What Could Go Wrong with Time Travel?

Is time travel as dangerous as a maniac in a mask? If you find yourself standing on the cusp of time and space, you might want to stop and think of the implications of what can go wrong.

You have to be pretty sharp to shatter the space/time continuum. But every genius who has ever created a way to travel back in time in movies never seems to consider how much they could mess up everything. Plenty could go wrong, including the “temporal paradox.” If you go back in time in a way that contradicts the future, you could end up creating a paradox. If the changes to the past affect the future, the paradox could, hypothetically, unravel the fabric of time.  Another theory is that time travel would create two different realities.

Prospective time travelers also need to watch out for the safeguards. Messing with time could prompt different facets throughout history to try and stop you from doing so — sort of like the fabric of time having its own white blood cells. There’s also the butterfly effect to take into consideration — that even the smallest shift, like the flap of a butterfly’s wings, could completely alter the world as we know it.

If you keep all of this in mind and still want to time travel — good luck.