WikiCommons photo by Babiesan titled “Unidentified Flying Object“. Not a flying saucer, but a jellyfish in the order Leptothecata.
All are invited — past and future — to participate in lunar observations on the evening of Monday, March 25, 2024. The night will see a full moon with a penumbral lunar eclipse. It is also the night of the Krononaut Moon, with the annual anticipated arrival of Visitors From the Future(s), or a signal from them, as requested by our present-day experimenters.
Krononaut Moon 2024: March 25 will be illuminated by a full moon with a penumbral lunar eclipse. WikiCommons photo by Stephen Rahn
There is not yet an agreed-upon word for one of these inter-dimensional overtures to time traveler — when folks (in the present time) send out a message to recipients (in a distant future time) asking them to beam down for a friendly meet-up. Over the years, several phrases have been used, like “landing party” and “reception”. The basic logic holds that if and when time machines ever become a reality (or wormholes, quantum entanglements, CTCs — closed timelike curves) or whatever the technology will be, then the time travelers, or Krononauts, could set a destination to a time in their remote past when ancient peoples (who would be us) are waiting to welcome them. The landing coordinates would be conveyed through historical accounts and from invitations sent to them from their friends back here on Earth, 21st-c. For example, this piece for Medium.com, and your reading of it, is a link in a long chain of communications. It is a “letter to our future selves”, a veritable message in a bottle.
Several experiments have been carried out to try to entice future humans, who might invent time travel technology, to come back and demonstrate it to people of the present time.
You may have heard about one of these experiments.
On June 28, 2009, acclaimed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking (1942–2018), at Cambridge, UK, poured a glass of champagne while waiting for what he called “tourists from the future” to show up. He dubbed the occasion, a “Reception for Time Travelers”. As legend has it, he sent out no invitations until the day after it was over. Then he announced, sadly, that nobody had come to his party. A short video was made reimagining the professor’s old clock at the stroke of midnight.
Prof. Hawking’s tongue-in-cheek “reception” was actually the fourth of the known such time travel experiments, devised with varying parts philosophical inquiry, citizen science, and conceptual art. (If other historical documentation exists out there, please let us know.) The four events occurred between the years 1982 and 2009, on three continents. Each of them was a one-shot, independent affair. Today, the Krononaut Moon community is working toward upping these numbers — and possibilities for successful contact in coming years — by organizing yearly research collaborations around the night of the full moon in March (or occasionally in April).
The other known time traveler get-togethers, in reverse chronological order (fittingly) are:
On May 7, 2005, a “Time Traveler Convention” was held on the campus of MIT, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US.
Earlier that same year, on March 31, 2005, a group at Forrest Place in Perth, Australia, threw a party for “Inhabitants of the Future”.
You’ll have to go back still further into the past, another two decades to March 9, 1982, to meet a group in Baltimore, Maryland, US, identifying itself as the Krononauts, who organized a gathering for Visitors From the Futures. The festivities were written up in the New York Times by reporter Benjamin Franklin (for real) who was there that night. The gathering took place under March’s full moon, or that year’s Krononaut Moon.
I know all of this because I was developing the Baltimore Krononautic experiments (also spelled Chrononautic) back in the 1970s, over 40 years ago. Our group was the first of its kind and we still see a big future in community time travel research. A few months ago, I was interviewed for “The Last Archive”, a history podcast founded by Jill Lepore. In episode s4.e6., titled “The Krononauts”, writer Ben Naddaff-Hafrey takes a critical look at contemporary perceptions of time and time travel. It’s a fun and provocative listen, available on Pushkin.fm.
A segment of the podcast follows Naddaff-Hafrey conducting his own micro-time-travel experiment, on March 24, 2023, on a bench in front of the Dedham Public Library in Massachusetts, US. This would become the fifth known such effort, globally, and shows that it only takes a party of one.
After the dust had settled on these far-flung landing sites, organizers of the events all reported that they had no evidence showing that time travelers had been there. (Some have speculated that the memories of the experiencers had been erased.) Still, an excellent adventure was had by all. So after a few disappointments, does this spell the end for the community time travel experiments? Or is it time for a rethink and a relaunch — a 2.0?
Deep thinkers of theoretical constructs like multiple universes argue that time travelers would be reluctant to show up at any public “landing party” (even at a public library) for a number of good reasons. There are complex ethical questions around disrupting history — what are collectively known as “the paradoxes”. Then there’s the risk of putting each other in danger.
Experimental designs need to evolve. The initial version-1.0 trials were all singular, self-contained events with a small organizing team. We could just as easily build multiple events (like every year) in multiple environments, with diverse innovators and projects, leading to new ideas. Members of the Krononaut Moon community will calculate the date each year, allowing technologists, poets and artists to respond to the occasion. Do we think it’s better to be watching the skies from a radio telescope on a mountaintop, or a pinhole camera in the backyard — or both? Who can know what conditions are favorable to invitees who are centuries away? Obviously, more inventive options will create more opportunities for meaningful connections.
The Krononaut Moon is an annual event, a “celebration of time, timelessness & time travel”, recurring under the full moon nearest to the March Equinox (Vernal in the Northern Hemisphere and Autumnal in the Southern). In 2024, it comes around on March 25, with a penumbral lunar eclipse. The following year’s observances will take place on March 14, 2025, including a total lunar eclipse. More dates can be found on our website. You are encouraged to enjoy the celestial phenomena in any way that you like, wherever you like, and with whomever you like — maybe even a friend from another dimension. Please keep things peaceful for all, and share lots of photos. The Krononaut Moon is our one night of the year dedicated to time travel.
In an age of artificial intelligence and virtual reality, the Krononaut Moon can be an authentic, immersive outing for families, colleagues, and friends (old and new). You can commune with nature, the stars, and with your past and future selves. You can have yourself a truly cosmic experience.
More information on the Krononaut Moon experiments can be found in our first Medium.com article from August 13, 2023, and on our website www.KronoMoon.org, currently in development. We are also on Mastodon and other channels. We hope to see you soon, online and under the Moon!
Our modern conception of time travel was invented by H.G. Wells in his groundbreaking novel, The Time Machine, in 1895. More than a century and a quarter later, the idea of navigating through time still feels utterly remote, something in which we could never actually be involved, other than as science fiction. In the movie “Everything Everywhere”, and elsewhere in contemporary culture, the sense of being locked in one’s own time is an effect of one’s individual worldline or dimension. All of the worldlines together form a hypothetical multiverse. If constructs like “multiverse” are of interest to you, then you should also check out block universe theory, superdeterminism, Buddhism, and other models of time. Time travel stories are about leaping or teleporting from one moment to a nonadjacent one, especially from a later time to an earlier one. In speculative writing, “backwards” movement is termed retrograde. The late theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking once dubbed retrograde time travelers as “tourists from the future”. Here we will be calling them krononauts.
Even top thinkers have suggested the possibility of tourists from a future venturing back to our epoch (which to them would be ancient history). This is what the Krononaut Moon project is about — providing them, and you, a gentle nudge to give it a try. This is community time travel research, the citizen science and conceptual art of krononautics. Citing references on Wikipedia, the New York Times and other reputable sources, this article will introduce you to five independent (and counting), receptions, conventions, or landing parties for “Inhabitants of the Future”, that took place over the past four decades. They were located in five towns on three continents, beginning with the first in 1982 in Baltimore, Maryland, US, which was organized by local colleagues and me. These different communities were hoping to see their guests of honor make an appearance by stepping out of a time ship. An important distinction here is that these experiments are not science fiction. They are designed and carried out with the knowledge that a non-zero chance exists that time travelers could actually show up. If they don’t show up, they could transmit to us some kind of signal. The organizers and attendees are taking a role in a real-world test — whatever their individual motivations might be. Another important point is that this webpage, plus your reading and sharing of it, is integral to the information loop that is necessary for the delicate krononautical logic to work — in real time, so to speak. The research goes on, including right here.
What if we could reach out to these potential sightseers with some kind of text or letter of introduction, and schedule a meet-up? In theory, there is a simple method for transmitting a greeting to destinations arbitrarily deep into the future. Burying a time capsule is a practice as old as recorded history. Ancient burials have filled whole museums with ideas and objects that have weathered through thousands of years. They show that immense time is not necessarily a barrier to getting one’s word across. For future explorers, one need only to post a notice of when and where for them to show up. With a little luck, they will be there. It’s a logical thought experiment, but to date we have no tangible evidence proving that it can actually work. Nor do we have any proof that it can’t.
For anyone who doubts that symbolic language can persist for thousands of years, take a look at the Lascaux Cave Paintings in France. From only simple drawing tools, their beautiful images of horses, reindeer, bisons and extinct aurochs have been migrating steadily toward the postmodern era from the early days of Magdalenian culture — a span of 17,000 years. That’s 170 centuries, or the length of time between now and the year 19,023. You can do this.
Lascaux, France cave paintings dating from early Magdalenian culture, from WikiCommons
Three basic steps for time traveler invitations
Compose an appeal to sentient beings who do not yet exist, and who have gadgetry and time traveling machines that you can’t even imagine. You could begin it with, “Welcome Visitors from the Futures”, or some variation on that.
Inscribe it on a gold or bronze plaque, carve it in stone, and lock it away in a cryogenic archive. You will need to have trust in its safe delivery to invitees who reside giga-eons away. At any time it could be intercepted on its long and lonely journey.
Then, once it is unpacked, you will need to hope that its recipients respond favorably and grant your request for them to retro-teleport from their time to yours. At the least they could send back a note of regret.
You send out your invitation — your proverbial message in a bottle — intended for a technologically advanced intelligence. In preparation for the big night, you take lots of photos and properly document the process. Publish your notes in an article on Medium.com or Wikipedia.org, or record a podcast. Then, in a remote future, it could be decrypted or uncorked by a company of curious, sympathetic and way-distant friends…
Let’s take a pause here and turn the telescope around for a moment. There’s this way-distant company of friends that you are a member of. You and your colleagues are cruising around in your superluminalkronokraft, when an ancient artifact is unearthed claiming to be from the 2020s (AD). It’s some sort of primitive recording device, not as old as many cave paintings. It has a cheerful message for you and your friends, inviting you to come join the folks at a festivity called the Krononaut Moon. Now what?
Back to the present, these artifact unearthers just might possess the means and inclination (the sense of humor?) to answer your call. If they happen to have a time machine (a DeLorean, TARDIS, WABAC Machine, tesseract, time tunnel, wormhole, tachyon stream, antimatter, quantum teleportation, string theory, quantum entanglement, etc.) they could honor your invite and beam down to share a refreshing and sparkling glass of Rosé— which for them would be of an exceptional vintage. At the end of the night, under the full moon, you could jointly toss a new message into the ocean for all eternity.
3-D/4-D rotation of a tesseract, from WikiCommons
Five known community time travel experiments, and counting
Historically, there have been a handful of these attempted encounters, in 1982, 2005 (twice), 2009, and 2023, so far. They all kept records of their longitude and latitude, the invitations they sent, and the guests who showed up, or didn’t. The experiments continue to rely on media reports (like this one) and archival records, unto perpetuity.
In coming years, more communities will be giving it a try. Who knows how many dry runs it will take before we intitiate an inter-ephochal conversation with our descendents, 99 generations removed? When Thomas Edison was struggling to find the best filament for his electric light bulb, his team laboriously tested “no fewer than 6,000 vegetable growths”, before settling on tungsten in 1910. As it’s been said, try, try again.
Several experiments have been carried out to try to entice future humans, who might invent time travel technology, to come back and demonstrate it to people of the present time. — Wikipedia
Statistically, the more shouts we collectively make into time’s infinite void, and the greater the diversity of those shouts, the greater the probability of picking up a pulse from the beyond — a glimmer of recognition. Soon, anyone reading this will be able to link up for a primal howl in the moonlight.
On March 9, 1982, before midnight (04:00 UTC) a group in downtown Baltimore, Maryland, US, identifying itself as “The Krononauts”, organized a gathering for “Visitors from the Futures”, at a large bookstore on N. Charles St. The project continues to evolve and is today known as Krononaut Moon, or KronoMoon. (39.29609, -76.61539)
Next up on March 25, 2024 (07:13 UTC) Krononaut Moon and a Penumbral Lunar Eclipse, in a town near you.
In Dedham, MA, as at the other test sites, there was no absolute confirmation of a krononaut sighting. Despite the setbacks, a most excellent adventure was had by all involved. Years from now, when the umpteenth revision of this article is published on Medium.com, imagine how many personal recollections there will be from all the aspiring krononaut spotters at all the public libraries. This is an opportune moment for libraries to get back some of their long overdue books.
SNL’s Tina Fey ponders the implications of community time travel research, 2005
Chronologically, the Krononauts group (originally spelled Chrononauts) preceded other such efforts by more than two decades. Our prototype gathering for Visitors from the Futures was covered by the local press and the New York Times. (These awkward-sounding plurals — like “the futures”—are in accordance with the now-classic “Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics” or MWI, 1957/1970s.) Baltimore’s event took place under the full moon on March 9, 1982. The night was a Krononaut Moon, confirmed by a lunar calendar. I (your narrator) had been developing the project since the 1970s. You can glimpse a few of our artifacts on the Time Travelpage of Wikipedia. You can also listen to the just-released podcast “The Krononauts” published by The Last Archive on Pushkin.fm.
Imagery
Nowadays the project is known as, Krononaut Moon: A Once-Yearly Celebration of Time, Timelessness & Time Travel, under the Full Moon nearest to the Northward Equinox.
The title is often styled as KronoMoon, which saves a few finger strokes. Graphically, we have been working up a logo design based on interlocking tori, suggesting chains of siloed universes. Let us know what you think.
WikiCommons image of interlocking tori (plural of torus). KronoMoon would like something similar to this as a project logo, but with the two “universes” not touching each other.
A word from the experts
Truth be told, we know that most serious people have no serious interest in time travel. Even H.G. Wells, who popularized the idea in 1895,did not think it was possible. In our own time, theoretical physicist and mathematician Brian Greene is also a skeptic — but then, we need skeptics. In his influential 2007 book, The Fabric of the Cosmos, Greene writes:
The fact is, no one has shown that the laws of physics absolutely rule out past-directed time travel. To the contrary, some physicists have even laid out hypothetical instructions for how a civilization with unlimited technological prowess, operating fully with the known laws of physics, might go about building a time machine … The proposals bear no resemblance to the spinning gizmo described by H.G. Wells or Doc Brown’s souped-up DeLorean. And the design elements all brush right up against the limits of known physics, leading many researchers to suspect that with subsequent refinements in our grasp of nature’s laws, existing and future proposals for time machines will be deemed beyond the bounds of what’s physically possible. But as of today, this suspicion is based on gut feeling and circumstantial evidence, not solid proof.
Einsten himself, during the decade of intense research leading to the publication of his general theory of relativity [1915], pondered the question of travel to the past. Frankly, it would have been strange if he hadn’t.
Calculating the date of the Krononaut Moon
Content warning: This section is optional and gets deep into the weeds. Come back after four paragraphs.
The Krononaut Moon is always on the full moon and always on a night that is close to the March equinox, which usually occurs on the 20th of the month. The “northward equinox”, as it is better known today, is an important hour on nature’s clock, foundational to the sciences and world cultures going all the way back. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, the vernal equinox marks the onset of spring. To our friends in the down under, it is the autumnal equinox.
Astrologically, a full moon is always opposite to the sun (they are in opposing houses), with the Earth floating in between. Only rarely does a full moon show up directly on an equinox (although this will happen in March of 2038). KronoMoon is generally a few nights off of the northward equinox.
Depending on the year, the Krononaut Moon, whose date is moveable, shines brightest either a few nights before the northward equinox (in Virgo) or a few nights after (in Libra). On the night of March 25, 2024 (07:13 UTC), with the full moon in Libra, we shall also observe a penumbral lunar eclipse. Please step out that night for its cosmological splendor, along with the ritual drumming, dancing and howling.
In the following year, on March 14, 2026 (06:58 UTC), the full moon will undergo a total lunar eclipse, in Virgo. Mark your calendars for these celestial phenomena of the Krononaut Moon — every March, but occasionally in April. For this project, full moon dates and times are more critical than geographic location. You can observe KronoMoon from anyplace that works best for you and your purposes. That is, your peaceful, nature-loving, moon-loving, Earth-friendly, and cosmos-curious purposes.
Total Lunar Eclipse on March 3, 2007
To the future(s)
You are invited to observe the Krononaut Moon however you like, wherever you like, and with whomever you like, or with no one — whether you have a campfire on the beach, a radio telescope, a shoebox pinhole camera, or only your breath and your inner light. We’ll provide the lunar dates which you can use to gaze into your own cosmos and see who is there.
There have been two smart critiques of ”community time travel research” as it is presented here. Some have asked: If these experiments have been tried 5+ times, why do they need to be re-tested again? As with the story of Thomas Edison’s light bulb mentioned above, who can know how many tries it will take to catch a time traveler?
Another question is: Let’s say it’s all doable and krononauts have walked among us for ages. Why would they take on the risks of outing themselves at a public event? This is a good question. Who can know what the ideal safe conditions are for them to drop in or drop a note on us in our time? With a variety of beckonings at all scales and technologies — or none — the Visitors from the Futures can pick a local combination that works best for them. We hope that community groups, science organizations, arts centers and individuals will design their own time travel experiments for under the full moon on March 25, 2024.
During March and in every month, and in every phase of the moon, keep a hopeful eye on the stars and the future(s), welcoming all time travelers and ordinary beings.
Please let us know of any errors or omissions in this article. KronoMoon.org (in beta) can be contacted via any of the bulleted links. This is our first piece for Medium.com, thanks. We’ll try and catch up with you again soon.
![Mark Baard’s color photo on Flickr shows a metallic brass colored plaque with black text: DESTINATION DAY / 12 NOON (UTC/GMT 8 HOURS] / 31st March 2005 / FORREST PLACE, PERTH 6000, WESTERN AUSTRALIA, etc. WE WELCOME AND AWAIT YOU. https://www.flickr.com/photos/markbaard/12972263/in/album-315938/](https://i0.wp.com/miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:433/1*03dvVDqWMjJoWhOpWTLB3Q.jpeg?w=800&ssl=1)
