This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science. I'm Larry Greenmeyer.

Got a minute?

Imagine being able to instantly see what a location you happen to be at looked like 50-75 or 100 years ago. A team of

app developers wants to use today's ubiquitous digital camera culture to make

such peering into the past possible. The app, called Pivot, will match GPS data from your

mobile device with geolocation data tags on images in a database. The system will let you

alternate between real-time and archived images of a place with a swipe of your touch screen.

Two Palestinian Americans are developing pivot.

One has a background in public policy and the other in cultural anthropology.

The app will focus on two geographic locations to start, historic Palestine and Boston, Massachusetts.

And his really non-profit is helping the project by sharing its database

of historic photos. Pivots developers plan to roll out a beta version shortly with a more complete

version of the app available by the end of the year.

It's likely that users will receive a push notification to their device

when they're near a site that can already be viewed through pivot.

Assuming all goes as planned, it'll be like carrying a time capsule in your

pocket.

Thanks for the minute.

For Scientific American 60 Second Science, I'm Larry Greenmeyer.