How Do You Bust a Time Traveler?
Is there even such a thing as traveling through time
Time travel is thought to be impossible because of the paradoxes it would create, but secretly many hope it can be done. Imagine journeying to wonders of the ancient world such as Byzantium or the Great Library of Alexandria, or watching enormous saurians lumber about in the Mesozoic, or determining once-and-for-all what happened in the Kennedy assassination.
Discoveries at the quantum level daily teach us that our understanding of wave function collapse, entanglement (spooky-action-at-a-distance), time crystals, etc. is incomplete at best. In fact, our basic concept of the structure of matter will likely change greatly over the next century, especially if string theory proves out.
So too, what we “know” about time travel may be just as incomplete or wrong. Although it seems unlikely, it is fun to imagine that time travelers have already circulated among us.
A Time Traveler’s Tell
Time travelers who wish to reveal they are from the future could prove it to skeptics by describing technology unknown to us, or by announcing the exact closing numbers on the stock exchange for the next afternoon’s session.
But if the travelers wished to remain concealed, how would it be possible to detect them?
