Is there a way to test if something's from the future?

This is for a short story that I'm trying to perfect before sending out to various magazines.

The story concerns a man who, while digging his own pool, finds a skeleton. He calls the police who take the skeleton away, only to return it to him a month or two later after determining it's his own skeleton from the future.

I need an explanation--it doesn't have to be airtight, just believable--for how they might determine it's from the future. Carbon dating won't work, obviously, and right now I'm planning for them to make the pull by comparing his dental records and also the degeneration of the bones from arthritis (suggesting a more advanced case than his own), but I'm wondering if there's a marker that might suggest something is from the future.

CO2 levels in the bones/soil around the bones? Some kind of radiation that increases in concentration over time?

Sounds like a cool story already, hope to read it when its complete.

I'll let you know if it gets picked up somewhere.

I just had it workshopped and my impression is that it's just one revision away from being ready.

The dental records(you should probably throw in a DNA test, too) + more advanced arthritis explanation seems to be the most believable.

Originally posted by Omega Vision
This is for a short story that I'm trying to perfect before sending out to various magazines.

The story concerns a man who, while digging his own pool, finds a skeleton. He calls the police who take the skeleton away, only to return it to him a month or two later after determining it's his own skeleton from the future.

I need an explanation--it doesn't have to be airtight, just believable--for how they might determine it's from the future. Carbon dating won't work, obviously, and right now I'm planning for them to make the pull by comparing his dental records and also the degeneration of the bones from arthritis (suggesting a more advanced case than his own), but I'm wondering if there's a marker that might suggest something is from the future.

CO2 levels in the bones/soil around the bones? Some kind of radiation that increases in concentration over time?

Well there are environmental systems whose future behavior can be predicted based on their patterns.

So maybe some environmental factor on his body can be tested, and perhaps that can indicate if the anomalous environmental influence on the skeleton meets that environment's predicted future conditions?

Idk

Originally posted by ArtificialGlory
The dental records(you should probably throw in a DNA test, too) + more advanced arthritis explanation seems to be the most believable.

Obviously if the skeleton is older, than there's still the possibility that it's just him in the past or there's some other freaky thing going on, and after he time-shifted he aged.

There is no temporal marker. Spatial markers would be one object's distance and position from another, then there're environmental markers, and much else. Yet there's nothing that tells you what point in time another object has been in. Space does expand as the universe ages, but the expansion of a couple measly years would be infinitesimal, and still untraceable. So whether or not an object has undergone a temporal shift, forward or backward for that matter, is untraceable. Unless you could take the neurons and somehow reforge some memories through futuristic neurological technology and sophistication.

I mean, given unlimited scientific sophistication and technology, one may be able to see if the subatomic particles within this skeleton operate infinitesimally outside our current laws of thermodynamics. Like space's volume, the laws of thermodynamics do change overtime as well. Can the changed behavior of this skeleton's subatomic structure be measured, and if so would the behavior still be different when the skeleton returns to this moment in time? Actually, no it wouldn't, they would return to doing only what the current laws would permit them to do.

Originally posted by Omega Vision
There is already a DNA test involved, and I include a reference to them not always being able to distinguish between close relatives, which is why the cop asks the protag if he has a twin brother, or 'had' one.

Is work this based on a true story?

Originally posted by Oneness
There's no way to tell if it's from the future, and twins do have a identical DnA markers.

Is work this based on a true story?

Originally posted by Oneness
Obviously if the skeleton is older, than there's still the possibility that it's just him in the past or there's some other freaky thing going on, and after he time-shifted he aged.

There is no temporal marker. Spatial markers would be one object's distance and position from another, then there're environmental markers, and much else. Yet there's nothing that tells you what point in time another object has been in. Space does expand as the universe ages, but the expansion of a couple measly years would be infinitesimal, and still untraceable. So whether or not an object has undergone a temporal shift, forward or backward for that matter, is untraceable. Unless you could take the neurons and somehow reforge some memories through futuristic neurological technology and sophistication.

I mean, given unlimited scientific sophistication and technology, one may be able to see if the subatomic particles within this skeleton operate infinitesimally outside our current laws of thermodynamics. Like space's volume, the laws of thermodynamics do change overtime as well. Can the changed behavior of this skeleton's subatomic structure be measured, and if so would the behavior still be different when the skeleton returns to this moment in time? Actually, no it wouldn't, they would return to doing only what the current laws would permit them to do.

Whao... that's all very nice and dandy, but I'm pretty certain the story takes place in the present so no crazy space-age tech.

Spoilers

Depending on how far into the future it is, degradation (wear and tear) occurs over time. For instance, this year you may have all of your teeth, and next year you may have lost one. If the skeleton was from 30 or more years into the future of a middle aged person, the skull could possibly show signs of senility... you know that kind of thing could be tapped on if you were going to write it up for plausibility. Or you could go an entirely different direction. There could have been items found near or on the corpse like a wedding ring that the person has never had because they weren't married yet.

Originally posted by Stoic
Depending on how far into the future it is, degradation (wear and tear) occurs over time. For instance, this year you may have all of your teeth, and next year you may have lost one. If the skeleton was from 30 or more years into the future of a middle aged person, the skull could possibly show signs of senility...

You're not looking far enough into it.

Just because one's skeletal doppelganger is aged more than its lively counterpart, doesn't mean it aged into the future and was shifted back in time after the fact. Could have aged in the past, as opposed to the future.

you know that kind of thing could be tapped on if you were going to write it up for plausibility. Or you could go an entirely different direction. There could have been items found near or on the corpse like a wedding ring that the person has never had because they weren't married yet.

The fact is when something like that happens, scientifically speaking, you'd have to have faith in such perplexing theories as it being your future self. Leaving it up to interpretation has always been a preferable plot device in my mind anyway. There's no modern way to demonstrably prove or disprove whether or not this doppelganger was in fact OV, or whether or not it was even from the future.

Originally posted by Stoic
Depending on how far into the future it is, degradation (wear and tear) occurs over time. For instance, this year you may have all of your teeth, and next year you may have lost one. If the skeleton was from 30 or more years into the future of a middle aged person, the skull could possibly show signs of senility... you know that kind of thing could be tapped on if you were going to write it up for plausibility. Or you could go an entirely different direction. There could have been items found near or on the corpse like a wedding ring that the person has never had because they weren't married yet.

This actually gives me an idea: the skeleton could have things on it that plausibly only that person could have had. For example a wedding ring that's one-of-a-kind or some sort of an implant that the original person also has.

There should be a way to test to see if something is the future.

Proton Decay

All the protons in the universe have half lives. If you have a precise enough measurement of how to see how much of the protons in matter has decayed, you should be able to place it, temporally.

I'm almost positive that that is Star Trek levels of tech: not something we can do, currently. It has far too precise of a measurement that I am positive our current tech cannot accomplish.

Originally posted by Omega Vision
This is for a short story that I'm trying to perfect before sending out to various magazines.

The story concerns a man who, while digging his own pool, finds a skeleton. He calls the police who take the skeleton away, only to return it to him a month or two later after determining it's his own skeleton from the future.

I need an explanation--it doesn't have to be airtight, just believable--for how they might determine it's from the future. Carbon dating won't work, obviously, and right now I'm planning for them to make the pull by comparing his dental records and also the degeneration of the bones from arthritis (suggesting a more advanced case than his own), but I'm wondering if there's a marker that might suggest something is from the future.

CO2 levels in the bones/soil around the bones? Some kind of radiation that increases in concentration over time?

The best I can say is be creative lol. Since time travel isn't real at this stage in time(see what I did) you could always make something up. You're a smart guy...or at least seem like it lol. Maybe the act of time travel leaves some kind of residue in the DNA of a time traveler. If you could give some good explanation you could probably make it sound real.

Originally posted by dadudemon
There should be a way to test to see if something is the future.

Proton Decay

All the protons in the universe have half lives. If you have a precise enough measurement of how to see how much of the protons in matter has decayed, you should be able to place it, temporally.

I'm almost positive that that is Star Trek levels of tech: not something we can do, currently. It has far too precise of a measurement that I am positive our current tech cannot accomplish.

Originally posted by BlackZero30x
The best I can say is be creative lol. Since time travel isn't real at this stage in time(see what I did) you could always make something up. You're a smart guy...or at least seem like it lol. Maybe the act of time travel leaves some kind of residue in the DNA of a time traveler. If you could give some good explanation you could probably make it sound real.

Then correlated with Stoic's ideas, it becomes pretty conclusive.

Originally posted by Omega Vision
The story concerns a man who, while digging his own pool, finds a skeleton. He calls the police who take the skeleton away, only to return it to him a month or two later after determining it's his own skeleton from the future.

Maybe Future Version had an operation, like hip replacement with an advanced alloy, or perhaps his bones show signs of electrically accelerated healing. Perhaps there are nutrients in his bones which currently do not exist.

Establish the future he came from. What are the medical capabilities? (this can all be backstory). Once you have that, the answer to your question may well suggest itself.

Originally posted by Bardock42
Spoilers

Originally posted by Mindship

Establish the future he came from. What are the medical capabilities? (this can all be backstory). Once you have that, the answer to your question may well suggest itself.

My current policy is to not speculate at all on the nature of the time travel or where/exactly when it was sent from, just to find some way of explaining how the forensics people might come to the conclusion that it's from the future.

The more you talk about time travel, the more fraught it becomes.

The hip replacement is a good idea though. Thanks. The prosthetic could be made from some kind of advanced carbon fiber that's ten years from being feasible.