The Chronovisor and Fr. Pellegrino Ernetti

I often visit Mental Floss's website and today they had a story on Time Travel. They mention good ole John Titor and his now debunked tale of 2036. One of the more fascinating stories involved a Monk - Fr. Ernetti, and his claim of having viewed the Crucifixion of Jesus among other famous past events. It could basically play back the sights and sounds of any event in history.

Here's a link to a more detailed description of this story:

Chronovisor "Time Travel" device

On his deathbed, Fr. Ernetti continued to insist that the device was real, but was locked away at the Vatican. His explanation earlier in life for this was that if this device got in the wrong hands, it could lead to witnessing and being part of the most brutal dictatorship in human history.

What do you think? Is this even possible?

That device has always fascinated me, all kinds of claims surrounding it, ending up in the Vatican and such...

Theres a short story by i Believe it was Orson Scott card I read, where basically they use just such a device to "watch" the past to see what really happened.

Ever since I read that story I have looked into the Chronovisor, crazy stuff.

There's a novel by Arthur C Clark and Steven Baxter titled The Light of Other Days that details the invention of something similar where people can view any place in time from long long ago, to only just a few moments ago.

The wormhole technology is first used to send digital information via gamma rays, then developed further to transmit light waves. The media corporation who develops this advance can spy on anyone anywhere it chooses. A logical development from the laws of space-time allows light waves to be detected from the past. This enhances the wormhole technology into a "time viewer" where anyone opening a wormhole can view people and events from any point throughout time and space.

When the technology is released to the general public, it effectively destroys all secrecy and privacy. The novel examines the philosophical issues that arise from the world's population (increasingly suffering from ecological and political disturbances) being aware that they could be under constant observation by anyone, or that they could observe anyone without their knowledge. Anyone is able to observe the true past events of their families and their heroes. An underground forms which attempts to escape this observation; corruption and crime are drastically reduced; nations discover the true causes and outcomes of international conflicts; and religions worldwide are forced to reevaluate their divine histories. As the underground movement grows, it utilizes a direct neural interface coupled with the unlimited communication provided by the wormhole technology to develop a group mind.

One of the central themes of the novel is that history is biased towards viewpoints of the person who wrote it. Hence many great "historical" events often did not occur as they now are collectively remembered. For example, during the book's progression the time viewer technology shows that Jesus was the illegitimate son of a Roman centurion (although the apocryphal story of his visiting Great Britain was proven to be true), and that Moses was based on a collection of stories rather than the actions of a real person.

Source

Fun novel. I've read it. Kinda spooky too.

reply to post by flashtrum


Personally. i dont really believe that Farther Ernetti was telling the whole truth, BUT i do believe that the machine is possible. I think that the imprint of history is still floating around somewhere and that we could potentially capture it. I think though that if this machine was created we would only be able to hear the sounds of the past, i dont think that would would be able to actually SEE anything.