What Better Time Than Now?

In case you thought the bright-eyed youngsters over at MIT were only concerned with serious, contemplative activities like throwing pianos off rooves, Bostonist has news that will put you at ease: They also know how to cut loose, as will surely be evidenced by Saturday's first and only Time Traveler Convention.

The key to this event, according to the website, is longlasting publicity (which most certainly does not include Bostonist; the convention organizer wants publicity that will last for millennia, and our server doesn't have room for such a large archive), such that whenever time travel is invented, there will be enough historical record so folks can learn of this event and travel back to show up. To that end, Convention organizer Amal Dorai is trying to publicize the lattitude and longitude of the party location, and we will oblige (on the off chance that Bostonist outlasts MIT): 42:21:36.025°N, 71:05:16.332°W.

Dorai, a graduate engineering student, said in an NPR interview that if time travelers do show up, it would be "one of the biggest scientific events ever." In any event, he added, there's no harm in trying, and there's always the possibility that time travelers who don't appear on Saturday may learn of the event from subsequent news and go back to attend after all. (Thinking about that makes Bostonist's head hurt.)

As a hedge against no-show time travelers, Dorai has arranged for enterntainment: several MIT physics professors will talk about time travel and some local bands will perform, two of whom, Dorai promises, have composed original songs about time travel for the event. Also, there will be chips and salsa.

Photo courtesy of flickr.com / user: matizi