How would you know if there were actual time travelers from the future amongst us? This was what Astrophysicist Robert Nemiroff, a professor at Michigan Technological University and his students wanted to find out. The most obvious place to find them would be on the internet.

Here is how Nemiroff and his students decided to trace time travelers online. They decided that the internet was the logical place to hunt for them. A time traveler would have knowledge of things from the future and may mention them online before the event transpired. To test this hypothesis they considered two events that gained major internet exposure – Pope Francis and Comet ISON.

Then they set up a search for references to these two before the events came to be. After extensive scanning they found no references to the comet before September 2012 when it suddenly hit the scene. There was just one reference to a Pope Francis before Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected head of the Catholic Church on March 16. That too seemed more accidental that prescient.

After the study they concluded that currently there are no time travelers hiding out amongst us. Although I am sure that even if they were, they would not make such elemental slips that would get them caught! Still it was an interesting science project to indulge in even it was quite whimsical.