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The Time Travel Paradoxes of Back To the Future
brumgrunt sent in a fun little piece to get your brain going on a cloudy monday morning. Despite countless viewings of BTTF I still never thought of a few of these. "Throughout Back To The Future Part III, there has to be two Deloreans in 1885. Also, why don't George and Lorraine recognize their son? Why doesn't the time machine disappear in the alternative 1985? These and more Back To The Future paradoxes explored..."
If you travel back in time to the exact same spot, just in a different time, then (unless you're REALLY precise on the exact time of day and year), you'll most likely end up floating in space. People who make time travel movies don't seem to realize that the earth moves around its axis and around the sun. The spot I'm standing on right now will be vaccum in just a few minutes.
If Marty had went back to a different time of year without a space suit, Biff would have been the least of his worries.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
There HAVE to be ;)
someone fire up their CGI skills and make it like it should be and rewrite a few lines of the script
"Despite countless viewings of BTTF I still never through of a few of these. "
Did you the whole thing?
The cool thing is that at one point there are FOUR DeLoreans for a few hours in 1955, Marty I, Cowboy Doc, Marty 2 (with Doc) and Biff's.
Doc probably could have MacGuyvered a distillation setup to make gasoline out of petroleum, but he quickly figured that it would take him much longer than it would take for him to get murdered and so other options were needed. He just didn't bore Marty with the details and called it impossible, adding the words "in what little time we have" in his own head.
...on their hands and needs to get a life.
Had it ever been made.
Repeat to yourself: It's just a show, I should really just relax.
Regarding Jennifer's surprise at seeing herself, the older Jennifer is surprised because they see each other at the same time. Up to the point young Jennifer sees old Jennifer, old Jennifer can't remember seeing young Jennifer because it's not a done deal yet. Time is still in the process of being changed. The movie is pretty clear that changes to the timeline are not predetermined. Old Jennifer cannot remember seeing young Jennifer until it actually happens, thus being a surprise for both parties.
I picture a lone Delorean, forever floating through empty space at 88 miles per hour.
I don't understand why you post first about a frame of reference problem and then joke about 88 miles per hour ... in reference to what? In the movies the DeLorean is traveling at 88 miles per hour as would be seen by an observer standing on Earth's surface. But to someone standing perfectly still in reference to the absolute center of the solar system -- as you seem to imply time machines are initially calibrated to -- then the velocity of the DeLorean would change with the velocity of the Earth around the Sun. Why are you only referencing the solar system and not galaxy or nebula or universe? So ... yeah, 88 miles per hour for those of us still on Earth many miles away. But your own post suffers the same problem that the movie suffers which is a frame of reference to the velocity and position.
... Or maybe claim that you machine is anchored to Earth's gravity well to simplify things a bit more?
...
Basically for new writers who write a science fiction time travel story you gotta make sure you mention briefly that you solved the orbit/rotation/surface problem and have calibrated your time machine to account for the ever changing topography of the Earth as well as its orbit and rotation
They were fun movies and nothing more. It might be fun to dissect them but if this is news, stand back in awe for my dissection of about a hundred other movies
My work here is dung.
If you fire up your DVD or VHS tape, you'll see that someone went back and fixed them in the original master. They went through a lot of trouble, too.
Can be found in a "Rocky and Bullwinkle" episode from long ago.
Boris Badenof has just cut the rope on a large treasure chest that dangles over a cliff. Of course he is standing on the treasure chest at the time so they both fall together. In typical comic form the treasure chest inverts as it falls, so Boris is underneath it as it crashes to the ground.
Natasha cries out, "Oh Boris are you okay?"
Boris says in response: "Don't worry, tis only cartoon".
In the first movie, Marty goes back in time and changes a bunch of things, so the world is different (albeit slightly) when he gets back. But what about inventing Rock & Roll and the song Johnny B Goode, and giving them to Chuck Berry via his cousin Marvin? That's something that stayed the same because he went back. So was he always supposed to go back or not?
Technoli
What about the biggest hole? The fact that at the end of BTTF 2, when Doc is floating in the Delorean and struck by lightning, he is not travelling at 88 Mph! He travels backwards in time while just hovering. The speed is a myth!
Logically, Marty's parents would have had a fight about Lorraine having cheated on George with Calvin Klein well before Marty reached that stage in his life. There's no reason they suddenly would have had that fight on the exact day Marty came back from 1955.
There are many different ways time travel can be presented in fiction, with many different sets of "rules." In my opinion, BTTF actually sticks pretty close to its own rules, except when a) absolutely necessary for the story, or b) good for a laugh (see a).
The reason future versions of people don't know what's going on right now in their being-rewritten past is because they're in a different line on Doc's chalkboard. So when Doc in 1885 writes the note to Marty, he is from a future where (when?) he didn't know he was going to be killed by Mad Dog Tannen. So he couldn't possibly know that Marty was going to need to come back and rescue him, and would need gasoline to do it.
As for why Marty's parents don't recognize him, I would say they've had years to forget the details of what Calvin Klein looked like, and years of seeing their son every day as he grew up to look like someone they haven't seen in 30 years. Think of someone you know and see often. Now look at a picture of them from a long time ago. In your mind, they may seem like they haven't changed, but they have. It's like how I still picture my dad looking like he did a while back, when I saw him more often, and am now shocked to see that he has turned into Rush Limbaugh (not literally, but eerily similar-looking).
The one good question posed by this article is about whether Marty and Jennifer would exist in 2015, after they have just gone off in the time machine w/ Doc Brown in 1985. At that point, we might think they should be removed from any future time line until they return safely to 1985. I can only surmise that when traveling to the future, the Delorean travels along the future time line it is leaving, without regard for any changes it may introduce by doing so.
Perhaps a better overall question is: what happens to all the versions of people stuck on those time lines that are then cancelled out by Doc and Marty's travels? Do they zap out of existence? Do the time lines continue on, with fake-boob Lorraine married to Biff and all the other unpleasantness? Should we be happy that everything worked out for "our" Marty, because he's the only character who is the same person we met at the beginning of the first movie?
will the wiki be adapted on sales figures to reflect this decrepancy? :-)
This particular problem can be sidestepped. Earth (and the Solar system) moves along geodesics in 4D-space (that's what the whole General Relativity is about), so we can just imagine that your time machine will also move along geodesics (essentially, retracing the path of the Earth and Solar System) when traveling in time.
There's no guarantee that the scores in the book would hold up if the timeline was altered. You all saw what happened in the Bronco's game on "Hot Tub Time Machine", right? Biff would probably still end up a broke loser, because the chaos of the universe would alter people's actions in small ways that would eventually cause huge changes in outcomes.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
It's quite funny how many paradoxes there are in BTTF, and still they managed to put in some truly obscure consistency: http://www.thevrabec.com/2010/07/12/back-to-the-future-you-certainly-havent-noticed-this/
--- Reality doesn't care about your opinions, it happens anyway and if you are in the way you'll get squished.
You mean to tell me that in the movie about the time travelling, flying delorean, that runs variously on a fusion engine and stolen libyan plutonium, that there's something unrealistic about the plot of that movie? NOOOO!
haha.
stuff |
I thought about this a long time ago, actually. It always bugged the crap out of me that they spent much of the third movie driving to the point that the time machine is a terrible thing and must be destroyed before it tears the universe a new one. At the end of the movie this is accomplished splendidly, only to immediately find that Doc Brown has created a new one.
Instead of a fourth movie, I propose a short series. The story is that Marty realizes that Doc Brown must be stopped, so he teams up with the other paradox Martys and they use the various paradox leftover Deloreans to hunt Doc Brown through time. More paradoxes create more people and equipment to replenish what will inevitably be terrible losses in this war.
The series would be terrible, and I would _love_ it.
http://publicvoidlife.blogspot.com
someone used the phrase 'get a life' !! ahaa haa ahaha ahaha ahah ahah aaha yoeap...
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Wikipedia hadn't been invented yet.
Fail yourself!
Time travel paradoxea worked different in the 1st one (you vanish from photos, or you cant touch guitar) from the second (alternate realities, universe exploding) and the third (marty still know the name of the teacher, the tombstone picture)
Of course, I've thought about time travel more than is healthy.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
A time machine is supposed to travel in the time dimension only, and not in our 3 spatial dimensions.
This is not the sig you're looking for.
If you're wondering about time machines, and other science facts, then repeat to yourself "it's just a show, I should really just relax!"
At a quantum level the entire scenario is highly improbable and given the scale and expanse of the timelines in question no amount of space or storage on slashdot.org would likely contain a text representation of the incredibly low probability. Thus I will likely fail to achieve "suspension of disbelief" the next time I view any of the films given this obvious and thoroughly proven principle of quantum physics. Shitty writing... clearly... no real context or plausible basis for the storyline...
Science Fiction authors have known for a long time that time travel can create paradoxes. There are many better efforts than the BTTF series however. (Of course BTTF was never intended as 'serious' science fiction. Even Star Trek has done a better job.
I don't believe that there is any possible frame of reference that contains an intersection of "being discrete" and "take the Delorean."
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
The ending of BTTF 1 has always bothered me. Doc has a time machine. He can choose any day of Marty's life to pick him up to go fix the future. You'd think he could at least let Marty go to the lake and get laid before the next hell ride through time, but he gives him like 10 minutes to enjoy the good version of his life. Also, after harping on the whole "sanctity of the space-time continuum" for the entire movie what does Doc do when he gets his time machine back? Immediately goes around and starts screwing up the space-time continuum. Hypocrite.
Actually it is not a plot hole.
Example: Let's assume A is a 2D human. He looks at something that he percieve as line.
Human B is 3D. For him this 'line' might just as well be a curve if he looks from above.
You can apply same logic to time.
Quick way to get 30% Funny 70% Troll: defend Opera browser on
Except what they don't ever really talk about is that each time they double the Martys or the docs in a given point in time, they double the amount of time that period in history takes up. Shortening their useful lifespan by that much. Since they've already lived in that stretch of time doesn't automatically tack that on to the end of your life.
Consequently, they would be aging significantly with respect to everybody else in their original time line. For a few relatively short trips it's not a big deal, but it adds up over time.
I'm not sure I follow his reasoning. He seems to be saying that because Marty and Jennifer are in the future, that they haven't returned to the past yet to be present in 2015. Therefore, while they're "out of time", they're essentially gone from the normal flow of time.
I see a few problems with this analysis. First of all, the 2015 Marty and Jennifer are their futures. They've long gone to the future and come back by that point.
When Einstein was transported a minute into the future, it was only a one-way trip, so it's completely understandable that he would be "gone" for that minute. If Doc had refueled the DeLorean after Einstein returned and sent him back 1 minute into the past (as of when he first arrived), the moment Einstein originally disappeared, he would have reappeared and it would have been as if he were never gone.
The point I'm driving at here is when the group usually goes into different times, they return to when they originally left, so they won't have been gone for long at all, respective to their original time even if they were in the future for decades for example.
In the begining of the third film Marty is at his highschool and he realizes the name has been changed. When he goes back in time to save Doc, Doc and Marty save the teacher. After Marty's influences on Doc. Marty than realizes his highschool was named after a teacher who fell off a clift. Then Doc and Marty have a conversation about how Marty noticed already the highschool was renamed.
At the begining of the film the school should not have been renamed until a Marty went back and influenced Doc.
They were dragging it around with horses and no one noticed. There's a LOT of open country with no one around back then. Worse case scenario, hook the horses up again, throw some brown burlap over the car, and ride on top of it like a buck-board. I seriously doubt anyone would notice a thing from a little distance, and once they get where they're going they can simply hide it as they did previously.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
A time machine is supposed to travel in the time dimension only, and not in our 3 spatial dimensions.
Hence the DeLorean, silly rabbit.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
And since the spatial dimensions are locked to the time dimension as one person said earlier a time machine is basically tracking the spatial dimensions in step with the time it's going through.
With that being said one still isn't without problems. How does the time machine deal with changing conditions surrounding the given location? For example x,y,z at time E could be on a flat plain, but at some future time at the same location be underwater. So really a time machine must be able to look at the location being moved to, AND be able to adjust one's position in spatial dimensions before getting there.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
this is a question that no one answers
you ( now) go back to another time and just suddenly move all the atoms and molecules without issue?
THIS is why it hasn't been done even the so called vaccum of space has matter in it. and if you appear and smash into an atom what happens.......
ya BOOM
It would all have been resolved in BTTF 3.. IF IT HAD EVER BEEN MADE. Too bad no one ever made a sequal to The Matrix either.
It has nothing to do with gravity. But then these three movies are very entertaining and good story which is difficult when using time travel plots. Even for fiction, the writer has to have plausible actions and results of the protagonist, time travel is an easy cop-out to make story "work" for a good ending. BTTF movies has suspense even though writer(s) can manipulate the space-time continuum. I also miss characters like Doc Brown. Smart, quirky, ultimate DIY guy instead of only buying cheap junk made overseas.
mfwright@batnet.com
Austin: Wait a tick. Basil, if I travel back to 1969 and I was frozen in 1967, presumeably, I could go back and visit my frozen self. But, if I'm still frozen in 1967, how could I have been unthawed in the '90s and traveled back to... [goes cross-eyed]
Austin: Oh, no, I've gone cross-eyed.
Basil: I suggest you don't worry about those things and just enjoy yourself. [to camera]
Basil: That goes for you all, too.
Austin: Yes.
Time was invented by the Swiss so they could sell watches, very expensive watches. Space was invented by the businessman so you would have someplace to put what they sold you.
There is no time nor space. There is only here and now. But where is here? My here and your here are not the same here, or are they? There is no past or future only now.
Everything is made of vibration. Different vibrations for different things. Change the vibration and you change the thing.
ALL IS LIGHT
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Time travel stories always involve some paradox or other. It is a problem of mismatched metaphors (treating time as if it were a place, which it is not).
So long as causes have a necessary connection to their effects, time travel is a logical contradiction in-and-of itself.
I like Sci-Fi about space travel and aliens much better, personally. Those things might actually exist (maybe). Time travel is tantamount to magic, and I find it silly.
The article states: "Even appreciating that they didn't know 'Calvin Klein' for long, his impact upon them was such that they'd still have an idea what he looks like, many years later."
I think the author overestimates how much visual memory is likely to fade after 30 years. I just saw some high school classmates after 25 years and looked over some old HS photos. I could barely recall the linking between HS photos and names of the people I saw daily for over three years - including some I lusted after with all the strength of a stereotypical adolescent. Without photographic backup (did Marty get in any photos at the dance?) I doubt they could remember his look very well after only knowing him for a week or so. Combining this with later knowing Marty's face since birth and gradual growth, I do not find it at all implausible that they wouldn't recognize his as a teenager as looking like "Calvin".
Probably be better than the crappy cartoon...though the cartoon did have Bill Nye.
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
I thought about this a long time ago, actually. It always bugged the crap out of me that they spent much of the third movie driving to the point that the time machine is a terrible thing and must be destroyed before it tears the universe a new one. At the end of the movie this is accomplished splendidly, only to immediately find that Doc Brown has created a new one. Instead of a fourth movie, I propose a short series. The story is that Marty realizes that Doc Brown must be stopped, so he teams up with the other paradox Martys and they use the various paradox leftover Deloreans to hunt Doc Brown through time. More paradoxes create more people and equipment to replenish what will inevitably be terrible losses in this war. The series would be terrible, and I would _love_ it.
Hopefully you can still find it somewhere:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future:_The_Animated_Series
An idea would be to swap your "destination bubble of matter" with your "origin bubble of matter", which would be your time machine. But you could still land in a hostile environment like in the middle of a future fusion reactor, or you could swap out half a human. The only way I can see to get around this is to send a probe that doesn't 'materialize', so it won't interfere with any matter at your destination.
This is not the sig you're looking for.
It's the timey wimey wibbly wobbley....
From the article :
"So,why would it have killed the film? Well, at the start of Back To The Future Part III, we see the 1955 Doc, who is the younger version of the character. The Doc who got sent back to 1885 is the older one. Thus, at the point the younger Doc discovered the information, the older Doc, by logic, would instantly know it."
Er, no! If the rules worked like that in these movies, then Marty would have INSTANTLY disappeared when he threw George out of the way of the car.
There was clearly a delay as the changed timeline propagates up and down the original timeline, wiping out/replacing what had gone before.
There are other flaws in his article, but maybe I'll wait 20 years and write a retrospective on it.
There was an animated series about the Doc and his kids travelling on the time-train. Never seen it, but I guess it was child-centered, so I don't think these issues were even explored.
Note the portal forming in front of the Delorean just before it disappears.
Delorean is PUSHED through a portal created by the flux capacitor which actually exploits naturally occurring folds in the space-time by poking a tiny hole (from the universe's point of view) in those folds for a fraction of a second.
Delorean needs to be moving at 88 mph in order to get to the other side in one piece before the portal closes.
So you see... it is more like the Star Gate than like H.G. Wells' time machine.
Now, that one should have ended floating in space upon arrival...
Unless...
What if gravity wells (being a dent in the fabric of space-time) extend like a trench instead of like a circular dent?
So, just as it holds you firmly attached to Earth instead of flying out to space while going slowly forward through space-time, Earth's gravity-trench keeps you moving along the same line up/down the trench while you are moving fast forward/backward through space-time.
There... Now your fiction can make sense.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Besides, steam engines were around and the idea of using them to propel vehicles was gaining traction. We know for a fact that the early pioneers of motor cars and trains and tanks weren't burned at the stake as evil spirits, so we can assume that, while people might have found the concept unusual or surprising, they were certainly accepting enough that you could haul around a DeLorean and it wouldn't do more than raise a few eyebrows.
In the begining of the third film Marty is at his highschool and he realizes the name has been changed.
The beginning of the third film doesn't start with Marty anywhere near his high school, nor was the high school named after a dead teacher; a ravine was named after the dead teacher.
Then Doc and Marty have a conversation about how Marty noticed already the highschool was renamed."
This conversation doesn't happen either.
What the hell movie did you watch?
Why didn't Biff return to the alternate 2015? If Doc and Marty would have gone to an alternate 2015 had they gone back, shouldn't Biff have gone there as well on his return to the future?
Wouldn't that be the Saturday Morning cartoon series that was on for a year or two?
The gag about using a team of horses to pull the Delorean up to speed. Doc has his little speedometer to check the speed. Yeah, it was a nice visual but completely nonsensical. The only way you're getting a horse up to 88 mph is if you're hauling it in a trailer. The writers are portraying Doc as an idiot for even trying something like this without realizing it's stupid right from the start.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Actually, it would be really illogical if Marty's parents did recognize him later in life.
If you meet someone as a teenager, then again as an adult (Without them aging) they would look very different just due to your perspective has changed.
When I watched BTTF as a kid, Marty was the cool grownup teenager. If I watch the movie today, he looks incredibly young to me.
Also, it's often been said that the human memory is a recording of interests, not events. How well would you recall the face of someone, no matter how pivotal in your life, if you only knew them for a couple of weeks and had no photos of them? A lot happens in your life in the 20 years between high school and teenage children of your own.
when you travel back in time you will find that there is nothing left. No earth, no people, no nothing. Everything you know is in the future. The past is just empty, only not in your mind, but that is just memories...
Is it weird that after i RTFA and hit the back button it brings up slashdot from last week?
I've always wondered: why doesn't Biff meeting himself to give himself the almanac rip a hole in the space-time continuum?
is did he have to pay to get into the contest?
Not a time travel nitpick, more of a goof. Marty received a latter at the end of BTTF 2, but at the start of BTTF 3, it has turned into a map showing the location of the DeLorean and the schematics to make a new time circuit out or 1955 components.
My web domain.
Uh-huh. Did you know KITT only existed after they discovered Michael 'Hasselhoff' Knight was too drunk to drive?
It's only a movie. It isn't real. It didn't really happen. Get over it.
And he pronounces things funny.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Lorraine was known to have a crush on Calvin (Marty) back in 1955. Calvin vanishes, George and Lorraine get married and then Loraine gives birth to a child that looks a lot like her high school crush. I know I'd start asking some questions if I were George!
I am the penguin that codes in the night.
There are NO Paradoxes that need to be explained in in Back to the Future III.
THERE WASN'T EVEN A BACK TO THE FUTURE II, much less a III !!! THEY WERE NEVER MADE!!!
At least, that how I like to look at the world.
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
As far as the gasoline aspect goes, you would need the right *kind* of gasoline. I can't find the compression ratios, but the De Lorean would probably need high octane gasoline and since it was in the US it would need a catalytic converter and unleaded gas. There would be more complications if it had a turbo. You would have to reinvent all the chemical processes to create such a fuel. It might be simpler to create a a fuel using local materials such as coal, nitroglycerin, gunpowder etc. like The Doc did. He could have used them to create a sort of HME, rocket fuel, which burns very hot. But that creates the question of why didn't he just make a couple of RATO packs? The Diesel engine was out since it wasn't invented until 1897 and may have required precision machine work.
Just a few thoughts.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
For someone who supposedly put so much thought into these issues, it is more like they didn't put any thought into them at all.
1. Picture a face that you haven't seen in person or in a photograph in 30 years. How clearly and distinctly do you recall the face? Let's assume that you do recall it fairly well (which is a stretch). You think your son looks like that person as they grow up. Wouldn't you chalk that up to coincidence?
2. Yes, there are two DeLoreans. It doesn't matter through.
3. The Doc might have made gasoline given enough time. And there is a possiblity a substitute might work in an absolute pinch, but you can't simply take any fuel and put it in any engine. You need something that wouldn't destroy the engine, and would get it to 88 mph safely.
4. Doc invented the time machine, so let's assume he understands the laws of time travel. He said alternate time lines are created, branching out and sometimes folding back into each other.
5. Doc was happy where he was. He was fufilling a life-long dream. He was also terrified of the consequences of future time travel. The purpose of the letter was clear. He didn't want to enable Marty in coming back. He asked Marty not to come back. And it has been ages since I've seen BttF3, but the fuel line worked when it was in the cave. Wasn't it the attack by the Native Americans that ruptured the fuel line? How could Doc forsee what would happen and what Marty would need after he came back?
6. Yes, they'd exist following previously established rules. Alternate timelines.
7. Again, alternate timelines. Let me reiterate a little more clearly. The future Marty and Jennifer do not exist in the timeline in which they went into the future and resolved things. They exist in an now alternate timeline where that has not occured yet.
8. Again, Doc is committed in an alternate timeline, but there is another Doc that has not been committed.
9. I haven't watched the film in ages, but the outside apeture of a cave does not necessarily indicate the total size of a cave or depth. Is the author an expert on where bears might be located?
10. The author already presents the counter-argument. If you can travel to one time specifically, why shouldn't you travel the the one time and place you know exactly where it is?
11. How is this even a plot hole?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
[Spock notices a elder Vulcan walking in the docking bay]
Spock: Father!
[the elder Vulcan turns and is revealed as Spock Prime]
Spock Prime: I am not our father.
[Young Spock, now recognizing who he is, approaches]
Spock Prime: There are so few Vulcans left. We cannot afford to ignore each other.
Spock: Then why did you send Kirk aboard, when you alone could have explained the truth?
Spock Prime: Because you needed each other. I could not deprive you of the revelation of all that you could accomplish together, of a friendship that will define you both in ways you cannot yet realize.
Spock: How did you persuade him to keep your secret?
Spock Prime: He inferred that universe-ending paradoxes would ensue should he break his promise.
Spock: You lied.
Spock Prime: I... I implied.
Spock: A gamble.
Spock Prime: An act of faith. One I hope that you will repeat in your future in Starfleet.
Spock: In the face of extinction, it is only logical that I resign my Starfleet commission and help rebuild our race.
Spock Prime: And, yet, you can be in two places at once. I urge you to remain in Starfleet. I have already located a suitable planet in which to establish a Vulcan colony. Spock, in this case, do yourself a favor: Put aside logic. Do what feels right.
[Spock Prime turns and leaves]
Spock Prime: Since my customary farewell would appear oddly self-serving, I shall simply say...
[Shows Vulcan hand salute]
Spock Prime: Good luck.
Just watch the movie "Primer".
Best time travel movie easily.
Sooo what happens when you put a time traveling device inside another time traveling device...
It also handles what you do with all the duplicates....
At least it was a good laugh
When Doc is talking to himself in 1955, I am pretty sure he created a pair of docs.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Time travel is NOT possible. You can poo-poo all of the scientific theories you want, but you cannot be in two places at the same time.
Do you write for DC Comics?
Atlas Shrugged : Thematic Story
Imagine four balls on the edge of a cliff. Say a direct copy of the ball nearest the cliff is sent to the back of the line of balls and takes the place of the first ball. The formerly first ball becomes the second, the second becomes the third, and the fourth falls off the cliff.
Time works the same way.
As a kid, I wondered why they didn't just get gasoline from the stored-in-a-cave DeLorean. I don't wonder any more though. Any DeLorean owner will tell you, don't leave the car sitting with the same gasoline more than six months, especially without a fuel stabilizer. I doubt the Hill Valley General Store stocked Sta-bil in 1885, so I'm guessing Doc Brown drained it.
He didn't just travel in time but also traveled interdimesionally. Lets see, String Theory gives us 11 dimensions if I remember correctly. Whew that just threw a monkey wrench into the works. Now discuss.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
Actually, if you start a time machine from rest on the Earth's surface, you will most likely end up emerging inside the Earth, with likely fatal results. Given general relativity, time machines would most logically travel along geodesic paths, which are analogs in curved manifolds (in this case, the space-time manifold curved by earth's gravity) of straight lines in Euclidean spaces. A simple way to imaging this would be that the time machine would follow the same path as an object that started from its location and with its initial velocity, but was only influenced by gravity (and specifically was not influenced by the electromagnetic and Pauli-exclusion-principle-based normal force that supports you when you stand on something).
That path would look like a highly elliptical orbit that was mostly inside the Earth. Going backward in time would mean going along the geodesic in the opposite direction from the normal forward in time movement. Except for brief intervals where the ends of the orbit emerge from the ground, most of the path will be inside the Earth. I suspect that for trips of any length, there would be serious velocity matching issues on emergence even if you did time arrival to one of those intervals where the path was outside the Earth. The safe way to operate a time machine would be to make the temporal jump after you were in Earth orbit.
Wouldn't that explain it? Each time you make a time jump, you create a new string. You cannot travel up and down strings once created, you simply split new strings into new strings...each creating a new possibility with subtle differences...
--E--
Due to some butterfly effect fallout from Marty McFly's adventures in 1955, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, on September 1, 1979, decided to make the maximum speedometer reading 85 mph, instead of the 95 mph maximum from the original timeline, in which Doc Brown purchased the DeLorean.
It's been made, but a paradox erased it from the pictures
It's only a thought experiment. Nobody thinks the movie is real. Get over it.
"Time Travel" forward could be viewed in the relativistic sense based on time dilation. So you just have to move really fast to "travel" into the future.
-The first time Marty goes back -When Biff takes the DeLorean from 2015 -When Marty and Doc go back to get the almanac -While all that is going on, there's also the DeLorean in the cave
I have to disagree here. 30 years is a long time. They didn't have photos of him and memory is not as great as we think sometime. As time went on their exact memory of his face would slowly blur and as their son grew older they wouldn't even notice as his face would change so slowly. At the most they might say "Hey, doesn't he look kind of like Calvin?" "No, Calvin was much taller".
Shoot I almost married this girl 10 years ago and now can barely remember what she looked like. :)
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
According to wikipedia Congreve rockets were invented in 1804, so Doc could have used these.
If you're wondering how he eats and breathes
And other science facts,
Just repeat to yourself "It's just a show,
I should really just relax"
To swim, only to die at the edge.