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?'"

Comments

It's really quite simple

[Diss Champ]

The universe really DOES revolve around the earth in the movie universe, so no special measures are necessary beyond "simply" moving in time.

wear your space suit

[v1]

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.

erm,

[Speare]

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.

Re:stasis field food storage

[Bogtha]

Coincidentally, the first draft for Back to the Future had a fridge for the time machine, but that was changed because the director thought it would end up with kids watching the film, playing around climbing into fridges, and getting trapped.

Re:Boiling It Down

[thedonger]

I spent some time in high school looking for a common form of a 2-digit multiplication trick and wound up deriving the quadratic formula. No one was impressed. So much for public school...

But back on topic, I think Homer Simpson's time traveling toaster is accurate with regards to the time portion: anything you do while in the past creates an alternate time stream only into which you may move forward. The problem the Simpson's didn't deal with is that if you exist in that new future, you will be a duplicate if you are able to travel forward in time to when you are alive. But I don't think forward time travel is possible since there is not/will not be a future.

Physical position notwithstanding, BTTF - while fun to watch - can't happen. Once you move backward through time you are screwed.