Temporal Anomalies

An asterisk of time?  It's a phenomenon!  This one is yellowish, but there's a black asterisk of time, too: "In the black asterisk of time that I did not remember until now, right now" (Stephanie Gangi, The Next: A Novel).  Photo courtesy of temporal anomaly investigator Neil Hester.

Temporal anomaly investigator Norman Walsh shares these mismatching clock faces in Cairo, Egypt.  We've not yet explored the tower and its environs to pinpoint the cause of the weirdness.

We spotted this temporal anomaly in Eastern Kentucky's 1974 yearbook.  One clock on the tower is seventeen minutes earlier than the other.  "One face looks backward to the past; the other looks forward to the future. To be identified with either face is to be captive in stone, victim of fixed laws and fixed authorities" (Marion Woodman, 1982).

The clock faces are ten minutes in disgreement in this temporal anomaly documented by Wake Forest's 1991 yearbook.  We tend to blame the toilet paper for causing a disturbance in the fabric of space/time.  Mark Anderson has asked, "Is architecture toilet paper or timeless art?"  The clock faces seem to answer that question: timeless.

If it's true that "time is mathematics, where there is no past and future" (Alberto Palazzi, Relativity from Lorentz to Einstein), then we can read that backwards 6 and colon as mathematical symbols.  Hence, ∂8:88 can be understood to mean a "partial derivative of 8 with respect to 88."  Otherwise, we may have to accept that the time is ∂8:88 PM AM World Time Home Time, and that the temperature is a toasty 188 Celsius Fahrenheit.  Photo courtesy of temporal anomaly investigator Ed Hunsinger.

"There are no minutes in a lover's fears. They measure all their time by months and years" (William King).  Photo courtesy of Enric Archivell.

Temporal anomaly investigator Terence Faircloth reports from the Gage building in Chicago.  Aquinas said that "past time is different from future time," and this photo illustrates that point beautifully.

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt spotted a temporal anomaly in The Lying Voices, by Elizabeth Ferrars:

We spotted a temporal anomaly while virtually re-visiting the charming Danish village of Solvang, California via Google Street View.  Facing south, the clocks on the downtown street corner proclaim that it's 2:20.  Facing north, it's 9:49.  From the east and west, it's 12 36.  Amazingly, when you virtually cross the intersection via Google Street View, it takes about 4 and a half hours according to the clock.  Note the clock faces as you wait at the red light, then click forward and marvel at how long that light lasted!  (Note: don't click too far down the road, or you'll zoom too far forward.  Click just in the intersection itself so as to inch forward.  You may or may not have to rotate slightly to see the clock on your left.)

Our last visit to Solvang found us spending the night in a haunted clock tower, and we made a video about the bizarre experience.

Temporal anomaly investigator Andrew Gustar spotted this clock tower in Ambleside, England, where it's simultaneously 7:20 and 2:25.  Without more context, we can't diagnose the issue, but not everything needs a tidy explanation.  

We spotted a temporal anomaly at Harrisonburg's James Madison University.  But we couldn't get anywhere near the clock in question to diagnose the cause of the time slip.  Have you ever tried to park at a university?  Because we couldn't investigate further, we made this collage; it's meaningless, but the anomaly seemed to warrant us dedicating some of our time to it, one way or another.

Not only is there a cat person (he looks nice, too), but you'll have alreary noticed the bonus temporal anomaly.  (Glad our guidance is making a difference in your temporal anomaly investigatory skills!)  From Western Carolina's 1957 yearbook.

We encountered a great many temporal anomalies in Martinsburg, West Virginia.  This one, at a school, warmed our heart on a very cold day, because both clocks showing different (and wrong) times meant that school was probably out early.  (Classroom education, obviously, is one of society's very most dunderheaded notions.)

"Time cannot be bound by any means and remains unchanged as it is" (Oneness of the Being).  Photo courtesy of Anthony Jauneaud.

We encountered a temporal anomaly in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania.  At 4 p.m., it was simulaneously 1:25 and 10:31.  We passed this anomaly on our way to visit a family member at a neurological rehabilitation clinic, and in the hallway outside his room was a framed painting (eerie! bizarre!) featuring an obscured element.  Could the obscured element be a gold pocket watch, in the tradition of Salvador Dalí's famous melting timepiece hanging off a branch in "Persistence of Memory"?  If so, we'll credit this painting for triggering temporal anomalies in the area.  By the way, we overheard a physical therapist saying that she had to time a patient's treatment according to her stopwatch because none of the clocks on the floor were in agreement.

This immaterial tower (from Wake Forest's 1984 yearbook) reminded us of a castle in the air we encountered via Google Maps' street views of Warwick, England.

We're nearly three decades late with this news item about a temporal anomaly, but why not?  Via UFO Newsclipping Service, 1991.

The city of An Oghmagh, Northern Ireland seems to exist within a rift in the fabric of time/space.  Temporal anomalies documentarian Kenneth Allen offers three proofs.  The first occurs at the troubling intersection of two streets with the same name (that's always playing with fire), and the clock (four hours early) is situated below a word missing its apostrophe.  (Grammatical anomalies may, for reasons still foggy, trigger temporal anomalies all on their own.)  Two "Campsie" streets, two (or more?) "Charlies" ... it's all a lot for the time to keep up with.  The second proof is of a clock that proclaims "3:17" at 11:00 a.m.  The third proof is of a clock displaying "6:15" at 11:30 a.m.  For any would-be time travelers, An Oghmagh offers a city-wide portal.

Some of the most amazing things happen around 9:73 in the morning.  Many of us call it "the better part of the day."  Photo courtesy of temporal anomaly investigator Dipurinku.