Slashdot Mirror
The Science and Physics of Back To the Future
overthinkingit writes "A scientist has tried to apply serious math and physics, including the Law of Cosines, to analyze how the DeLorean in Back to the Future travels through both Time AND Space: 'in order to pull off the kind of time travel we see in the Back To The Future trilogy — the kind where the traveler is transposed in time, but remains stationary in the same relative position to where he/she left — the DeLorean would have to be an outstanding space ship, in addition to its already laudable work as a time-ship. According to Doc Brown's stopwatch, Einstein the dog travels precisely one minute into the future on this first jump, arriving, relative to their frame of reference, at the same location he left. But how far has this reference frame itself traveled during that one minute?'"
how it leaves tracks of fire on asphalt? Or in the air? Never quite understood that part. The rest of the movie, OTOH, makes perfect sense.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
The universe really DOES revolve around the earth in the movie universe, so no special measures are necessary beyond "simply" moving in time.
Since it was in space for 0.0000E+999 seconds, i.e. never.
It did travel in time and moved from one point to another in the universe (to stay in the same spot on earth) but it didn't "travel in space", hence no need to be a spaceship.
The obvious question is "relative to what"? Once you are moving in time, relativity is out the window. So, I assume, would be any frame of reference in XYZ space. Once you pull of magic in terms of the time position, magic in space positions seems easy. Maybe the whole trick is to change the reference frame, and time travel comes along with the teleportation for free.
My Photography - http://ian-x.com
The Deathlings (comic) - http://thedeathlings.com
This explains the problem that I have trying to use a stasis field in place of a refrigerator. Every time that I shut down the field the food comes flying out of it real fast! (but fresh)
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
1.21 Jigawatts. How many watts are in a lightning bolt anyway? And, for bonus points, if you had a Mr. Fusion, explain how it could generate 1.21 Jigawatts without burning out the wires in the car. (or are we talking 3 or 4 gauge cables now throughout?)
First off, there are WAY too many pages to this article for me to read but it looks fun so maybe later.
But in regards to this, I would like a physicist to boil large problems down to "We can't do X because of the simple problem of Y." Example with Mr. Fusion: We can't do Mr. Fusion because the amount of energy that goes into creating the conditions for fusion outweigh the amount of energy produced. That's something measurable and approachable to me, a starting point.
If it comes down to the problem requiring a Free Lunch, I'd probably give up early--I'm not one to disobey the laws of thermodynamics.
In middle school I devoted large amounts of time and reams of paper to developing a formula f(n) to produce the nth prime number (at the time I was searching for O(1) oh how naive I was about mathematical induction!) and it was all because a teacher explained how powerful such a formula would be for encryption and many other things.
While I (obviously) never solved it, I sure the hell enjoyed the simplified form of a much more complex problem. And on top of that, it kind of set the tone for computer science in my life. Could hoverboards & time machines turn a movie goer into a physicist? Maybe not often but it happens.
My work here is dung.
What you fail to grasp is that the 7th dimension works like quantum sticky tape to hold you in place relative to the things around you as you travel through time. So, you don't really need a space ship because of the relativistic affects of the items around you relative to each other pulling you along. Plus there's the whole inertia thing which requires you to go 88 miles an hour exactly so you always wind up where you started whether you go forward or backward. Try it yourself by drawing two 8's. On is for space space and the other one is for time space.
Also, don't forget that the velocity has to be in miles per hour, because the metric system is gay.
DUH!
they are serious.
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
Teleportation would be the next logical step to answer the moving through space issue.
However remember it involves more than moving through space. Things will last longer. According to Einstein's theory, say you were 15 years old when you left Earth in a spacecraft traveling at about 99.5% of the speed of light, and celebrated only five birthdays during your space voyage. When you get home at the age of 20, you would find that all your classmates were 65 years old, retired, and enjoying their grandchildren! Because time passed more slowly for you, you will have experienced only five years of life, while your classmates will have experienced a full 50 years.
If we get the teleportation thing down, I'll be able to add a lot more clips to my juggling video. :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvp8m8CqIDc
And I always thought time-travel was throwing my alarm clock against the wall.
don't you understand why computer scientists/engineers/it professionals are the butt of mathematician's jokes...
in b4 I/my friend studies algebraic geometry/topology.
The fire was probably due to a well known fact that DeLorians leaked fuel and oil badly. That's why they quit making them.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It's exploding at this conversation.
This typical american response brought to you by Time Warner.
1.21 niggawatts? 1.21 niggawatts? Great Scott! The only power source capable of generating 1.21 niggawatts of theft/welfare is a nigger.
Shameless plug: http://iki.fi/teknohog/physics/levita.ps
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
browser that can handle the math...... seems he need to calculate in the slashdot effect...
anyone that has (in the past) managed to create a time travel device and has tried it, probably thought they made a disintegration machine, because anything they sent back or forward in time was never seen again. (or before, I suppose)
Because a second/minute/year/millenia ago that spot was occupied by empty space. The earth is moving very fast through space.
I've always used that reason to concede that even if we DO make time travel possible, it will be of little practical value.
Then there's the other snag of transposition... if you say, send yourself back in time, what happens to that volume of space where you arrive? Is it destroyed? And what fills in the void where you left? Or one more expected result is it's transposed with your time's space. Thus all time travel is time swapping, something goes forward and something goes back. Now lets say you do make a time travel machine, and test it without considering the earth-travels-through-space issue... that means whatever you send out, you get a big ball of vacuum back. If it's a very brief travel, you may get a chunk of earth, high pressure ocean, or more likely, high pressure magma. Ouch... hope you got insurance. That'll turn your lab into a disaster area real quick.
There are so man "problems" with time travel, that it really doesn't matter if its possible or not. It's not useful.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
as serious math?
Did a communications major write this?
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Reference frames don't travel with respect to themselves. By definition.
However, you could say that we're that much closer/farther from Vega, or in a different season in our Solar orbit, or in a different timezone, etc. Or the Earth's core has counterspun in relation to its own crust. Or tectonic shifts have occurred.
Just assume the car is locked onto a specific reference frame, such as a given latitude/longitude relative to the Earth's axis of rotation and the nearest large mass: the Earth's crust under the car. And pass the popcorn, it's a movie for chri'sakes.
[
Time travel stories very very rarely accommodate the notion that an object made independent of the earth's-sol's-milkyway's current position in time/space might fail to match the movements (future or prior) of these systems, and not return to the same spot on earth, never mind even staying in the solar system.
That always bugs me. Isn't it an obvious problem? Wouldn't your 'magical' explanation of a 'magical' tech need some explanation of it?
Damn those pesky terrorists
But how far has this reference frame itself traveled during that one minute?'
Relative to what? Relative to itself, it hasn't traveled at all. And since we don't know the mechanism for time travel, there's no reason to use any other reference frame. Really, until we understand how they are supposed to travel through time we can't discuss the interactions of reference frames across time skips.
ceci n'est pas une
Don't they realize that "it's fiction"?
They might as well play around with radioactive spiders. Whose turn is it to be bitten today?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Maybe at the moment the DeLorean actually travels through time, it simply moves relative to whatever it's resting on, namely the Earth (or a patch of air) just like Wells' Time Machine is shown as doing in the 1960 film of the same name. Of course, you'd need a little extra handwavium to explain how it also temporarily becomes invisible to an external observer, something to do with causality perhaps...
Meh! Physicists! It *always* has to be ohhh sooo complex!
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
It's simple - large masses such as the earth curve Spacetime. When the Delorean transits time, its path is bent by this natural curvature of spacetime. This serves to keep the time machine firmly rooted in position as related to that of the Earth, regardless of where (or when) it is at either the departure or destination times. This would also mean that time travel between points not on or in orbit around a large mass would be impossible. So that bootleg script for Back to the Future Part IV: The Search for More Money is right out.
Never underestimate the potential of Human stupidity. -Heinlein
Since Professor Brown is obviously using Steampunk technology (look at the ending to the final BTTF), it seems clear to me that the solution to this problem is that the Time Machine is carried along in the Earth's "Aether Drag", the distorting effect that any large mass has on the Luminiferous Aether!
Couldn't you just tie a tether to the DeLorean, anchor it to the ground, and then make the time jump?
You arrive at your temporal destination, and the tether would keep you bound to the Earth's surface. It would only have to be long enough for the 88mph ramp up speed.
However, this means 1 second time jump would result in being physically yanked several kilometers in a split second. Barring astronomical whiplash, this should keep you relatively stationary to the Earth.
Maybe Timecop did have the better time travel scenario. Launch from a bunker, and suddenly splash into the river.
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
And revolving at nine thousand miles an hour.
It's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
The sun that is the source of all our power.
Now the sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day,
In the outer spiral arm, at fourteen thousand miles an hour,
Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred million stars;
It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side;
It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick,
But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide.
We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point,
We go 'round every two hundred million years;
And our galaxy itself is one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.
Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whiz;
As fast as it can go, that's the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
When the DeLorean becomes unstuck from time, it does not actually also become unstuck from space. Since it does not experience time, that means it can't interact with physical objects, but the interactions before and after must be consistent. For example if the DeLorean didn't "move" at all, so the earth moved away from it, that would mean a massive change in its potential energy without any change in time, which requires infinite energy. Thus the point in space where the DeLorean becomes unstuck serves as a reference point, and that reference point is dragged along with earth's gravity well, and the electrostatic fields that were holding the DeLorean up, etc. In a way it as though the Delorean is sitting there, motionless, the entire time but simply not visible, until it appears again and of course has the same amplitude of momentum that it had when it became unstuck (88 mph).
Obviously this works just the same if you're traveling forward or backward in time.
That's all ludicrous made-up BS, but so is the Flux Capacitor. I mean it doesn't make much sense to me to accept time travel just to poke holes at the "but you always end up in the same place" part. Since it's made up physics anyway, it can work however the author wants it to. This isn't the same as when you have say a super-hero with magical powers, but he behaves in a completely illogical way (like forgetting he has certain powers when it would short-circuit the plot). This is like accepting that the hero can fly, but rejecting the laser eye vision. That's just silly.
The enemies of Democracy are
We're talking about time travel, so we get to go a little nuts. Much like when landing in a valley, as long as you're close, you'll fall into it. Call it a funnel you like. So as long as you're generally close the Earth's gravity well will suck you into the same spot that you left -- relative to the gravity well. It's one of those pendulum and gyroscoping effects.
- Q.E.D.
(In case it isn't obvious, I know nothing. But love the trilogy.)
I have an arsenal of a Chevy Malibu and a Nissan Versa, in my garage, at the ready to convert into time machines. Better yet, the breaker panel is just on the other side of the wall, so there's my power source.
My main breaker is 200 A, so at 240 VAC and 80% load, that's 38.4 kW. To get 1.21 GW at 240 VAC, I'd need a 6.3 MA main. Better call the city utility to upgrade me.
Alternately, Caterpillar has 5.2 MW gas turbines available for rental--I'd need to rent 233 of these to make 1.21 GW. If each one of these needs 600 square feet, that's a total of 139,800 square feet, or 3.2 acres. My house is only on one acre, so I'd need to build a parking deck that could accommodate 233 semi-trailers; probably 5-6 levels.
Yes, I'm sure with some high school-level trigonometry we can figure out this trivial time-travel business.
Who cares about the science, it's delorean!
I care MUCH more about the other 2 technologies presented in BttF than time travel:
1) Mr. Fusion ... a device that will take a few liters organic waste and generate enough power to power your car like it was running on plutonium? heck yeah!
2) Anti-Gravity ... for cars, skate boards, etc.
Those two technologies are FAR more interesting, compelling, and desirable, IMO, than the time travel technology. And, in the current climate, the energy source is probably more compelling than the levitation device.
These kinds of considerations aren't anything new, and injecting them into soft sci-fi like Back to the Future is a waste of time. BttF is enjoyable, though, and does make a great accidental (?) satire of the American dream and hubris. For science, read some Larry Niven or Stanislaw Lem instead.
For example, Vernor Vinge did something like this, involving teleportation. A teleporter could control both the outcome position and velocity, but velocity was "harder" and took effort proportional to the difference in velocity.
Therefore, long distance teleports were only feasible along a longitude, and to the opposite latitude, since you had to match momentum or die by either being crushed or flung off into space. The earth's spin matches at lat X long Y, and lat -X long Y, but nowhere else.
As a result, one of the world's superpowers controlled both semi-polar regions, alternating by season; while the other stuck to the equator.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
So Doc told Marty he couldn't run into himself or it'd screw up time and he'd cease to exist.....however Biff was able to go back in time and talk to himself w/o any problems.....what's the deal?!?!
Not just time and space, but you have to arrive with the right velocity, orientation, and spin. If you landed in the future in a DeLorean spinning at 380 rpm on its top and traveling at 483 mph with respect to the local terrain, you might not survive to make your next movie.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
The science and physics of superman racing the flash.
"A scientist has tried to apply serious math and physics, including the Law of Cosines, to analyze who would win in a race between superman and the flash"
In other news, said scientists' funders have threatened to pull their grants citing too much idle time.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Now, if this scientist had simply realized that Back to the Future is a fictional movie, he could have saved a lot of time.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Hello McFly!!!
You need a Tardus for this kind of work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwY5o2fsG7Y
here's the link I forgot...
http://www.delorean.com/
i haven't RTFA yet.... but this clown better not have been doing this on taxpayer dimes.....
- Like the unfortunate Federation officers that get stuck in 'phase' after a transporter accident. And all they can successfully interact with is the deck. They go through ceilings, walls, equipment, even Mr. Spock, but not the deck. And of course, they are fortunate to still be able to breath the air, despite not being able to actually move any of it sufficiently to wave at fellow crewmembers and cause them wonderment at the drafts...
- Or the ghosts that also can walk about on Earth, but sadly cannot help falling through walls, etc. No, I would not walk through a wall for Demi Moore. well, maybe after she got her boobs for Stiptease. No, but for Jennifer Connelly I might, even though hers really are fake.
Yes, the complexities of time travel would, in a real world, include navigation to the point in relative space where you wanted to be at the desired time.
I guess that's why it's so damned hard in real life. That and getting a DeLorean that runs for more than a month straight.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Before we discovered Relativity it was a problem, but Einstein had made it abundantly clear that it is NOT a problem.
However, Einstein also showed that gravity is an accelerating reference frame, which might be a problem since then shit is actually moving.
The strange thing was that both you and they continued to experience your own times at the usual rate. That's why Albie called it the "Theory of Relativity". (Incidentally I know this is a non-technical explanation, but a little additional analysis shows why there is the apparent paradox that although both you and the Earth apparently experience a body accelerating away from you and then accelerating towards you, the time dilation is not the same on both sides.)
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I'd say their SysAdmin certainly didn't "Over Think" their webserver.
Slashdotted Back to the Future!!!
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
Orwell explains why you become invisible in the intervening time when time travelling in the book "The Time Machine", which the movie is based upon.
Basically it goes like this: the amount of interaction between a time traveller T and an object O is directly proportional to the speed difference. If T moves at 200 times the normal speed of time (taking him forward 200 seconds for each second O experiences as moving forward) the electromagnetic forces will have 1/200:th of the chance to interact, and thus will interact 1/200:th as much. This also explains why T can see the outside world, because although each second gets 1/200:th of a photon per photon, he also gets 200 times the photons, which ends up as 1/1, so light will be as bright to him as if he was travelling at normal speed.
There is no absolute frame of reference in space or in time. By taking into account the motion of the Earth around the Sun and around its axis, he is arbitrarily picking implying the heliocentric-ecliptic coordinate system is the absolute frame of reference.
To be honest though, I can't suggest a better way of doing this. The DeLorean can simply pop out of existence in one spot in spacetime and pop into existence at another. If this ability is a given, I'm not sure its necessary to treat travelling through space separately.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
So you're saying that it has to move both in time, and in relative dimensions in space.
... is a gigawatt? :)
Professor Brown explained that Einstein simply 'skipped' over that minute and arrived in the same place at a different time. The DeLorean -and hence Einstein- still had their combined velocities of the reference plane (place) that it had when it did the 'timeskip'; that's why it was still going eighty-eight MPH when it reappeared one minute later. If the combined velocities of the 'time traveler' or the 'place' do not change during his trip, then he simply arrives in the same 'place' just at a different time. However, if the 'place' from which he leaves encounters a sudden change of velocity at the exact moment of departure, then he could return in a very different 'place' upon arrival.
Sig this!
I call AC. ACs don't get to call BS.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I already knew this ..
And you don't need to be a scientist, since you don't need to do the math, you just need to know that the earth rotates and moves around the sun, and so to end up in the same spot would severly restrict your choice of jump time deltas.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
James M. McCanney, M.S. Physics, has cracked the 2500 year old problem of finding the pattern of prime numbers, so that, as he describes it, even a 3rd grader can use his "generator function". Yes, this does mean that encryption functions based on prime numbers are now very insecure. http://www.calculateprimes.com/
All Rights Reserve Without Prejudice, Angela Kahealani. All information + transactions nonnegotiable + private.
While it isn't BTTF, exactly, the tv show Seven Days had a similar time traveling premise, however the portion of the machine that traveled back in time wasn't the time machine itself, but rather a pod that had to be guided back to the earth. The intro of the show even shows a lost pod floating out in space with a (dead?) pilot. One of the few, if only, shows I've ever seen that addressed the time/space issue.
Why don't this people think of the most common thing that would be applied in time travel. Gravity anchor, it anchors you with the planet you (or the space area) are on when you time travel. That way, you don't end up in space or in the sun when you time travel.
The car in the Back to the Future movies might have had such anchor. Not intentionally, obliviously. Rather by an accident when he build the time travel engine (must have been part of the time travel matrix he had).
Ask this guy instead.
They need to give this guy something better to do.
since we are just holographic projections from a 2D image into a 3D existence. There is no "Where" and there is no "When" to adjust to. As previously discussed, the universe may be a hologram theory would support the concept that all our perceptions of space and time and motion are based on our interpretation of the hologram as we sense it. Since we construct sensors to detect what we perceive to be true how would we know otherwise. There's no limit to what you can accomplish... if you don't demand credit.
Sometimes I think our understanding of space is even more shaky than our understanding of time. It should be obvious, for example, that distances can only be measured between two objects. So saying that the time ship would need to travel a considerable distance in order to be in the same place is actually rather silly. The distance traveled in space (if that really is distinct from time) is zero if you measure it in any sensible way.
Why would you measure it from some fictitious "stationary" point in space? What does the word stationary really mean in this context? Would it be important in any physical sense?
Its a movie under the genre science FICTION. The flux capacitor is a work of fiction. It was indeed an excellent trilogy but to me it sounds like the scientists are bored.
...damn, I crack myself up.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
It is foolish to assume that time travel has to be fast. It could be very very slow as long as it appears to be fast to the person traveling. If you could freeze the traveler frame and slowly transport it, you could go at whatever speed you wanted.
Obviously a fridge wouldn't work -- it can't go at 88 mph.
A washing machine, however, would have no difficulty at going that fast:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_Fiction:_Boom_or_Bust
You'd just be incredibly dizzy.:-)
So next time you jig, be very careful to dance either more or less than 1.21 minute, lest you suddenly go back in time to the 1950s where your dad is a spineless wimp.
I'm a spineless wimp you insensitive clod!
Your space suit won't help..
>> Because a second/minute/year/millenia ago that spot was occupied by empty space. The earth is moving very fast through space.
You'll just be the next meteor burning up during (re)entry. At least for those shorter jumps.
That's surprisingly on topic for a response to a troll post...
Alternatively, one can magick up an explanation of temporospatial momentum preservation (and have the time-travelling object interacts with the universe around it by means of gravity so that it can follow the same orbit forward in time, and what-not).
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
...it's still not enough for him!
City of Industry is at about 98 meters above sea level. This would increase the distance the point moves.
We've abolished the Machian idea of an absolute reference frame by now.
No we haven't.
We're here on Earth. We have our time reference. We launch a satellite, and check it's time reference, and find that it's moving a tad slower than ours, even when it's not accelerating in its orbit. (This has already been done) The fact that it is moving faster than we are moves it closer to c and that means its time reference is slower than ours.
The satellite is in orbit around the Earth, so it's easy to see that it's moving faster than we are, and that makes it rather difficult to sort out this whole "no absolute reference frame" thing.
So let's simplify things a bit: Rather than orbit the Earth, we launch it directly into outer space, heading directly away from Earth. Without any absolute reference, we have two points heading directly away from each other, at exactly identical speeds. If there's a perfect lack of absolute reference, both items would slow down exactly the same amount relative to each other, because the only reference involved is the other point!
Yet, that's not what happens. We launch a spacecraft, send it directly away from the Earth, and find that its time reference slows compared to ours. We send it out a ways, we send it back, and find that it's clocks are simply slow.
So there *is* a reference to something other than just Earth, there is something more absolute about the Earth reference than the spacecraft's reference, which makes the "there are no absolutes" argument specious, if often convenient!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Likewise as you travel through this local time frame, that is, move through the fourth dimension, the mass you're on in the other three dimensions will carry you with it, so that you will not appear to move geographically during your journey through time.
Just as an airplane travels at 300 miles per hour through the air. It's moving horizontally. If you stand in the aisle and jump vertically, you will land in the same spot in the aisle from which you jumped. Because although you are moving along a different dimension, the other two continue to "carry" you with them.
Ujuuggghhhh, I'm suffocating!
Im still curious as to how they made a DeLorian go 88 mph. They were so heavy and under powered..
1. DeLorean, not DeLorian (sic)
2. The DMC-1, afaik, used a PRV (Pougeut/Renault/Volvo) V6, so oil and fuel leaks, if any, could hardly be attributed to British engineering. Assembly standards, perhaps.
3. Lotus (British firm) did design the frame and suspension, which I have heard no complaints about.* Oddly enough, one problem with these cars in areas where they salt the roads is that they rot out. The body panels are indeed stainless steel and impervious to rust, but the frame, alas, is not.
*Other than the ride height in the front being awkward, but that was, I hear, due to impending US regulations for a minimum ride height that never got put into legislation. There are kits to restore the front ride height to spec.
When the cop asks why I was speeding, can I just say I was trying slow the aging process?
But how far has this reference frame itself traveled during that one minute?
That reference frame is RELATIVE! So it can't have traveled!
On another note, I calculated that with the fat inside my body. I could power the flux compensator 1.21 gigawatts for 0.8 seconds at straight! (I'd not survive, but when it comes to death, it can't get much better!)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Which brings us back to poor Calvin Klein and his hot 50's teenage bad girl / mom issues...
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
Has the Grand Dragon gone on an anal spree again? You crazy KKK members and giving the GD erotic pleasures.
You actually need to account for a *LOT* more than mear motion and orientation of earth in the 11-dimenstional universal reference frame over time. You also need to account for all distortions of free space caused by changes in the expansion of the universe, gravity wells of all matter with mass within at least 1B light years and magnetic induced distortions to free space. This approach would be much more dangerous than stealing platonium from libyians and is *NOT* how Docs invention operates.
The flux capacitor attaches itself to all relevent future/past frames before actually moving the delorian forward or backward in time by establishing an instantaneous link with its potential mirror in the past or future frame using super scary action through time. Absoulte current and past/future universal coordinates are worked out **well before any transition actually occurs**.
To help visualize what is occuring the process is similiar in concept to leaders which guided the lightning strike to the conducting surface of the clock tower before the lightning actually completed its journy.
Coincidently this is also why the delorian needs to be traveling at 88.8 MPH - so that future/past frame transitions can clearly see the reflection of their own momentum potential to establish proper phase resonance.
Also helpful is the fact the capacitor is perfectly "Y" shaped to maintain its symmetric profile when estabishing a resonant phase match with its potential mirror. This is essential as the presence of strong active magnetic fields in the vacinity (either present or past/future) can cause the orientation of free space surrounding the flux capacitor to change dynmaically after establishing a potential link. This can be catastrophic as the delorian could be translated upside down, on its side or even into solid earth.
No, no. He's got it all wrong.
"Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey."
-FL
In the Olden Days, when I was a kid, we used to unscrew the latch to prevent the tragic loss of any human DNA. Then we'd cut the lines to release the pressurised Freon, for the safety of anyone who happened to be shooting junk with a rifle or setting fire to the garbage. You wouldn't want to risk an explosion.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
...but the surface of the earth is accelerating (by spinning around the earth) as is the earth accelerating (by spinning around the Sun) and of course our solar system and galaxy are also accelerating.
The reference frame would be traveling in a straight line at a constant speed. i.e. off into space.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
...but the surface of the earth is accelerating (by spinning around the earth) as is the earth accelerating (by spinning around the Sun) and of course our solar system and galaxy are also accelerating. The reference frame would be traveling in a straight line at a constant speed. i.e. off into space.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
Such as, I dunno, the continual change int he Earth's vector thanks to the Sun's gravity?
If that doesn't make sense, think about it this way - it's rather exactly like spinning a cat in a basket, the cat sticks to the basket even when it's upside-down because the cat's momentum is pushing it straight out, but the basket is catching it and pulling it around in a circle. Just like astronauts orbiting the earth, except in reverse and no gravity involved, so maybe not really like that at all. But I digress; my point is you can't explain it that simply, because if the momentum is the trick, then the delorean is gunna shoot off into space.
Unless, of course, you can come up with some way for gravity to affect things that are 'in-transit' timetravelling, but I think you will quickly find any such explanation leads to much bigger problems, like too much time travel eventually contributing to the decay of the Earth's orbit, or perhaps how to explain one force continuing to act on the delorean when no other force can.
How is future Biff, when he takes the almanac back to 1955, able to travel back to the unaffected future? Remember, when Doc explains to Marty they can't just go back to the future they once knew because they are now on another time line? Yet, clearly, Biff was able to make it back because he returned the DeLorean back where he got it from in the unaltered time line despite having come from the past where past Biff already has the almanac.
So, Mr.Everything-makes-since, how do you explain that?
PS Your sarcasm is lost on me. This is BTTF. Serious business >:(
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
You do if you expect to be at the same point in time when you get to your space destination.
Not if you travel really really fast.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
Are you saying Earth is an inertial frame of reference? And that we would end up at the same place in a different time?
Or are you saying, Earth is not an inertial reference frame and that it would move out from underneath you?
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
Damn you!
I've never noticed that before and I can't un-know it!
...he is giving away all my secrets. If word gets out on how to build a time machine, none of my get rich quick schemes will work.
If y'all mod him down to keep it a secret, I'll share the wealth with you later.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
The acceleration of the earth gives it away. Remember, a change in direction counts as acceleration. If the earth was indeed not moving, but everything else was. Then everything else would be accelerating (in some sort of circular wobble). And we would be able to detect this, just as we can detect the wobble of distant stars caused by the planets orbiting them.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
instead I end up going 88 mph in the parking lot every time me and my friends get together and play.
PS Telling the judge that the Libyans had found me doesn't work.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
Ouch! Did you come here from Digg or 4chan?
But seriously, lighten up some. While he was wrong in his understanding, the thing he was confused about is a text book paradox. It is something that is naturally confusing and seemingly contradictory. So, could you politely explain how he is wrong and maybe link to some illuminating resources?
For the GP, google "twin paradox". If you find a good explanation, you will have you answer as to why the "traveler" will be the one that ages.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
Google "twin paradox". If you find a good explanation, you will have you answer as to why the "traveler" will be the one that doesn't age.
It is a classic problem in relativity and very fun and interesting to understand how it works. bottom line though is, if you sped away from earth, then sped back, everyone else would age more than you.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
For the GP, google "twin paradox". If you find a good explanation, you will have you answer as to why the "traveler" will be the one that ages.
the traveler ages less than everyone else.
Sorry, got to typing faster than I was thinking.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
I think the problem with you post is it seems that you are positing the idea that by traveling fast, the flow of time only appears to be changing.
It is, in fact, changing.
Let me give you a different scenario of the reality of these changes. (First at ordinary speeds) if you are on a truck traveling at 55 mph and you throw a baseball at 30 mph in the same direction, your friend will see the ball traveling at 85 mph. (now at extraordinary speeds) If you are on a truck traveling at the speed of light, and you throw a baseball at the speed of light in the same direction, your friend will see the ball traveling at the speed of light with you.
In other words, you and the ball with be traveling together according to your stationary friend, yet the ball will be leaving you at the speed of light according to you.
These are not just appearances, this is what would actually be happening in each reference frame. Similarly, when you travel, the flow of time will also actually be changing.
I know this wasn't the best explanation, but I thought a spatial consequence of relativity might help you think of these consequences in a different light.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
Light always travels at the same speed. If you run away from it, it still catches up to you at the speed of light.
Even if you yourself are traveling at the speed of light away from earth, light from earth is overtaking you at the speed of light. Even though from the perspective of an earth-dweller, no light would be catching up to you.
This is a rather large part of special relativity.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
Is it just me, or is "FAIL" out of place for a serious reply?
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
Clearly, the effects of changing the past take time to ripple through, um, time... hence the "fading" of people from photographs (not sure why certain body parts fade before others though). So Biff made it back to unaltered 1985 because he came back really quickly and sped past the ripple.
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
Don't fret it -- see http://entertainment.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1097189&cid=26527959
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
It's a different Biff!
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
Ok I think I got it. Damn you for trying to ruin my childhood memories of one of the best movie series.
Future Biff gives 1955 Biff the almanac.
1955 Biff thinks it a bunch of bull. At that point in time 1955 Biff doesn't believe the almanac, so there is no change to the timeline, so Future Biff goes to the "normal" future (the time he came from)
He puts the DeLorean back.
Then 1955 Biff realizes the almanac is real, then the timeline branches off.
http://img232.imageshack.us/my.php?image=howitworkedwm9.png
If we treat the flux capacitor's effect as the creation of a wormhole with one mouth in front of the Delorean and the other in another part of spacetime, all the problems go away. The wormhole is only open long enough for a Delorean, travelling at 88 mph, to traverse it. This is why it takes so much energy!
More support for this interpretation comes from the fact that the flux capacitor, which bends space to create the wormhole, is not the only important power drain! The "time circuits", which are needed to calculate the exact spacetime location corresponding to the current Earth co-ordinates but displaced in time, must be quite amazingly power-intensive.
Maybe the time circuits use space-manipulation tech in their design.
Now THAT is some heavy-duty math and physics. If you are in 7th grade.
Anyone who tinkers with these things soon discovers that if you build a time machine in the vicinity of a large mass, such as the planet Earth, you get general relativistic frame dragging meaning that as you travel through time, your position relative to that mass remains roughly constant. In effect, the presence of mass means you have local breaking of Lorentz symmetry so that inertial frames are no longer equivalent.
It's related to the way the warp drives in Star Trek don't work as well in the presence of matter. In a complete vacuum away from all mass (eg. in intergalactic space), warp n corresponds to n^3 times the speed of light. But in the vicinity of stars and planets warp drive is actually much slower.
Anyway, this was meant to be a brief post as I'm on my way back to the fourth millennium.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
This is not a problem. You just use the Delorean as your zero X-Y-Z axis point and plot the rest of the universe around it.
This is simple relativity, folks.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
Clearly it's because they stop young Biff from using the almanac. The alternate 1985 that they went back to from 2015 merely happened in order to get them to go back to 1955 and fix things. ;)
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
is that BttF involves the Grandfather Paradox, but BttF2 seems to be a time travel tale of the alternate timeline variety. If time travel creates alternate timelines, then the Grandfather Paradox doesn't occur.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits eighty-eight miles per hour... you're gonna see some serious shit.
There is no time. Find some time, put it in a bottle and give it to me. There is no space either. There is only the universe, and billions of specs of energy vibrating at varying rates. Time is an illusion brought on by the fact we as humans have yet to observe the inverse particulation of all matter, as of yet, we have observed only the linear effects of forward particulation. Thus the eye only sees light as it appears to explode outward from it's origin in waves of particles as they dance on our retinas. We have yet to see behind the scenes, where particulating matter is collapsing under it's own mass on the point of origin.
Time appears to occur because there is an observable "space" between constituent bodies of the universe. As all matter is constantly moving and changing form. Speed is relative to the point of observation. Therefore time only appears as a side-effect of a consciousness traveling from one point in the universe to another.... Time does not "exist". There is no time. ....rambles incoherantly...."there is no sleep either"
-Songs of my delirium
Discordian Pope Oz
-Oz
I was tempted to answer plot hole, but here's another point of view.
There are technically no "alternate" timelines, simply alternate events, but the events of the past still affect the situation of the future. Marty and Doc are out of their time space, so they continue to remember the events of their pasts, as does old Biff, who was out of his time space when the shift (the change from natural (the events Marty originally fixed in 1955) to alternate (the events old Biff screwed up in 1955)) occurred. Jennifer is unconscious, so she is completely unaware of the changes, and Marty and Doc fix the problem before she wakes, so she never experiences the alternate events. After Marty destroys the almanac, fixing the timeline, the time space shifts back to what I've termed as natural events.
So, in all technicality, there are no alternate timelines, just alternate events that deviate from the so-called natural timeline. My sig should explain how I devised this explanation.
I remember when I was a kid, and this movie came out, there were SO many playground rumors that hoverboards were real, and coming out 'this Christmas'. I half believed them then.
...