The Time Traveler Convention
May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC)
East Campus Courtyard, MIT
42:21:36.025�N, 71:05:16.332�W
(42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees)
What is it?
Technically, you would only need one time traveler convention. Time travelers from all eras could meet at a specific place at a specific time, and they could make as many repeat visits as they wanted. We are hosting the first and only Time Traveler Convention at MIT in one week, and WE NEED YOUR HELP!
Why do you need my help?
We need you to help PUBLICIZE the event so that future time travelers will know about the convention and attend. This web page is insufficient; in less than a year it will be taken down when I graduate, and futhermore, the World Wide Web is unlikely to remain in its present form permanently. We need volunteers to publish the details of the convention in enduring forms, so that the time travelers of future millennia will be aware of the convention. This convention can never be forgotten! We need publicity in MAJOR outlets, not just Internet news. Think New York Times, Washington Post, books, that sort of thing. If you have any strings, please pull them.
Great idea, I'd love to help! What should I do?
Write the details down on a piece of acid-free paper, and slip them into obscure books in academic libraries! Carve them into a clay tablet! If you write for a newspaper, insert a few details about the convention! Tell your friends, so that word of the convention will be preserved in our oral history! A note: Time travel is a hard problem, and it may not be invented until long after MIT has faded into oblivion. Thus, we ask that you include the latitude/longitude information when you publicize the convention.
[...]
(Via Instapundit.)
In what is surely a related development, on Saturday Professor Ronald Mallett was the featured speaker for this year's National Gallery For Young Inventors in Akron Ohio:
Young inventors honored in Akron
Cancer-weakening spice, method to grow bone among teens' inventions
By Paula Schleis
[Akron] Beacon Journal staff writer
[...]
This year marked the 10th anniversary for the National Gallery for America's Young Inventors, one of the affairs that make Akron the ``City of Invention.''
[...]
The program began with a lively physics lesson by Ronald Mallett, a theoretical physicist at the University of Connecticut, who believes he's on the verge of building the world's first time machine.
With a slide show, laser pointer and a handful of props, Mallett turned the hall into his classroom. He talked about the Albert Einstein equations that suggest time travel is possible, and how the untimely death of Mallett's own father inspired him to prove Einstein was right.
Then, step by step, Mallett walked his captivated audience through his plan for creating a wormhole in a laboratory setting so he can send a neutron into a time warp.
[...]
A coincidence? Do you really think so?
Memo to superbeings of the distant future: If you've located an ancient time machine bequeathed to us by friendly aliens and will be bringing ancient celebrities to the party (Ezra, Plato, Julius Caesar, Jesus, Paul, etc.) and you need an interpreter -- well, look me up.
UPDATE (3 May): Joe Cathey comments. The wormhole method sounds promising, but let's not neglect the Tipler cylinder either. And Professor Mallett seems to be following an entirely different approach. I'm not picky; whatever works is fine with me.
Incidentally, National Public Radio is now covering the Time Traveler Convention.
UPDATE (4 May): Helenann Hartley comments. Also the Time Traveler Convention has now been covered by Yahoo!news. Sure makes me wish I still lived in Cambridge.
UPDATE (7 May): More here.
UPDATE (9 May): More here.
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