The video: An Irish filmmaker claims to have discovered proof of time travel: George Clarke says that, while watching the DVD version of Charlie Chaplin's 1928 film The Circus, he spotted a mysterious woman chatting on a cell phone in the disc's "extra footage." (Watch Clarke's wildly popular YouTube explanation below.) The woman, filmed while attending the movie's premiere, appears to be speaking into an object held up to her ear some 45 years before Motorola unveiled the first cell phone in 1973. "The only conclusion that I can come to... sounds absolutely ridiculous," says Clarke. "It's a time traveler." Unsurprisingly not everyone agrees. Here are five alternate theories:
1) It's a hearing aid: The most plausible explanation is that the woman is holding a "big, clunky, old-fashioned, carbon-amplified hearing aid," says Robert Quigley at Geekosystem. The device patented by Siemens in 1924 had to be held to the face, much as a cell phone is today.
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