The more people working towards a goal, the better the odds that the goal will be reached, it’s the basic driving force in croudsourced development. This is especially true for out-there type research that needs many independent minds looking for breakthroughs. Unfortunately some ideas are just too out there, just as time travel, so there are pitifully few people dedicating their lives to these goals.
The idea here is to find a photo that is clearly from, say, the early 90’s with a younger man and an older man or woman, and send the photo to random people around the age of 20 to 22 (men or women as the case may be) with a note that says something of the sort:
In 1994 you and I met. You spun some tale that you were from the distant future, showed me some interesting technology that would seem to indicate it, predicted smart phones and the whole Charlie Sheen incident, bummed a meal off me, and posed for the enclosed photo. You are the older gentleman on the left. You asked me to send you this photo in/around 2013 to 2014 timeframe to inspire you to get to work, that it was actually this photo that got you going on the road to making the breakthrough and meeting the people necessary to develop your time travelling capabilities.
To be honest, I’m still having a hard time believing it (which, ironically, you told me I would write in this letter) and if it wasn’t for the technology you brought from the future to show me I would have never believed enough even to write this letter and buy a stamp, so don’t forget to bring some cool stuff along to show me.
1) “linear accelerations in a *near* vacuum, with emphasis on the near” and you’d know what that meant
Sure, most people are not going to change their lives based on this letter, but send this letter to a significantly large number of people, but not so large that it is exposed as a hoax, and you’ll get lots of people dedicating significant time to this task.