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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?'"

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  1. The Velocity Parameters by Ralph+Spoilsport · · Score: 1, Redundant
    Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
    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.