in a cryogenic archive. You will need to have trust in its safe delivery to invitees who reside giga-eons away. At any time it could be intercepted on its long and lonely journey.
- Then, once it is unpacked, you will need to hope that its recipients respond favorably and grant your request for them to retro-teleport from their time to yours. At the least they could send back a note of regret.
You send out your invitation — your proverbial message in a bottle — intended for a technologically advanced intelligence. In preparation for the big night, you take lots of photos and properly document the process. Publish your notes in an article on Medium.com or Wikipedia.org, or record a podcast. Then, in a remote future, it could be decrypted or uncorked by a company of curious, sympathetic and way-distant friends…
Let’s take a pause here and turn the telescope around for a moment. There’s this way-distant company of friends that you are a member of. You and your colleagues are cruising around in your superluminal kronokraft, when an ancient artifact is unearthed claiming to be from the 2020s (AD). It’s some sort of primitive recording device, not as old as many cave paintings. It has a cheerful message for you and your friends, inviting you to come join the folks at a festivity called the Krononaut Moon. Now what?
Back to the present, these artifact unearthers just might possess the means and inclination (the sense of humor?) to answer your call. If they happen to have a time machine (a DeLorean, TARDIS, WABAC Machine, tesseract, time tunnel, wormhole, tachyon stream, antimatter, quantum teleportation, string theory, quantum entanglement, etc.) they could honor your invite and beam down to share a refreshing and sparkling glass of Rosé — which for them would be of an exceptional vintage. At the end of the night, under the full moon, you could jointly toss a new message into the ocean for all eternity.
Five known community time travel experiments, and counting
Historically, there have been a handful of these attempted encounters, in 1982, 2005 (twice), 2009, and 2023, so far. They all kept records of their longitude and latitude, the invitations they sent, and the guests who showed up, or didn’t. The experiments continue to rely on media reports (like this one) and archival records, unto perpetuity.
In coming years, more communities will be giving it a try. Who knows how many dry runs it will take before we intitiate an inter-ephochal conversation with our descendents, 99 generations removed? When Thomas Edison was struggling to find the best filament for his electric light bulb, his team laboriously tested “no fewer than 6,000 vegetable growths”, before settling on tungsten in 1910. As it’s been said, try, try again.
Several experiments have been carried out to try to entice future humans, who might invent time travel technology, to come back and demonstrate it to people of the present time.
— Wikipedia
Statistically, the more shouts we collectively make into time’s infinite void, and the greater the diversity of those shouts, the greater the probability of picking up a pulse from the beyond — a glimmer of recognition. Soon, anyone reading this will be able to link up for a primal howl in the moonlight.
- On March 9, 1982, before midnight (04:00 UTC) a group in downtown Baltimore, Maryland, US, identifying itself as “The Krononauts”, organized a gathering for “Visitors from the Futures”, at a large bookstore on N. Charles St. The project continues to evolve and is today known as Krononaut Moon, or KronoMoon.
(39.29609, -76.61539)
- On March 31, 2005 (04:00 UTC) a group at Forrest Place in Perth, Australia threw a party for “Inhabitants of the Future”, billing it as “Destination Day”.
(-31.9522, 115.8591)
- Two months later, on May 7, 2005 (May 8, 02:00 UTC) on the campus of MIT, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, a “Time Traveler Convention” was held.
(42.360007, -71.087870)
- On June 28, 2009 (12:00 UTC) in Cambridge, UK, renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking popped open a bottle of champagne at his evening’s Reception for Time Travelers. The next day he sent out invitations, and then reported that nobody had shown up.
[The esteemed Prof. Hawking’s sense of humor is in a rich tradition that dates back to 1899, and Alfred Jarry’s satirical How to Construct a Time Machine. Time travel discourse has always teetered on an edge of drop-dead funny and drop-dead serious.]
(52.21048, 0.10087)
- On March 24, 2023 (16:28 UTC) earlier this year, a podcaster for The Last Archive devised his own Party for Time Travelers. He sat alone with his microphone and recorder on an “Eagle Scout” park bench in front of the Dedham Public Library in Dedham, Massachusetts, US.
(42.247793, -71.175947)
- Next up on March 25, 2024 (07:13 UTC) Krononaut Moon and a Penumbral Lunar Eclipse, in a town near you.
In Dedham, MA, as at the other test sites, there was no absolute confirmation of a krononaut sighting. Despite the setbacks, a most excellent adventure was had by all involved. Years from now, when the umpteenth revision of this article is published on Medium.com, imagine how many personal recollections there will be from all the aspiring krononaut spotters at all the public libraries. This is an opportune moment for libraries to get back some of their long overdue books.
Chronologically, the Krononauts group (originally spelled Chrononauts) preceded other such efforts by more than two decades. Our prototype gathering for Visitors from the Futures was covered by the local press and the New York Times. (These awkward-sounding plurals — like “the futures”—are in accordance with the now-classic “Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics” or MWI, 1957/1970s.) Baltimore’s event took place under the full moon on March 9, 1982. The night was a Krononaut Moon, confirmed by a lunar calendar. I (your narrator) had been developing the project since the 1970s. You can glimpse a few of our artifacts on the Time Travel page of Wikipedia. You can also listen to the just-released podcast “The Krononauts” published by The Last Archive on Pushkin.fm.
Imagery
Nowadays the project is known as, Krononaut Moon: A Once-Yearly Celebration of Time, Timelessness & Time Travel, under the Full Moon nearest to the Northward Equinox.
The title is often styled as KronoMoon, which saves a few finger strokes. Graphically, we have been working up a logo design based on interlocking tori, suggesting chains of siloed universes. Let us know what you think.
A word from the experts
Truth be told, we know that most serious people have no serious interest in time travel. Even H.G. Wells, who popularized the idea in 1895, did not think it was possible. In our own time, theoretical physicist and mathematician Brian Greene is also a skeptic — but then, we need skeptics. In his influential 2007 book, The Fabric of the Cosmos, Greene writes:
The fact is, no one has shown that the laws of physics absolutely rule out past-directed time travel. To the contrary, some physicists have even laid out hypothetical instructions for how a civilization with unlimited technological prowess, operating fully with the known laws of physics, might go about building a time machine … The proposals bear no resemblance to the spinning gizmo described by H.G. Wells or Doc Brown’s souped-up DeLorean. And the design elements all brush right up against the limits of known physics, leading many researchers to suspect that with subsequent refinements in our grasp of nature’s laws, existing and future proposals for time machines will be deemed beyond the bounds of what’s physically possible. But as of today, this suspicion is based on gut feeling and circumstantial evidence, not solid proof.
Einsten himself, during the decade of intense research leading to the publication of his general theory of relativity [1915], pondered the question of travel to the past. Frankly, it would have been strange if he hadn’t.
Calculating the date of the Krononaut Moon
Content warning: This section is optional and gets deep into the weeds. Come back after four paragraphs.
The Krononaut Moon is always on the full moon and always on a night that is close to the March equinox, which usually occurs on the 20th of the month. The “northward equinox”, as it is better known today, is an important hour on nature’s clock, foundational to the sciences and world cultures going all the way back. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, the vernal equinox marks the onset of spring. To our friends in the down under, it is the autumnal equinox.
Astrologically, a full moon is always opposite to the sun (they are in opposing houses), with the Earth floating in between. Only rarely does a full moon show up directly on an equinox (although this will happen in March of 2038). KronoMoon is generally a few nights off of the northward equinox.
Depending on the year, the Krononaut Moon, whose date is moveable, shines brightest either a few nights before the northward equinox (in Virgo) or a few nights after (in Libra). On the night of March 25, 2024 (07:13 UTC), with the full moon in Libra, we shall also observe a penumbral lunar eclipse. Please step out that night for its cosmological splendor, along with the ritual drumming, dancing and howling.
In the following year, on March 14, 2026 (06:58 UTC), the full moon will undergo a total lunar eclipse, in Virgo. Mark your calendars for these celestial phenomena of the Krononaut Moon — every March, but occasionally in April. For this project, full moon dates and times are more critical than geographic location. You can observe KronoMoon from anyplace that works best for you and your purposes. That is, your peaceful, nature-loving, moon-loving, Earth-friendly, and cosmos-curious purposes.
To the future(s)
You are invited to observe the Krononaut Moon however you like, wherever you like, and with whomever you like, or with no one — whether you have a campfire on the beach, a radio telescope, a shoebox pinhole camera, or only your breath and your inner light. We’ll provide the lunar dates which you can use to gaze into your own cosmos and see who is there.
There have been two smart critiques of ”community time travel research” as it is presented here. Some have asked: If these experiments have been tried 5+ times, why do they need to be re-tested again? As with the story of Thomas Edison’s light bulb mentioned above, who can know how many tries it will take to catch a time traveler?
Another question is: Let’s say it’s all doable and krononauts have walked among us for ages. Why would they take on the risks of outing themselves at a public event? This is a good question. Who can know what the ideal safe conditions are for them to drop in or drop a note on us in our time? With a variety of beckonings at all scales and technologies — or none — the Visitors from the Futures can pick a local combination that works best for them. We hope that community groups, science organizations, arts centers and individuals will design their own time travel experiments for under the full moon on March 25, 2024.
During March and in every month, and in every phase of the moon, keep a hopeful eye on the stars and the future(s), welcoming all time travelers and ordinary beings.
written by Richard Tryzno Ellsberry
Conceptual artist, citizen scientist, and developer at Krononaut Moon
• KronoMoon.org (in beta) • Mastodon • Bluesky • Discord • Medium
• The Krononauts podcast episode on The Last Archive & Pushkin.fm
Please let us know of any errors or omissions in this article. KronoMoon.org (in beta) can be contacted via any of the bulleted links. This is our first piece for Medium.com, thanks. We’ll try and catch up with you again soon.
This story also appears on our website.