The Time Traveler’s Party

Hello everyone! Before reading ahead int the article, I would like to inform you that this article includes my personal opinions as the writing may seem informal, at least less formal compared to my other articles. This article was one of my first for a long time, so it was slightly rushed and may be a poor quality article, sorry!

In the scorching summer days of June, 2009, Stephen Hawking came up with a brilliant idea. He called this, “The Time Traveler’s Party”.

The Time Traveler’s Party was an event in which Hawking wrote numerous invitations, all of which spoke about meeting up at the University of Cambridge. There was one twist however, Stephen Hawking only gave out the invitations after the date had passed. The idea was that these slips of papers would most likely go on to last for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years, and if any time traveler ever saw the date for which the card had stated, they would end up showing up. Because Stephen Hawking only handed out the cards after the date for the party had passed, the only people who would know when and where the party was would be time travelers. It wasn’t until at a science fair around 3 years later would he disclose that no one showed up and thus disproved the existence of time travel for at least the next hundred years.

Other Then Paper?

As something other then paper will definitely survive longer than the original 100 years.

Here’s where the what if kicks in. These pieces of paper can only last so long, and it is likely that not many of them are framed and are currently being shown to the public, so this brings up my thoughts and questions – if the invitation was never shown to anybody but the few who received it, how would anyone in the future know about the party?

I will express my thoughts and type them down as if I was talking to you in person. My revised plan uses the same premise as described by Stephen Hawking, being to only inform people after the given date, therefore no one can possibly show up if they are living in our reality. This may get confusing, but is an interesting experiment to test the barriers of what we do and don’t understand about our world. So if we want a relic that is guaranteed to last more than just the proposed hundreds of years with Hawking’s pieces of paper, we need to use an object that will inevitably become a landmark of some sort, and a solid one at that. The primary reason a landmark is better than an invitation is due to its supposed outstanding features, the certain aspects of a place or thing that attracts attention. This is already visible in places such as The Stone Henge or The Georgia Guide Stones. These are massive structures that were made to last an eternity.

…A Time Traveling Pillar…

The supposed idea is to create a landmark that can be both strong enough to last and tall enough to be seen.

So what if we made our own giant stone pillar in which has the date, time, and place where you are going to be, in secret obviously, having only a select few people in on what you’re planning on doing. The location of the party must be a very specific place. After making it, cover it up and put it in a secretive place—

Now picture this, sitting in an open field with just a few lights and wooden post holding up your hand drawn paper that reads, “WELCOME TO THE TIME TRAVELERS PARTY”. After sitting there for an hour, you record what you see and whether anybody actually showed up, these will be your results of the experiment which I will refer to later. After this, you pull out the monument you’ve been working on and place it where there is a lot of foot traffic, a place such as a very popular mall in the center of a major capital. A giant mark is sure to get people looking at it. This attraction made out of stone is sure to last the hundreds and thousands of years we want it to and who knows, maybe sometime in the future, this will lead someone to take a time machine back to your time. And when they do end up arriving at the same field with your lights and wooden post, that will end up proving time travel.

Picture it.

Those results you recorded on the paper? — To see if anyone showed up.

Why choose popular places? – As stated before, so people can see it and read it.

Why keep the invite a secret? – So you  know that everyone who shows up is legitimate.

“It’s a crazy idea, but one I believe will work. Maybe… Only time will tell.”

-Kevin