Is the fact that really bad things have happened proof that a time machine will never be invented?

A time machine is not necessary.

Why would you think they would go back to prevent such things? Perhaps they went back to make sure that such things happened so as not to interfere with the chain of events necessary to ensure that they invented the time machine in the first place.

@YoBob So then why travel at all?

You’re assuming these time travelers have your best interests at heart.
How do you know that these time travelers at one point wouldn’t go back and save the life of your future mother-in-law?? XD

@lucillelucillelucille Well, damn. Now that’s a thought that’s gonna fester.

But what if we are progressing and we progress to a point where time has no meaning or bearing? Then a Time Machine would not be needed for anything at all.

Maybe Hitler was the time traveler.

A time machine wouldn’t be able to travel to a time before it was invented.

@FutureMemory No funsies.

They might not want to change the past in fear that they would undo something that led to their lives or the creation of the time machine.

Time travelling questions make my head hurt.

Well, one possibility is they simply are not allowed to alter the past, some law like the star trek temporal prime directive prevents them. or, maybe the paradox created by going back in time prevents them.

See, if you go back in time to stop hitler, then in the future there would be no hitler, and as in the future there would be no hitler, people from the future would not come back to stop hitler, therefore there would have been a hitler, and nothing would have changed.

Maybe the instant you travel back in time, the universe is totally destroyed by an eternal causality loop. for example, you go back in time, and you get killed. time passes and you are born, you grow up, you go back in time, you get killed, time passes, you are born, you grow up, you go back in time, you get killed, time passes, you are born…. etc.

As @FutureMemory said, you couldn’t back in time prior to the machine being invented (unless you found a natural way of moving backwards in time much like you would with going forward with the theory of relativity).

Second, many speculate about the grandfather paradox. If the traveler went to the same “universe” you couldn’t alter, or change the events of past, say warning everyone of a bomb going off because if you did it would completely negate your reasoning from going to the past in the first place; so I guess theoretically impossible to warn/stop something like a world war from happening by going back in the past.

Nope. There could be multiple timelines or those returning could have been provided perspective allowing them knowledge which bad things had to happen.

In fact, they could have already prevented way worse things from happening.

Maybe it has already been invented, and hence you are in a parellell universe . In the other you don’t exist OR have a wife with 20 kids. In the other universe you can’t stand sandwiches. Who knows? I have watched to much Twilight Zone in my life.

@Frenchfry Dude, that parallel universe sucks.

I think the Into The Universe With Stephen Hawking episode on Time Travel explains very clearly the possibilities and probable realities of time travel. Warning: it’s long (but seriously awesome).

I love the idea of time travel, always have. But the real reason no one has accomplished it, I believe, is that while great fun to speculate about in sci-fi stories and Fluther threads, it’s almost certainly impossible—Professors Hawking and Einstein notwithstanding.

I’m sure many of you will disagree with me, but that’s my belief.

I wouldn’t rule anything out as being impossible including time travel. We are all travelling through time and I have somehow come to a future I could never have imagined where there are things like the Internet and Fluther. If I went fast enough I could travel further into the future and see the world as it will be centuries from now.

Travelling back in time is more difficult to imagine and creates all sorts of messy paradoxes. Mankind in the future may invent a machine that can travel into the past. People from the future may try to change things but we would never see a difference if a new time line is created with each little change that is made. The time traveller would then be lost in a maze of alternative universes with no hope of getting back home. If he managed to return to the future it would be one different from his own.

One canont change what has happened. It was meant to happened and did so as is should have. We are now what we are suppose to be and things are how they are suppose to be.

“What you need to know about the past is that no matter what has happened, it has all worked together to bring you to this very moment. And this is the moment you can choose to make everything new. Right now.”

-source unknown (possibly a timetraveller, who knows?).

A time machine cannot go back in time before it has been invented. Theoretically, once a time machine has been invented, those with it could prevent anything that is possible to prevent.

I think that nothing bad would happen to prevent, because if it did and you went back in time to fix it, your earlier self would not know to go back in time, launching you into a paradox.

Only in the current time line. In the back to the future time line it doesn’t happen.

What about all the bad things that didn’t happen?

Special relativity provides sufficient proof of this, providing you intend to go back. We are already going forward relative to an object outside the Earth’s gravitational field. That would be general relativity. If you think relativity is depressing, try thermodynamics. Reality sucks.

@anartist Good point. Or then, maybe the people that went back messed up and caused all these problems. Ah well.

Also, everybody should check these out:

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This Q and answers by members especially @lucillelucillelucille and @FutureMemory [perfect name for this topic!] gives rise to some interesting time machine novels——that the people living now do not reap the benefits of the change that will happen later/earlier or that their interests are not ours. Fascinating!
Ah @bob_ now I know where your avatar came from! I always liked it.

What if all the nasty awful stuff in our history is why we survive something in the future. The idea of “correcting” our history is a bad one, what would be the out come? If you sanitize the past you risking ruining all the positive outcomes of negative seeming events. I don’t know, I wouldn’t fuck with the past.

I don’t think traveling to the past is possible or if it is, it wouldn’t be very far in the past, more like a standstill of time. I think it would be likely (if precise backward time travel were possible) be traveling into a parallel universe, which would indeed go in a different direction as a result. But I would defer to the mathematicians who don’t know either.

I find that time traveling in one direction is hard enough.

I find that time traveling in one direction is hard enough.

Is that a quote, or did you just make it up?

If that was all you, that was one of the best things that I’ve ever heard.

because of the Laws of Physics you can only go forward in time not backwards. this phenominon is described by Einstien’s Theories of General and Special Relativity