A photograph taken in Canada more than a hundred years ago has people wondering whether a time traveller crashed the shot. The picture, dated to 1917, shows a group of men, women and children gathered on what looks like a hillside. Among them stands a figure whose clothes seem to belong to a very different era.
A book, a video and a nickname
The image appears in Lester Ray Peterson’s 1974 book The Great Cape Scott Story, a historical account of the Canadian area’s heritage. Viewers have nicknamed the man at the centre of the fuss the "surfer dude". He wears a very baggy t-shirt and shorts, and his messy hair looks distinctly modern.
Those around him add to the intrigue. The man to his left seems utterly confused by his presence, while a woman further to the right appears to be pointing straight at him. It almost looks as though he jumped into the frame just as the camera clicked.
YouTuber Jamie D. Grant was stunned when he opened the book and found the picture. In a video titled Time Travel proof found. Truth or Illusion?, he drew attention to the group’s clothes, their hats and the way they sat poised for a photo. "Now look closer," he said. "His head uncovered, his hair, his shorts." He then asked viewers: "What do you think?"
The man has now joined a list of supposed time travellers, including a "time travelling hipster" from a 1940s photo whose style seemed years ahead of those around him. One viewer wrote that they had looked through the book as a small child and noticed the picture, adding: "It still gives me the chills." Another commented: "The guy looks like he was caught off guard in the picture."
The sceptics weigh in
Others are far less convinced, pointing out that his outfit may not have been so unusual after all. A reviewer on Goodreads passed on a comment saying t-shirts were already around and entered the Merriam-Webster Dictionary in the 1920s. The same reviewer noted that US Navy sailors were wearing them as early as 1913, and that other men in the picture are also in shorts. Their verdict was blunt: "I’m going to say that he’s not a time traveller."
Science does not help the believers much either. Physicists broadly agree that travelling back in time is out of reach given what we currently understand about the universe. Professor William Hiscock of Montana State University explains that forward time travel is possible through the time-dilation effect of Special Relativity, but going backwards is a far bigger obstacle.
He said many solutions to Einstein’s equations of General Relativity would allow a person to meet herself, or her grandmother, at an earlier time. The difficulty, he explained, is deciding whether those solutions could occur in the real universe or are "mere mathematical oddities incompatible with known physics." He stressed that no experiment or cosmic observation has ever shown such time travel happening.
For now, the surfer man remains a fun mystery. Going by the evidence so far, he was most likely just a man in the clothes of his own time, caught by a camera and rediscovered a century later.
Image credit: JAMIE D GRANT YOUTUBE
Source: The Mirror US
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