Bottles of the best French Champagne, tables full of canapés and cucumber sandwiches, balloons, banners and music. Stephen Hawkingthe famous theoretical physicist from the University of Cambridge, had everything ready to give the party of the century in June 2009. “I was waiting for a long time, but no one came,” explained a couple of years later. He wasn’t too surprised, especially since he only sent out the invitations after the party was already over.
And not by mistake: Hawking’s party was the first major celebration dedicated specifically to time travelers.
In 1992, Hawking had already proposed that time travel was impossible. So that afternoon party in the swamps of the River Cam was half an experiment to prove that the timetravelers They did not exist, half “trolling” all those theorists who thought that this type of trips could exist.
In reality, it was a joke that is inserted into the historical controversy of time travel. For all we know, all the time travelers could be in the pub across the street laughing at poor Hawking and his old anti-travel ideas. It is not likely, there I agree with Hawking; but, today, we cannot rule out that working hypothesis.
Everything (not) is on the internet
I suppose that, therefore, that of the English physicist has not been the only attempt to search for time travelers. A few years later, in 2014, a team of physicists from the Michigan Institute of Technology used the internet and social networks to look for clues about possible trips.
It was not about looking for people who defined themselves as “time travelers“, but to look for the trace of clairvoyance. That is, signs of people who knew things before they happened. The idea was to look for unequivocal messages, about things not previously known and significant enough to be recorded in the history books of the future.
They chose two facts that met these three characteristics: Comet ISON and the name that Jorge Bergoglio would choose during his papacy, Francisco. The search, needless to say, was fruitless. Only in the case of Pope Francis did they find a prior reference to the choice of the name, but after analyzing it they discovered that it was a merely speculative text.
Can you travel in time? The short answer is that we don’t know. The long answer is that, although it seems something banaldebates about the possibility of time travel continue to be a very controversial topic even today. And they remain so for a very simple reason: there is nothing in our scientific theories about the universe that prohibits per se this type of trips. Hence it is an exciting field full of theories, objections and counter-objections.
Someday we will have to return to the topic and talk about the current controversies in time travel. But today, since it’s Sunday, I just wanted to remind you that if you ever pass through Cambridge on June 28, 2009, there is a party to which you are invited. Toast us.
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