Can Physicists Find Time Travelers on Facebook? - Robinson Meyer - The Atlantic - 0 views
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the two scoured Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and a few other websites to find “prescient information”—that is, tweets and statuses about current events posted before the events became current. The only way someone could write such a post, they reasoned, is if they were visiting… from the future.
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(Histories of bright comets have been “generally well kept by societies and journals around the world,” they write.)
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Attention, Facebook and Google+: Your social network’s crappy search is preventing humanity from finding time travelers from the future.
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Pope Francis.” Once they consulted the blog post it advertised, though, they the tweet “deemed overtly speculative and not prescient.”
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But that doesn’t quite mean anything. The authors admit that the study might have failed for many reasons: Time travelers might not have the ability to physically adjust the past; they might not have posted about the events the authors were looking for; they might have posted about the events but not turned up in a search. Time travelers might have also read the study or this news story about it, and been sure to making avoid any careless mistakes.
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[G]iven the current prevalence of the Internet, its numerous portals around the globe, and its numerous uses in communication, this search might be considered the most sensitive and comprehensive search yet for time travel from the future.