Time machine

[FierceKitty]

Not sure if this is in the right place, but anyway....You have a time machine which can be sent on a one-way trip into the past with minute accuracy, and a powerful bomb. In effect, you get to select one troublemaker from history and get rid of him or her. Disregarding the usual paradoxes, whom would you select as your target?
   The serpent in Eden doesn't count. Bombs don't explode in Paradise.
   I'm personally torn between Confucius and Abraham; interested in other people's ideas.

[goat major]

Noel Edmonds ?

[Nosher]

My ex-wife

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Killing the obvious ones - AH, IS, or Mao would put me out of a job !!!!

ianS

[Sandinista]

Adam as he leaves paradise

[Luddite]

The first muppet that looked at something he didn't understand and said 'god did it'...

Without that setback we'd probably have an interstellar empire by now.

[Last Hussar]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Ptitleo3hnku5u?from=Main.GodwinsLawOfTimeTravel

[Jim Ando]

Anyone who invented religon

[Kassad]

Interesting question. One bomb and one-way trip? For me Adof Hitler. If I hit the target I can restart a new life knowing the future events and take advantage from that. If I fail I can avoid the worst aspect of incoming war and, also knowing the future events work for the Allied intelligent agency.

[Pruneau]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Ptitleo3hnku5u?from=Main.GodwinsLawOfTimeTravel

[clibinarium]

Best time machine joke was in Futurama. Professor Farnsworth laments all the years he wasted working on a time machine that doesn't work. Dr. Zoidberg says its a pity, because if it had worked he could have gone back in time and told himself not to bother wasting his time on it.

Apparently it is theoretically possible to build a functioning time machine, but it can't go back in time. It can bring you back to the point it was turned on and started working, but not before that. Laws of physics can't accomodate the traditional view of time travel. At least how we understand them now, though I suppose there's a slim chance new discoveries and theories might change that.

Given the havoc potentially wreakable, even with good intentions, the best thing to do would be use the bomb to blow up the time machine. But then future-you might arrive to stop you because of all the disasterous consequences that caused.

[nikharwood]

Clib - that's a great post [& makes me reach for my Futurama DVDs  ]

[Leon]

I listen to a late night radio show on BBC every now and then, and they were discussing time travel a few weeks back.  The guy they had on said that they don't believe (as Clib says) that you can go backwards, but also, not from any point.  The theory was that you would enter some kind of room where time could be either sped up or slowed down, resulting in you exiting the room either behind or ahead of everyone else.  You could keep doing this, but would always be going forward in some way.

The possibility of going back in time has to be impossible, otherwise if it happens in the future then it would already have happened, and we would have seen some consequence/evidence of it.

[Pruneau]

The possibility of going back in time has to be impossible, otherwise if it happens in the future then it would already have happened, and we would have seen some consequence/evidence of it.

I think Lady Gaga is proof enough?  Surely they sent her back in time as some sort of punishment?

[Leon]

I think Lady Gaga is proof enough?  Surely they sent her back in time as some sort of punishment?

I don't know about that, but I'd quite happily kick her into next week....