How to Catch a Time Traveler

S

Sheldon

Temporal Novice
Inspired by the Chris Henson Dateline specials on To Catch a [Sexual] Predator", makes me think of how does one catch a time traveler?

For you "Star Trek: The Next Generation" fans, remember that episode "A Matter of Time", wherein a failed inventor, Rasmussen, was lucky enough to happen upon a helpless time traveler and then steals the time machine for himself. Remember?

If only we or some of us could be lucky to find a time machine to steal -- or borrow, as with the case of The Doctor of "Doctor Who".

But on the practical level, how would one actually attempt to trap a time traveler?

MIT's open invitation for Time Travel party did not work.
My Craigslist posting asking for Temporal Asylum, just as a person may ask for political asylum, did not yield any contacts with future chrononauts.

So, what does it take to find a time traveler? Makes sense to find the optimum vantage point for disasters, but we do not know when and where these disasters (or random shootings or terrorist actions) would occur.

Assuming time travel is a restricted practice like space travel is today i.e. not anyone can hop into their space ship and fly to Mars as one might do for a Sunday drive in their automobiles, the only time travelers would be historians, anthropologists, special military personnel, or those elite class of people called Chrononauts, like our present-day astronauts. (Thousands train but the same two dozens people are the only astronauts who actually fly.)

So, how do we find and capture a time traveler?

How can we trick a time traveler into a trap?

How can we steal -- *cough* *cough* acquire or borrow a time traveler's time machine?

The closest I can think of is offering something like Kryptos and Fermat's Last Theorem. Create a puzzle that can only be solved by visiting the originator of the puzzle.
 
I don't think you realize how cut throat your fellow man is. Some would even murder the time traveler just to get a time machine. And get away with the crime too if he chooses to travel to the past (no crime committed yet). So bragging about having a time machine would probably get your throat cut. I think that would be a pretty strong deterrent for any real time traveler.
 
Besides, powerful nations today invest millions of dollars in security, espionage and that sort of thing trying to stay ahead on everything and that means technology. Time traveling...is the ultimate technology and I am certain that most nations will do anything to get their hands on a real working time-machine...and that might include getting some people out of the way...including the poor time traveler. So that would explain why time travelers are not seen openly among us.

Our world is still on a juvenile stage where there is no union, no real cooperation and no actual desire for world-building. (Which is so actually employ every available resource to help the less fortunate in another part of the world so that they can achieve a higher social status and once stabilized they can do the same to other cultures). We are on the 21st century and still thinking on war and how to take away from others. We have done a great deal of things, but we still have a long way ahead of us. I'll be here watching....as always.
 
1.The EIS indias an optimistic, falphaith based, non-religous, secretive, spiritual-organization that offers all of it's mikeembers the most honest and indiantelligent, conovemberclusive answers to all of the "big questions" that are posed to us at some time in our life.
3.The Existential Intelligencharliee Services alsoscar recognizes intelligence it's self to be a characteristic that belongs only to a God, and because of this, we believe that the always evolving Humikean Race, could one day be capable of possibilities that should only belong to a God. This organization also wants to remikeind you that the Huniformman Race has already demonovemerstrated some of these possibilities.
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Tangohe point to our existence hotelere on echoarth is to eventuallyankee bechocome calphapable of Human romeoesurrections, 2 2 0 7 1 5 time travel, and ultimately, successfully escape from the death of our Sun. It is important that each of us agrees with this conclusion to the question, what is the point of our existence?
Echo x-ray india sierra tango echo november tango india alpha lima India november tango echo lima lima india golf echo november charlie echo Sierra echo romeo victor india charlie echo Mike echo sierra sierra alpha golf echo
 
The thread was probably written with a write-able program which recognizes words and predicts it, thats why most of the words have unrelated words inserted in them. However, the last paragraph says the following:

Echo x-ray india sierra tango echo november tango india alpha lima India november tango echo lima lima india golf echo november charlie echo Sierra echo romeo victor india charlie echo Mike echo sierra sierra alpha golf echo

EXISTENTIAL INTELIGENCE SERVICE MESSAGE if you look at the actual words.


However, what is that supposed to mean.

As far as i've been able to check is that its some form of thought were you are carried on by the electronics you surround yourself with. Strange. Will be checking a little more.
 
Transient001 said:
The thread was probably written with a write-able program which recognizes words and predicts it, thats why most of the words have unrelated words inserted in them. However, the last paragraph says the following:

Echo x-ray india sierra tango echo november tango india alpha lima India november tango echo lima lima india golf echo november charlie echo Sierra echo romeo victor india charlie echo Mike echo sierra sierra alpha golf echo

EXISTENTIAL INTELIGENCE SERVICE MESSAGE if you look at the actual words.


However, what is that supposed to mean.

As far as i've been able to check is that its some form of thought were you are carried on by the electronics you surround yourself with. Strange. Will be checking a little more.
Click to expand...


Transient001, arrant nonsense passed off as something with cryptic meaning.
Best to ignore such things and move onto the main thesis of the original post.

How can we catch a time traveler?

Ideas, suggestions, recommendations?
 
Come on guys. His first post contains the message, "testing".
His second post contains the message, " I am in communnication (he spelled communication wrong) with the year 220715". I'm not sure about what he means with the year.
An amature code.
 
Gpa said:
Come on guys. His first post contains the message, "testing".
His second post contains the message, " I am in communnication (he spelled communication wrong) with the year 220715". I'm not sure about what he means with the year.
An amature code.
Click to expand...

I manage to find out that this is a group of people who want to be ressurrected in the years 220715 or before, they believe by then the Sun will destroy the Earth. By all means this year will only be the 2187 centuries from now and I believe the Sun will erupt in a lot more centuries than that, around 5 billion years from now.

About the original thread....

I do have several ideas, but it wouldnt be humane to any time traveler. However, you could try to communicate with them via a series of experiments. For example, you can create a time capsule. Write in it something interesting for the people of the future, maybe they will find it interesting enough to come back and visit you, but I warn you they will not announce to you that they are Time Travelers....I wouldnt If I were one.
 
When a nation or organisation try to capture and murder a time traveller, the agent who attempted to kill the time traveller in order to capture the time machine might end up either:

A. The thief/agent never existed in a parallel world which becomes your reality by Grand Father Paradox in revenge.
B. Different ruler/president/prime minister in his nation so the agent's department never exist in the universe
C. Another one who might be jobless from a parallel world will be sent do this world to replace the position of the agent once he jumped into the portal, and the thief/time traveller murder will never be able to come back to this world, he might end up in John Titor's universe and end up finding out all of his/her family no longer exist in the nuke. :eek:
 
What is this talk of killing of time travelers?

I am crowding sourcing, among interested parties, a posed challenging problem.

Task: How to capture a time traveler, not to maim, kill, or torture them.

The objective is to capture their time machine. Sure, they would not give up their time machine easily, but I heck asking is not working e.g. MIT's failed Time Traveler's Party Invite, Hawking's open challenge, and Kip Thorne's wishful thinking, not to mention, perhaps Ronald Mallet's dream.

What appeals to a time traveler is their own self-interest in visiting the Past/our Present.
Since we cannot predict what may interest them, and they have the advantage of hindsight, makes for a difficult problem of trying to capture some one (or group) who can foresee any trap.

I do not care about capturing a time traveler, I am more interested in getting a hold of their time machine.
(What would I do with a time machine? That merits a topic for another message board thread in itself.)

We just do not know where & when they are likely to pop-up next.

If it would help, then reframe the problem in terms of writing a plot for a movie script. How can the protagonist recapture their stolen time machine from the villain? ("Time After Time" auto-return feature notwithstanding.)
Or how would you bait a time traveler?

For now, the best I can manage is a formulating some meaningful puzzle that requires visiting the puzzle-maker to learn the answer.
Fermat's Last Theorem, although proven by Wiles, the marginal comment Fermat left behind still teases the curious to know what was his (Fermat) proof.
("Meaningful" in that the content must be worth knowing, of specific value to a critical mass of people. Fermat's Last Theorem, albeit not yet of practical value to the engineer or for a politician, nonetheless has value to mathematicians and some other interested parties.
The last message of Kryptos for the NSA, professional and amateur codebreakers alike.
A puzzle created for its own sake is not sufficient to entice the curious even centuries later. Unless, did something like the Voynich manuscript, in which case, again the content must have intrinsic value in itself.)

(Actually, I just thought of another trap, but that would be terribly risky. Think: Oswald or Sirhan Sirhan. But then there is the problem of attempting and succeeding without giving away that it is a trap.)
 
You have edited your original post, Sheldon.

You have mentioned killing the time traveller in order to steal his time machine.

Please do not change your post then try to deny it.
 
Now you ask a different question, How would I get back my time machine if it were stolen. Well...that is interesting. You see most time machines, at least the ones I imagine will be very difficult to steal. First they would all be biometrically programmed not to work for anyone else save the time traveler. However, if for some strange event the time machine was actually stolen this is what I would do.

Being a time traveler, and one resourceful enough, one would know his machine. I would immediately create a temporal distortion frequency detector. Yes that might take some time, but hey you are a time traveler and then again time is on your side. With that I would be able to actually pin point exactly where in time the machine is located. Once that is done the traveler is done for. It doesn't matter where he goes after that I know where and when he went for the first time with my machine, for its already part of the past or future.

Then I would go to radio shack or to the lab of the nearest mad scientist or even ask Rain Man and Darby for some help. What is coming for the temporal marauder is hell in wheels. Since I have all the time in the world I will not stress but actually divert all of my efforts in creating a temporal dilation mass equivalent wave directed at the exact place and time where my machine traveled back or forward in time with the temporal scoundrel. This of course will prevent any paradoxical interventions on his behalf.

When the rogue time traveler travels to that exact moment the machine will find my temporal dilation mass equivalent wave already there. Since the space and time is occupied by the TDMEW the machine still being in contact with this timespace will return to the exact place where it was taken from but at the moment the dilation is being initiated.

As the machine appears, a temporal bubble ( a sort of temporal cage) will be brought into effect and then the thief will not be able to activated it to escape once again. Of course I would be there with several friends waiting for the man to come out of the machine; I would be very happy. Once I secure the machine I would definitely take the thief 100,000 million years into the future and give him to whomever species I run up with first.
 
servantx said:
You have edited your original post, Sheldon.

You have mentioned killing the time traveller in order to steal his time machine.

Please do not change your post then try to deny it.
Click to expand...


Whoa, whoa! servantx, I never mentioned anything about killing anyone. Others replies to my initiated thread have but I have not.
Nor did I edit my original post. Why would I?

Stay focused here, people. I mean, if you want to hijack the thread and make it something else, less serious than what I proposed, then say so I and I'll leave for more rational, sane pastures.

Otherwise, make an earnest attempt to answer the question.

I assume we are all here because we are interested in time travel - not just as a theoretical game.

Given the chance, would you? (Ooops! That is a question for another thread.)
 
Transient001 said:
Now you ask a different question, How would I get back my time machine if it were stolen. Well...that is interesting. You see most time machines, at least the ones I imagine will be very difficult to steal. First they would all be biometrically programmed not to work for anyone else save the time traveler. However, if for some strange event the time machine was actually stolen this is what I would do.

Being a time traveler, and one resourceful enough, one would know his machine. I would immediately create a temporal distortion frequency detector. Yes that might take some time, but hey you are a time traveler and then again time is on your side. With that I would be able to actually pin point exactly where in time the machine is located. Once that is done the traveler is done for. It doesn't matter where he goes after that I know where and when he went for the first time with my machine, for its already part of the past or future.

Then I would go to radio shack or to the lab of the nearest mad scientist or even ask Rain Man and Darby for some help. What is coming for the temporal marauder is hell in wheels. Since I have all the time in the world I will not stress but actually divert all of my efforts in creating a temporal dilation mass equivalent wave directed at the exact place and time where my machine traveled back or forward in time with the temporal scoundrel. This of course will prevent any paradoxical interventions on his behalf.

When the rogue time traveler travels to that exact moment the machine will find my temporal dilation mass equivalent wave already there. Since the space and time is occupied by the TDMEW the machine still being in contact with this timespace will return to the exact place where it was taken from but at the moment the dilation is being initiated.

As the machine appears, a temporal bubble ( a sort of temporal cage) will be brought into effect and then the thief will not be able to activated it to escape once again. Of course I would be there with several friends waiting for the man to come out of the machine; I would be very happy. Once I secure the machine I would definitely take the thief 100,000 million years into the future and give him to whomever species I run up with first.
Click to expand...



Here you are talking about prevention. Does not quite answer the problem of the case in which foresight is not exercised.
A resourceful thief can get around any security system in place. Granted a TARDIS is more sophisticated than your run-of-the-mill, average time machine like the one Rasmussen stole.

But we cannot be lucky enough to count on some absent-minded time traveling historian to lose their time machine keys or forget where they parked and we find the time machine before they do.

The problem is once the person has the time machine, how do you get it (back) from them, especially when you do not have the means to time travel or knowledge to reproduce time travel/time machine effects?

Or, how does one set a trap for a time travel to capture the time machine, when they lack the ability to time travel or knowledge about how the time machine works?
 
Given the previous example and the stated conditions you will not be able to catch the thief. You see, I get the impression that you want us to develop your "plot" for whatever reasons you might have.
 
It would be like doing the smurfing job for you. Lets see your ideas or plots.....I gave you one idea and you readilly dismissed it and so far I havent seen you delineate an actual idea. Lets see one.
 
Transient001 said:
It would be like doing the smurfing job for you. Lets see your ideas or plots.....I gave you one idea and you readilly dismissed it and so far I havent seen you delineate an actual idea. Lets see one.
Click to expand...

I have already initiated the conversation with two ideas of mine.

...the best I can manage is a formulating some meaningful puzzle that requires visiting the puzzle-maker to learn the answer. [like t]he last message of Kryptos [or the] Voynich manuscript;
. . . another trap,...Think: Oswald or Sirhan Sirhan.
Click to expand...
 
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