Researchers use Twitter to help search for time travellers

A group of researchers at Michigan Technical University have began scouring the internet for evidence that time travellers from the future are among us. When Facebook and Google+ failed to offer any evidence of time travel, the researchers turned to Twitter. Unfortunately, Twitter offered the same results, or lack thereof.  

Whether or not time travel is even physically possible remains to be seen. But researchers at Michigan Technical University have already started scouring the internet for evidence that we’ve been visited by tourists from the future. The theory is that anyone who has moved backwards through space-time may have left their mark by tweeting, updating Facebook or posting on Google+ (who knows, maybe it’s super popular in the future). The team began looking for mentions of two particular terms, “comet ISON” and “Pope Francis” before they would have entered our lexicon on September 21, 2012 and March 16, 2013, respectively. The ability to backdate Facebook posts and the fact that Google Trends only picks up popular terms limited he effectiveness of those particular tools, but that did not deter the researchers.