Re: spot the faker

johan.larson@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
That man over there claims to be a time traveler from the year 1750.
Preliminary investigation has not been able to deny this claim: there
is no missing person matching his description, he was found wearing
old-fashioned clothing, he has no modern dental work, and seems to know
a great deal about the early eighteenth century.

Your mission, should you accept it, is to verify his claim. What would
you check?

I'd look for modern pollutants: strontium-90 and other
radioisotopes in his bones. And for a whole bunch
of organic pollutants in his blood and tissues: persistent
pesticides, chlorinated chemicals, etc.; he might have polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbons in his tissues, but probably a rather
different set from what's usual now. I can't think of anything
that would determine reliably what time he really came from, but
it would be pretty easy to determine if he'd spent most of his
life before modern times.

Joel Polowin

.

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