Time Paradox Explained - Back to the Future
Great Scott !!! We feature Doc Brown’s Time Travelling DeLorean in our Blog about one of the wonders of Time Travel the Time Paradox. What is a Time Paradox - How does it relate to Time Travel and we discuss the science involved.
Time Paradox
“Doc: “I foresee two possibilities. One, seeing herself thirty years in the future would put Jennifer into shock and she’d simply pass out. Or two, the encounter could create a time paradox. The results of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe!... Granted, that’s the worst-case scenario. The destruction however might be limited merely to our own galaxy.”
Marty: “Well that’s a relief!”
— Doc and Marty discussing the implications of 1985 Jennifer running into her 2015 self.
A paradox, in time travel, is “a situation in which the effect of an incident contradicts or eliminates the cause of that same incident”.[1]
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Time travel paradox Explained
The Earth rotates around the sun - the sun rotates around the galaxy - the galaxy moves in the universe. All that being said, if the time machine were possible, the DeLorean would be in a different place, and not the same place each time it moves into the past or future.
Solar System
Here’s one possible answer: The time machine is still affected by the gravitation pull of a body such as that on Earth.
Expounding upon that: Views from inside the time machine indicate that the DeLorean time machine is traveling through a portal that only opens when the machine reaches 88 miles per hour.
Since time travel hasn't been witnessed, it's plausible that the unopened time portals are held in place by the Earth's gravity or by a physical force not yet proven. The ideas behind the first paragraph, about Earth's movement in space, have been discussed in the article about spatial displacement.
DeLorean Time Travel
Behind the scenes
The word "paradox" is often used to describe a mystery or an unanswered question. eg :
Paradox was also the title of the musical score played during the scene in Part II in which the time-traveling Doc Brown talked with his younger self while handing himself a wrench to attach the electrical cable to the lamppost in 1955; since Doc Brown caused a "pair o' Docs" to occur.
Doc Brown
Though many paradoxes arise in the trilogy, Doc may be overzealous about them because, though the effects obviously happen, the risk of destroying the space-time continuum may not really exist, mearly being a fabrication of Doc's mind to give reason to fix time-lines.
Evidence of such exists, because 1985 Doc was willing to correct 1955 Doc with the wrench size and give him the suggestion that he was conducting a weather experiment as well as telling him there was going to be a storm. He also gave 1955 Doc information on how to repair the DeLorean, via the letter, while he was stuck in 1885, knowing the risks.
There is nothing in Einstein’s theories of relativity to rule out time travel, although the very notion of traveling to the past violates one of the most fundamental premises of physics, that of causality.
With the laws of cause and effect out the window, there naturally arises a number of inconsistencies associated with time travel, and listed here are some of those paradoxes which have given both scientist and time travel movie buffs alike more than a few sleepless nights over the years.
The time travel paradoxes which follow fall into two broad categories:
1) Closed Causal Loops, such as the Predestination Paradox and the Bootstrap Paradox, which involve a self-existing time loop in which cause and effect run in a repeating circle, but is also internally consistent with the timeline’s history.
2) Consistency Paradoxes, such as the Grandfather Paradox and other similar variants such as The Hitler paradox, and Polchinski’s Paradox, which generate a number of timeline inconsistencies related to the possibility of altering the past.
1: Predestination Paradox
Travel through Time
A Predestination Paradox occurs when the actions of a person traveling back in time becomes part of past events, and may ultimately causes the event he is trying to prevent to take place.
This results in a ‘temporal causality loop’ in which (Event 1) in the ‘past’ influences (Event 2) in the ‘future’ (time travel to the past) which then causes (Event 1) to occur.
With this circular loop of events ensuring that history is not altered by the time traveler, and that any attempts to stop something from happening in the past, will simply lead to the cause itself, instead of stopping it.
This paradox suggests that things are always destined to turn out the same way, and that whatever has happened must happen.
Sound complicated? …… O.K this may sound a grim, but just for a moment Imagine that your lover dies in a hit-and-run car accident, and you travel back in time to save her from her fate, only to find that on your way to the accident you are the one who accidentally runs her over.
Your attempt to change the past has therefore resulted in a predestination paradox. One way of dealing with this type of paradox is to assume that the version of events you have experienced are already built into a self-consistent version of reality, and that by trying to alter the past you will only end up fulfilling your role in creating an event in history, not altering it.
– Cinema Treatment
The Time Machine (2002)
In ‘The Time Machine’ Movie' in (2002) for instance, Dr. Alexander Hartdegen witnesses his fiancee being killed by a mugger, leading him to build a time machine to travel back in time to save her from her fate.
His subsequent attempts to save her fail, though, leading him to conclude that “I could come back a thousand times… and see her die a thousand ways.” After then traveling centuries into the future to see if a solution has been found to the temporal problem, Hartdegen is told by the Über-Morlock:
“You built your time machine because of Emma’s death. If she had lived, it would never have existed, so how could you use your machine to go back and save her? You are the inescapable result of your tragedy, just as I am the inescapable result of you.”
The DeLorean Time Machine
Movies: Examples of predestination paradoxes in the movies include :
12 Monkeys (1995), TimeCrimes (2007), The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009), and Predestination (2014).
Books: An example of a predestination paradox in a book is Phoebe Fortune and the Pre-destination Paradox by M.S. Crook.
2: Bootstrap Paradox
Bootstrap Paradox
A Bootstrap Paradox is a type of paradox in which an object, person, or piece of information sent back in time results in an infinite loop where the object has no discernible origin, and exists without ever being created.
It is also known as an Ontological Paradox, as ontology is a branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of being, or existence.
– Information: George Lucas traveling back in time and giving himself the scripts for the Star War movies which he then goes on to direct and gain great fame for would create a bootstrap paradox involving information, as the scripts have no true point of creation or origin.
– Person: A bootstrap paradox involving a person could be, say, a 20 year old male time traveler who goes back 21 years, meets a woman, has an affair, and returns home three months later without knowing the woman was pregnant. Her child grows up to be the 20 year old time traveler, who travels back 21 years through time, meets a woman, and so on.
These ontological paradoxes imply that the future, present and past are not defined, thus giving scientists an obvious problem on how to then pinpoint the “origin” of anything, a word customarily referring to the past, but now rendered meaningless.
Further questions arise as to how the object/data was created, and by whom. Nevertheless, Einstein’s field equations allow for the possibility of closed time loops, with Kip Thorne the first theoretical physicist to recognize traversable wormholes and backwards time travel as being theoretically possible under certain conditions.
Movies: Examples of bootstrap paradoxes in the movies include ‘Somewhere in Time’ (1980), ‘Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure’ (1989), ‘The Terminator’ movies, and ‘Time Lapse’ (2014). The Netflix series Dark (2017-19) also features a book called ‘A Journey Through Time’ which presents another classic example of a bootstrap paradox.
Books: Examples of bootstrap paradoxes in books include Michael Moorcock’s ‘Behold The Man’, Tim Powers’ The Anubis Gates, and Heinlein’s “By His Bootstraps”
Cyberdyne Systems Model 101
3: Grandfather Paradox
The Grandfather Paradox concerns ‘self-inconsistent solutions’ to a timeline’s history caused by traveling back in time. For example :
Again we are going to be very grim for a minuet, if you traveled to the past and killed your grandfather, you would never have been born and would not have been able to travel to the past – a paradox. Let’s say you did decide to kill your grandfather because he created a dynasty that ruined the world. You figure if you knock him off before he meets your grandmother then the whole family line (including you) will vanish and the world will be a better place. According to theoretical physicists, the situation could play out as follows:
The Grandfather Paradox
– Time line protection hypothesis: You pop back in time, walk up to him, and point a revolver at his head. You pull the trigger but the gun fails to fire. Click! Click! Click! The bullets in the chamber have dents in the firing caps. You point the gun elsewhere and pull the trigger. Bang! Point it at your grandfather.. Click! Click! Click! So you try another method to kill him, but that only leads to scars that in later life he attributed to the world’s worst mugger. You can do many things as long as they’re not fatal until you are chased off by a policeman.
– Multiple universes hypothesis: You pop back in time, walk up to him, and point a revolver at his head. You pull the trigger and Boom! The deed is done. You return to the “present” but you never existed here. Everything about you has been erased, including your family, friends, home, possessions, bank account, and history. You’ve entered a timeline where you never existed. Scientists entertain the possibility that you have now created an alternate timeline or entered a parallel universe.
Movies: Example of the Grandfather Paradox in movies include ‘Back to the Future’ (1985), ‘Back to the Future Part II’ (1989), and ‘Back to the Future Part III’ (1990).
Books: Example of the Grandfather Paradox in books include Dr. Quantum in the Grandfather Paradox by Fred Alan Wolf, The Grandfather Paradox by Steven Burgauer, and Future Times Three (1944) by René Barjavel, the very first treatment of a grandfather paradox in a novel.
4: Let’s Kill Hitler Paradox
We will steer off this subject soon but similar to the Grandfather Paradox which paradoxically prevents your own birth, the Killing Hitler paradox erases your own reason for going back in time to kill him. Furthermore, while killing Grandpa might have a limited “butterfly effect”, killing Hitler would have far-reaching consequences for everyone in the world, even if only for the fact you studied him in school.
The paradox itself arises from the idea that if you were successful, then there would be no reason to time travel in the first place. If you killed Hitler then none of his actions would trickle down through history and cause you to want to make the attempt.
Movies/Shows: By far the best treatment for this notion occurred in a ‘Twilight Zone’ episode called ‘Cradle of Darkness’ that sums up the difficulties involved in trying to change history, with another being an episode of Dr Who called ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’.
Books: Examples of the Let’s Kill Hitler Paradox in books include How to Kill Hitler: A Guide For Time Travelers by Andrew Stanek, and the graphic novel I Killed Adolf Hitler by Jason.
5: Polchinski’s Paradox
American theoretical physicist Joseph Polchinski proposed a time paradox scenario in which a billiard ball enters a wormhole, and emerges out the other end in the past just in time to collide with its younger version and stop it going into the wormhole in the first place.
Polchinski’s Paradox
Polchinski’s paradox is taken seriously by physicists, as there is nothing in 'Einstein’s General Relativity to rule out the possibility of time travel, closed time-like curves (CTCs), or tunnels through space-time.
Furthermore, it has the advantage of being based upon the laws of motion, without having to refer to the indeterministic concept of free will, and so presents a better research method for scientists to think about the paradox.
When Joseph Polchinski proposed the paradox, he had Novikov’s Self-Consistency Principle in mind, which basically states that while time travel is possible, time paradoxes are forbidden.
However, a number of solutions have been formulated to avoid the inconsistencies Polchinski suggested, which essentially involves the billiard ball delivering a blow which changes its younger version’s course, but not enough to stop it entering the wormhole.
This solution is related to the ‘timeline-protection hypothesis’ which states that a probability distortion would occur in order to prevent a paradox from happening. This also helps explain why if you tried to time travel and murder your grandfather, something will always happen to make that impossible, thus preserving a consistent version of history.
Books: Paradoxes of Time Travel by Ryan Wasserman is a wide-ranging exploration on the topic of time travel, including Polchinski’s Paradox.
Are Self-fulfilling Prophecies Paradoxes?
A self-fulfilling prophecy is only a causality loop when the prophecy is truly known to happen and events in the future cause effects in the past, otherwise the phenomenon is not so much a paradox as a case of cause and effect.
Say, for instance, an authority figure states that something is inevitable, proper, and true, convincing everyone through persuasive style. People, completely convinced through rhetoric, begin to behave as if the prediction were already true, and consequently bring it about through their actions. This might be seen best by an example where someone convincingly states:
“High-speed Magnetic Levitation Trains will dominate as the best form of transportation from the 21st Century onward.”
Jet travel, relying on diminishing fuel supplies, will be reserved for ocean crossing, and local flights will be a thing of the past. People now start planning on building networks of high-speed trains that run on electricity. Infrastructure gears up to supply the needed parts and the prediction becomes true not because it was truly inevitable (though it is a smart idea), but because people behaved as if it were true.
It even works on a smaller scale – the scale of individuals. The basic methodology for all those “self-help” books out in the world is that if you modify your thinking that you are successful (money, career, dating, etc.), then with the strengthening of that belief you start to behave like a successful person. People begin to notice and start to treat you like a successful person; it is a reinforcement/feedback loop and you actually become successful by behaving as if you were.
Are Time Paradoxes Inevitable?
The Butterfly Effect is a reference to Chaos Theory where seemingly trivial changes can have huge cascade reactions over long periods of time. Consequently, the Timeline corruption hypothesis states that time paradoxes are an unavoidable consequence of time travel, and even insignificant changes may be enough to alter history completely.
Lets explain this theory in a little story ….
A paleontologist, with the help of a time travel device, travels back to the Jurassic Period to get photographs of Stegosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Ceratosaurus, and Allosaurus amongst other dinosaurs. He knows he can’t take samples so he just takes magnificent pictures from the fixed platform that is positioned precisely to not change anything about the environment.
His assistant is about to pick a long blade of grass, but he stops him and explains how nothing must change because of their presence. They finish what they are doing and return to the present, but everything is gone. They reappear in a wild world with no humans, and no signs that they ever existed..
They fall to the floor of their platform, the only man-made thing in the whole world, and lament “Why? We didn’t change anything!” And there on the heel of the scientist’s shoe is a crushed butterfly.
Butterfly Effect
The Butterfly Effect is also a movie, starring Ashton Kutcher as Evan Treborn and Amy Smart as Kayleigh Miller, where a troubled man has had blackouts during his youth, later explained by him traveling back into his own past and taking charge of his younger body briefly. The movie explores the issue of changing the timeline and how unintended consequences can propagate.
Solutions
Scientists eager to avoid the paradoxes presented by time travel have come up with a number of ingenious ways in which to present a more consistent version of reality, some of which have been touched upon here, including:
–The Solution: time travel is impossible because of the very paradox it creates.
–Self-healing hypothesis: successfully altering events in the past will set off another set of events which will cause the present to remain the same.
–The Multiverse or “many-worlds” hypothesis: an alternate parallel universe or timeline is created each time an event is altered in the past.
–Erased timeline hypothesis: a person traveling to the past would exist in the new timeline, but have their own timeline erased.
Thank you to KEVIN BONSOR & ROBERT LAMB for this excellent article.
Here’s some more Paradox theory’s for you to think about ….
As we mentioned before, the concept of traveling into the past becomes a bit murky the second causality rears its head. Cause comes before effect, at least in this universe, which manages to muck up even the best-laid time traveling plans.
For starters, if you traveled back in time 200 years, you'd emerge in a time before you were born. Think about that for a second. In the flow of time, the effect (you) would exist before the cause (your birth).
A math professor travels into the future and steals a groundbreaking math theorem. The professor then gives the theorem to a promising student. Then, that promising student grows up to be the very person from whom the professor stole the theorem to begin with.
Then there's the post-selected model of time travel, which involves distorted probability close to any paradoxical situation [source: Sanders].
What does this mean? Well, put yourself in the shoes of the time-traveling assassin again. This time travel model would make your grandfather virtually death proof. You can pull the trigger, but the laser will malfunction. Perhaps a bird will poop at just the right moment, but some quantum fluctuation will occur to prevent a paradoxical situation from taking place.
But then there's another possibility: The future or past you travel into might just be a parallel universe. Think of it as a separate sandbox: You can build or destroy all the castles you want in it, but it doesn't affect your home sandbox in the slightest. So if the past you travel into exists in a separate timeline, killing your grandfather in cold blood is no big whoop. Of course, this might mean that every time jaunt would land you in a new parallel universe and you might never return to your original sandbox.
Confused yet? Welcome to the world of time travel.
Explore the links below for even more mind-blowing cosmology
A big thank you to Elizabeth Howell November 14, 2017 = Theories, Paradoxes & Possibilities
The DeLorean TIme Machine
Time travel may be theoretically possible, but it is beyond our current technological capabilities.
Time travel — moving between different points in time — has been a popular topic for science fiction for decades. Franchises ranging from "Doctor Who" to "Star Trek" to "Back to the Future" have seen humans get in a vehicle of some sort and arrive in the past or future, ready to take on new adventures. Each come with their own time travel theories.
The reality, however, is more muddled. Not all scientists believe that time travel is possible. Some even say that an attempt would be fatal to any human who chooses to undertake it.
Understanding time
What is time? While most people think of time as a constant, physicist Albert Einstein showed that time is an illusion; it is relative — it can vary for different observers depending on your speed through space.
Albert Einstein
To Einstein, time is the "fourth dimension." Space is described as a three-dimensional arena, which provides a traveler with coordinates — such as length, width and height —showing location. Time provides another coordinate — direction — although conventionally, it only moves forward. (Conversely, a new theory asserts that time is "real.")
Most physicists think time is a subjective illusion, but what if time is real?
Einstein's theory of special relativity says that time slows down or speeds up depending on how fast you move relative to something else. Approaching the speed of light, a person inside a spaceship would age much slower than his twin at home. Also, under Einstein's theory of general relativity, gravity can bend time.
As Marty McFly would say ‘ Doc this sounds Heavy ! ‘
Doc Brown
Picture a four-dimensional fabric called space-time. When anything that has mass sits on that piece of fabric, it causes a dimple or a bending of space-time. The bending of space-time causes objects to move on a curved path and that curvature of space is what we know as gravity.
Both the general and special relativity theories have been proven with GPS satellite technology that has very accurate timepieces on board. The effects of gravity, as well as the satellites' increased speed above the Earth relative to observers on the ground, make the unadjusted clocks gain 38 microseconds a day. (Engineers make calibrations to account for the difference.)
In a sense, this effect, called time dilation, means astronauts are time travelers, as they return to Earth very, very slightly younger than their identical twins that remain on the planet.
Through the wormhole
General relativity also provides scenarios that could allow travelers to go back in time, according to NASA. The equations, however, might be difficult to physically achieve.
Wormwhole
One possibility could be to go faster than light, which travels at 186,282 miles per second (299,792 kilometers per second) in a vacuum. Einstein's equations, though, show that an object at the speed of light would have both infinite mass and a length of 0. This appears to be physically impossible, although some scientists have extended his equations and said it might be done.
A linked possibility, NASA stated, would be to create "wormholes" between points in space-time. While Einstein's equations provide for them, they would collapse very quickly and would only be suitable for very small particles. Also, scientists haven't actually observed these wormholes yet. Also, the technology needed to create a wormhole is far beyond anything we have today.
Can You Time-Travel?
Alternate time travel theories
While Einstein's theories appear to make time travel difficult, some groups have proposed alternate solutions to jump back and forth in time.
Infinite cylinder
Astronomer Frank Tipler proposed a mechanism (sometimes known as a Tipler Cylinder) where one would take matter that is 10 times the sun's mass, then roll it into very long but very dense cylinder.
After spinning this up a few billion revolutions per minute, a spaceship nearby — following a very precise spiral around this cylinder — could get itself on a "closed, time-like curve", according to the Anderson Institute. There are limitations with this method, however, including the fact that the cylinder needs to be infinitely long for this to work.
An artist's impression of a black hole like the one weighed in this work, sitting in the core of a disk galaxy. The black-hole in NGC4526 weighs 450,000,000 times more than our own Sun. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Black holes
Black Hole
Another possibility would be to move a ship rapidly around a black hole, or to artificially create that condition with a huge, rotating structure.
"Around and around they'd go, experiencing just half the time of everyone far away from the black hole. The ship and its crew would be traveling through time," physicist Stephen Hawking wrote in the Daily Mail in 2010.
"Imagine they circled the black hole for five of their years. Ten years would pass elsewhere. When they got home, everyone on Earth would have aged five years more than they had."
However, he added, the crew would need to travel around the speed of light for this to work. Physicist Amos Iron at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel pointed out another limitation if one used a machine: it might fall apart before being able to rotate that quickly.
Cosmic strings
Credit to Aderson Institute
Another theory for potential time travelers involves something called cosmic strings — narrow tubes of energy stretched across the entire length of the ever-expanding universe. These thin regions, left over from the early cosmos, are predicted to contain huge amounts of mass and therefore could warp the space-time around them.
Cosmic strings are either infinite or they’re in loops, with no ends, scientists say. The approach of two such strings parallel to each other would bend space-time so vigorously and in such a particular configuration that might make time travel possible, in theory.
Time machines
It is generally understood that traveling forward or back in time would require a device — a time machine — to take you there. Time machine research often involves bending space-time so far that time lines turn back on themselves to form a loop, technically known as a "closed time-like curve."
The Doctor's time machine is the TARDIS, which stands for ‘Time and Relative Dimensions in Space’.
Doctor Who Tardis
To accomplish this, time machines often are thought to need an exotic form of matter with so-called "negative energy density." Such exotic matter has bizarre properties, including moving in the opposite direction of normal matter when pushed. Such matter could theoretically exist, but if it did, it might be present only in quantities too small for the construction of a time machine.
However, time-travel research suggests time machines are possible without exotic matter. The work begins with a doughnut-shaped hole enveloped within a sphere of normal matter. Inside this doughnut-shaped vacuum, space-time could get bent upon itself using focused gravitational fields to form a closed time-like curve.
To go back in time, a traveler would race around inside the doughnut, going further back into the past with each lap. This theory has a number of obstacles, however. The gravitational fields required to make such a closed time-like curve would have to be very strong, and manipulating them would have to be very precise. [Related: Warp Speed, Scotty? Star Trek's FTL Drive May Actually Work]
Back to the Grandfather paradox
If that were to happen, some physicists say, you would be not be born in one parallel universe but still born in another. Others say that the photons that make up light prefer self-consistency in timelines, which would interfere with your evil, suicidal plan.
Some scientists disagree with the options mentioned above and say time travel is impossible no matter what your method. The faster-than-light one in particular drew derision from American Museum of Natural History astrophysicist Charles Lu.
That "simply, mathematically, doesn't work," he said in a past interview with sister site LiveScience.
Also, humans may not be able to withstand time travel at all. Traveling nearly the speed of light would only take a centrifuge, but that would be lethal, said Jeff Tollaksen, a professor of physics at Chapman University, in 2012.
Using gravity would also be deadly. To experience time dilation, one could stand on a neutron star, but the forces a person would experience would rip you apart first.
Time travel in fiction
Two 2015 articles by Space.com described different ways in which time travel works in fiction, and the best time-travel machines ever. Some methods used in fiction include:
Interstellar
One-way travel to the future: The traveler leaves home, but the people he or she left behind might age or be dead by the time the traveler returns. Examples: "Interstellar" (2014), "Ikarie XB-1" (1963)
Time travel by moving through higher dimensions: In "Interstellar" (2014), there are "tesseracts" (which is the four-dimensional analogue of the cube) available in which astronauts can travel because the vessel represents time as a dimension of space. A similar concept is expressed in Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle In Time" (2018, based on the book series that started in 1963), where time is folded by means of a tesseract. The book, however, uses supernatural beings to make the travel possible.
Travelling the space-time vortex: The famous "Doctor Who" (1963-present) TARDIS ("Time And Relative Dimension In Space") uses an extra-dimensional vortex to go through time, while the travelers inside feel time passing normally.
Instantaneous time jumping: Examples include "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" (2006), the DeLorean from "Back To The Future" (1985), and the Mr. Peabody's WABAC machine from "The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show" (1959-64).
Time travelling while standing still: Both the "Time Machine" (1895 book) and Hermione Granger's Time-Turner from "Harry Potter" keep the traveler still while they move through time.
The Time Machine
Slow time travel: In "Primer" (2004), a traveler stays in a box while time traveling. For each minute they want to go back in time, they need to stay in the box for a minute. If they want to go back a day in time, they have to stay there for 24 hours.
Traveling faster than light: In "Superman: The Movie" (1979), Superman flies faster than light to go back in time and rescue Lois Lane before she is killed. The concept was also used in the 1980 novel "Timescape" by Gregory Benford, in which the protagonist sends (hypothetical) faster-than-light tachyon particles back to Earth in 1962 to warn of disaster. In several "Star Trek" episodes and movies, the Enterprise travels through time by going faster than light. In the comic book and TV series "The Flash," the super-speedster uses a cosmic treadmill to travel through time.
Star Trek
Difficult methods to categorize: There's a rocket sled in "Timecop" (1994) that pops in and out of view when it's being used, which has led to much speculation about what's going on. There's also the Time Displacement Equipment in "The Terminator" movie series, which shows off how to fight a war in four dimensions (including time).
So is time travel possible?
While time travel does not appear possible — at least, possible in the sense that the humans would survive it — with the physics that we use today, the field is constantly changing. Advances in quantum theories could perhaps provide some understanding of how to overcome time travel paradoxes.
One possibility, although it would not necessarily lead to time travel, is solving the mystery of how certain particles can communicate instantaneously with each other faster than the speed of light.
In the meantime, however, interested time travelers can at least experience it vicariously through movies, television and books.
Article credits to www.space.com Elizabeth Fernandez
More Time Travel and Philosophy
In general relativity, things called closed time-like curves can exist, and are a way to solve general field equations.
It’s like stepping on a train, taking a wonderful trip through the mountains, and returning to the same spot you left off, both in space and in time.
That means the moment where you step off the train is both in the past and future of when you got on the train in the first place. In a closed time-like curve, an object returns to the same place and time that it was in the past, completing a loop. It’s unclear if closed time-like curves exist in our universe, but if they do, mathematically, they would allow for time travel.
Then there’s option two.
In this quantum mechanical model, each choice opens up another universe. If time travelers changed something in the past, they would enter another parallel universe.
The original timeline would still exist, one among many branching worlds. In such a model, it might be very hard for time travelers to return to the universe they came from.
Finally - if time travel is possible, time travelers can only do certain things.
A time traveler who went back in time, for example, could not kill Hitler, no matter what he tried. This raises all sorts of philosophical problems - does the time traveler still have free will? It’s difficult to say time travel is possible while simultaneously destroying freedom of choice.
Paradox-Free Time Travel While Preserving Freedom of Choice
That’s where young physicist Germain Tobar steps in.
Under the supervision of physicist Dr. Fabio Costa, Tobar came up with a way to mathematically preserve freedom of choice, while allowing for paradox-free time travel.
For example, let’s imagine there is a scientist in a laboratory with a time-traveling coin.
The coin enters the laboratory at some point in the past as “heads” and leaves at some point in the future as “tails”. Tobar’s model fixes the boundary conditions - the point in time where the coin enters and leaves the laboratory - as always heads and tails.
Then, his model allows the state of the coin to change when it is in the laboratory. Since the initial and final state of the coin is fixed, a paradox is avoided. However, anything can happen to the coin when it is in the laboratory. “For example,” says Tobar, “she [the scientist] can decide to always flip the coin, or always prepare heads regardless of what she got... it can flip, it can hit other coins, and so on.” But no matter what she did or how hard she tried, each time the coin time-travels through her lab, it will always leave as “tails”.
Let’s take another pertinent example. “Say you traveled in time, in an attempt to stop COVID-19’s patient zero from being exposed to the virus,” Costa says. “However if you stopped that individual from becoming infected – that would eliminate the motivation for you to go back and stop the pandemic in the first place.”
In Tobar’s model, no matter what you did, the virus would still escape somehow. “You might try and stop patient zero from becoming infected, but in doing so you would catch the virus and become patient zero, or someone else would,” says Tobar. “No matter what you did, the salient events would just recalibrate around you.”
Even time travellers couldn't stop the spread of the coronavirus.
That means that you have complete freedom of choice, but no matter how hard you tried, you could not stop COVID-19 from escaping.
But this is good news for Marty McFly in Back to the Future. Nothing he did could prevent his parents from falling in love and getting married, and eventually, allowing Marty to be born. Other things might change, like how they met, or what his father ate for breakfast that morning. But nothing could change their eventual meeting.
This doesn’t necessarily rule out other models of time travel, for example, a quantum mechanical one.
Quantum Mechanics
“Some of the quantum approaches would indeed invoke the existence of multiple universes, which interact through the time machine, possibly creating alternate timelines,” says Tobar. Instead, Tobar and Costa’s model is classical and shows that if only one universe exists, it is possible to allow for paradox-free time travel.
This work has other implications as well, including the unification of quantum theory with general relativity. “One of the main issues is that, in such a theory, time seems to disappear, making the traditional, temporal view of dynamics unsuitable,” says Tobar. “Our work presents a different way to look at physical laws, which could find applications in theories of quantum gravity.”
Could closed time-like curves, and potentially time machines, exist in our Universe?
Credit to Anderson Institute
“Proposals so far involve exotic matter (with negative or infinite energy), and we don't know if such matter exists in our universe,” says Tobar. “An interesting consequence is that the CTCs [closed time-like curves] would only exist after a certain point in time, which means it would not be possible to time travel to before the first time machine was created. This would explain why we haven't seen any time traveler from the future yet.”
And to leave you to ponder on the future in Doc Browns own words :
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To find out more fun Future Facts by clicking our Blogs below……….!!! Please Share …..
Ghostbuster - Ecto 1
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/3/31/ghostbusters-ecto-1
Cars of Back to the Future
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/2/10/the-cars-of-back-to-the-future-55-
Back to the Future Fashion
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/2/19/back-to-the-future-fashion-te2yx
Ariel Leader
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/2/17/ariel-leader
Back to the Future - Hill Valley History
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/2/2/hill-valley-history-jxrr4
Back to the Future Gadgets and Trends we have in 2021
Doc Browns Biography and the History of his DeLorean Time Machine
Marty McFly Biography also featuring Biff, George, Jennifer, Loranine
Back to the Future - Hill Valley History
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/2/2/hill-valley-history
Back to the Future - Detailed storyline
Back to the Future - How to generate 1.21 Giggawatts / Jiggawatts with Mr Fusion
What is a Fat Bike ? And where did the idea of Fat Bikes come from ?
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/1/10/fat-bike-what-is-a-fat-bike-history
The Time Paradox explained - Back to the Future
The Sinclair C5
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/1/9/sinclair-c5-
Mini Jeep Mini Review
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/minicoolsterjeepreview
Hoverboards - Back to the Future
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2020/12/13/hoverboards-
How does the Time Machine work - Back to the Future
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2020/11/22/how-does-the-time-machine-work
The DeLorean Motor Company - What did it fail ? Or did it ?
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2020/11/22/whydiddeloreanmotorcompanyfail
The DeLorean Motor Company - History
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2020/11/22/deloreanmotorcompany
The Flux Capacitor - Back to the Future
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/fluxcapacitor
Is Time Travel Possible ? And what would it take ? Back to the Future
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/istimetravelpossible
The Cars of Back to the Future
Explore the Cars featured in Back to the Future …!! Which cars were used in the Filming of Back to the Future 1, 2 and 3
We showcase the models used in our Blog to the Future Post
The DeLorean Time Machine
Amazingly there are 55 separate automobiles and trucks in Back to the Future that are identified in imcdb.org, The "Internet Movie Cars Database", the newest of which were the :
Studebaker
Although Statler Studebaker is seen in Part I, there is only one Studebaker seen in 1955.
Toyota
There are three Toyotas seen in 1985, in three different scenes of Courthouse Square.
Chevrolet
The imcdb.org site counts eleven Chevrolets (including four Bel Airs in 1955), nine Fords, and only
Chrysler
Only one Chrysler spotted.
Other lines of automobile noted in the film are Buick, Cadillac, Datsun (now Nissan), Divco, Dodge, GMC, Honda, Hudson, Jeep, Kaiser, Mercury, Nash, Packard, Plymouth, Volkswagen and Volvo.
Although a Pontiac dealership is shown in Part II, there is only one Pontiac in Part II
AMC Eagle
(Mr. Parker's car) Jennifer Parker's father drives into downtown Hill Valley to pick her up.
The AMC Eagle is a four-wheel drive station wagon manufactured in the 1980s by American Motors. It was the first four-wheel drive crossover passenger car in America.
History
Jennifer Parker's father, Danny Parker Jr., drove an orange wood-panel 1984 AMC Eagle in 1985. Its license plate was 1J V8988.
In 1985A, the Parker residence had a wrecked AMC Hornet parked in the front yard, which may or may not have belonged to Mr. Parker, as there is the possibility that the house wasn't actually occupied by the Parker family in that particular ABC timeline.
Mr. Parker's AMC Eagle made one brief final reappearance in the Parker residence's driveway when Marty McFly drove up there in his Toyota 4x4 to wake Jennifer up, after the Grays Sports Almanac had been destroyed in 1955, restoring the timeline.
1984 BMW 733i (George's car in 1985-I)
"Marty got up [from the dining room table], walked to the kitchen window and looked out. There in the driveway was a sparkling new BMW. Next to it stood Biff Tannen, polishing diligently." —From Back to the Future by George Gipe (quote, page 244)
BMW 733I
The BMW 733i was a model of car manufactured by BMW in the 1980s.
History
The McFly family owned a BMW 733i in 1985. This was driven by George McFly, and was the main family car. Its license plate number was 3A709T8.
Before Marty McFly went back to 1955, Biff Tannen had borrowed and totaled another car owned by George, a Chevrolet Nova, while drinking and driving (at the same time!) — thus ruining Marty's plans to go up to the lake with Jennifer Parker for the weekend.
After Marty returned to what turned out to be an altered and improved present, the car changed to a BMW, in one piece, and Biff was waxing it with the two coats of wax George liked.
1952 Buick Super (Wilbur's car)
1952 Buick Super
Wilbur's 1952 Buick Super Riviera.
The Super was a vehicle manufactured by Buick from 1940 to 1958.
History
In 1955, an elderly man named Wilbur drove past Lyon Estates in a dark red-colored Buick Super Riviera, when he and his wife saw a young man in a strange yellow suit near a futuristic-looking car.
Wilbur began to slow down for the stranger, but his wife became frightened and forced him to drive on.
The Buick Super Riviera's license plate number was 4S28359.
1948 Cadillac Series 61
1950 Cadillac Series 62 (Demonstration model)
Caterpillar 12
1947 Chevrolet 4100
1947 Chevrolet Advance-Design Thriftmaster
The Chevrolet Advance-Design was a series of pickup trucks manufactured by Chevrolet from 1947 to 1955.
History
In 1955, Marty McFly held onto the back of a blue Chevrolet Advance-Design Thriftmaster pickup truck while being chased around Courthouse Square by Biff Tannen and his gang in Biff's Ford Super De Luxe Convertible.
1951 Chevrolet Advance-Design truck. - D. Jones Manure Hauling owned a 1951 Chevrolet Advance-Design truck.
1953 Chevrolet Bel Air (Sam Baines's car in 1955)
1953 Chevrolet Bel Air
Marty McFly being hit by Sam Baines's car in 1955A.
The first-generation Chevrolet Bel Air was a car manufactured from 1950 to 1954 by General Motors.
History
Lorraine's father, Sam Baines, drove a green 1953 Chevrolet Bel Air in 1955, 1955A, 1955B, and 1955C.
Its license plate was 6S 48405 (Coincidentally, the same plates are seen earlier in the film on another car that almost hits Marty in the town square).
On November 5, 1955, Sam hit George McFly with his car when George fell down from a tree into the middle of the street while supposedly birdwatching.
In 1955A, 1955B and 1955C, Sam hit Marty with the car, because Marty tried to rescue his father. Sam had just picked up the Baines family's brand new television set with his car.
1955 Chevrolet Bel Air Nomad
1982 Chevrolet C-30
1974 Chevrolet Camaro
1974 Chevrolet De Luxe
1980 Chevrolet Malibu (Police car in 1985)
1980 Chevrolet Malibu
A Chevrolet Malibu serving as a Hill Valley Police car.
The Malibu was a vehicle manufactured by Chevrolet.
In 1985, Marty McFly, using his skateboard, hitched a ride on the back of Hill Valley Police car #5253, a Chevrolet Malibu, as he left Courthouse Square to go home.
1979 Chevrolet Nova (George's wrecked car in 1985)
"As he drew closer, Marty saw that its [the car's] front end was completely smashed, as if someone had driven it into a wall. Nearby stood Marty's father and Biff Tannen, watching in silence as the truck driver unhitched the damaged vehicle."—From Back to the Future by George Gipe (quote, page 28)
History
In the first timeline, George McFly drove a 1979 Chevrolet Nova in 1985 before he lent it to his work supervisor Biff Tannen, who totaled it while drinking and driving (at the same time!).
Biff then blamed George by claiming the car had a blind spot, and forced him to pay up to have his suit dry-cleaned as he had spilled beer over himself in the crash. The car was subsequently returned to the McFly residence on the back of a tow truck.
Marty McFly had been planning to borrow the car to take Jennifer Parker to the lake, but thanks to Biff these plans were ruined.
Lorraine used the car on one occasion in 1983 to go after Marty when she heard the sound of his skateboard as he sneaked out of the house and set off to meet his friends.
Following Marty's return from 1955 to what turned out to be an altered and improved present, George owned a BMW 733i, which Biff — who now had his own auto detailing company — was waxing with the two coats of wax George liked.
1964 Chevrolet Suburban
1946 Chrysler
1972 Datsun 1200
1974 Datsun 260Z
1975 Datsun B210
1975 Datsun B210 Coupe
DeLorean Time Machine
(Primary car of the films acting as time machine) he DeLorean DMC-12 is a sports car that was manufactured by the De Lorean Motor Company for the American market from 1981 to 1983 in Northern Ireland. It is most commonly known simply as the DeLorean, as it was the only model ever produced by the company. The DMC-12 featured gull-wing doors with a fiberglass "underbody", to which non-structural brushed stainless steel panels are affixed.
The first prototype appeared in March 1977, and production officially began in 1981 (with the first DMC-12 rolling off the production line on January 21) at the DMC factory in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland. During its production, several aspects of the car were changed, such as the hood (bonnet) style, wheels and interior. About nine thousand DMC-12s were made before production stopped in late 1982. Today, about 6,500 DeLorean motor cars are believed to still exist.
Unknown Divco
1955 Dodge Coronet
1981 Dodge Ram
1950 Dodge Wayfarer
Unknown Ford Courier (or Datsun truck) (Biff's Auto Detailing truck)
Biff's Ford Courier truck stands nearby as he puts the second coat of wax on George McFly's BMW 733i.
The Courier is the name used on a variety of vehicles manufactured by Ford.
History
In 1985, Biff Tannen owned what appeared to be a yellow Ford Courier pickup truck that he used for his company, Biff's Auto Detailing.
Behind the scenes Biff's yellow truck is never seen fully on-screen at any point during the Back to the Future trilogy, so it remains unknown as to whether it was a Ford Courier, a Datsun or a similar vehicle.
1952 Ford Crestline Victoria
A Ford Crestline Victoria at Hill Valley High School.
The Crestline Victoria was a vehicle manufactured by Ford in the 1950s.
On November 12, 1955, a dark green Crestline Victoria with a white roof was parked outside Hill Valley High School during the Enchantment Under the Sea dance.
1953 Ford Customline
1985 Ford Econline
The Econoline, also known as the E-Series and the Club Wagon, is a line of full size vans manufactured by Ford.
In 1985, an Econoline van was used for the re-election campaign of Goldie Wilson for Mayor of Hill Valley. Its license plate number was 2H67820.
1984 Ford F-350 (Flatbed carrying Marty's future Statler Toyota 4X4)
1984 Ford F-350
The F-350 was part of the F-Series of vehicles manufactured by Ford.
History
In 1985, a seventh generation F-350 flatbed truck carried a Toyota Hilux for Statler Toyota. Marty McFly told his girlfriend Jennifer Parker that his dream was to one day own that Toyota 4x4.
1940 Ford F-5
A Ford F-5 tank truck parked at the Texaco service station in 1955 (in the background, on the far right).
The F-5 was part of the first generation of F-Series vehicles manufactured by Ford.
A Ford F-5 tank truck was owned by Texaco and was present at the Texaco service station in Courthouse Square, Hill Valley, in 1955.
1954 Ford Mainline
1984 Ford Ranger (First pickup that Marty skitches on)
1984 Ford Ranger
A Ford Ranger pulling out of Burger King in Hill Valley.
The Ranger is a vehicle manufactured by Ford.
In 1985, Marty McFly grabbed onto the back of a blue Ford Ranger while riding his skateboard on the way to school.
1946 Ford Super De Luxe (Biff Tannen's car in 1955)
1946 Ford Super De Luxe
Ford Super De Luxe Convertible
Biff and his gang in the Ford.
" After a half block of falling rapidly behind their prey, Biff's pals turned and shrugged, looking to Biff for a new tack. / "Get the car!" Biff ordered. / The four hotfooted it over to Biff's convertible, which was parked nearby. A few seconds later, they roared off after Marty, burning rubber on the town square and disappearing in a cloud of black smoke. " —From Back to the Future by George Gipe (quote, page 177)
" "Here she is, Biff," Terry gestured proudly, "all fixed up, like new. Except we couldn't get her started." He glanced over at the eager Tannen. "You got a kill-switch on this thing?" / Tannen grinned at that. / "Nope, you just gotta have the right touch," he bragged. "Ain't nobody can start this car but me." / He climbed in the car and turned the key. The car growled to life on the first try. " —From Back to the Future Part II by Craig Shaw Gardner (quote, page 144)
Marty: "Let's land on him [Biff in the Ford], we'll cripple his car."
Doc: "Marty, he's in a '46 Ford. We're in a DeLorean. He'd rip through us like we were tin foil."
— As the DeLorean hovers over the Ford
The Super De Luxe was a model of vehicle manufactured by Ford during the 1940s.
The Ford filled with the contents of a manure truck.
The newly restored Ford Super De Luxe on display at the entrance to the Biff Tannen Museum in 1985A
Marty McFly hiding in the back seat of Biff's car.
Biff chases down a hoverboarding Marty through the River Road Tunnel.
Biff Tannen owned a 1946 model in 1955 which was a convertible, painted black with a red interior, and had the nickname "Sheila".] Its license plate number was 6H 96472.
Biff was the only person who knew the trick to starting the ignition (a push-button on the dashboard), as he explained to Terry at Western Auto, who had been unable to start the car whilst working on it and wondered if it was fitted with a kill-switch:
"You just gotta have the right touch. Nobody can start this car but me." Biff still remembered the technique in his old age — much to the amazement of his younger self, who demanded to know how this "old codger with a cane" knew how to do this.
"You just got to have the right touch. Nobody can start this car but me."
—Biff to Terry, regarding the trick to start his car.
After being provoked by Marty McFly in Lou's Cafe on November 8, 1955, Biff and his gang chased him in the Ford around Courthouse Square before slamming into a manure truck.
By November 12, Biff had the car repaired. In order to repair the damage to his car, Biff was pressured by Terry to pay $302.57 for the job, but refused payment. As he argued with Terry, both Marty and Biff's older self jumped into the Ford, with Marty hiding in the back seat. Old Biff drove the Ford back to his house and parked it in his garage before displaying the Gray's Sports Almanac.
Later that night, Marty snuck away in the back seat again as Biff drove to the Enchantment Under the Sea dance at Hill Valley High School. Biff parked the vehicle outside the door of the gymnasium and drove off in it after discovering that Marty had been after the almanac.
Biff drove the Ford towards River Road Tunnel on the way home before Marty swooped in using the hoverboard. Biff and Marty fought over the almanac outside and in the tunnel, with Biff sideswiping the wall of the tunnel with the right side of the Ford.
When Biff reached the end of the tunnel, he turned completely around and faced Marty who was still halfway inside. Biff charged the car towards Marty in the hopes of running him over, but failed when Marty grabbed a string of pennants attached to the DeLorean time machine. As Biff watched Marty and the DeLorean hover away into the night, he crashed the Ford into a manure truck again, filling his car with manure.
1946 Ford Super De Luxe
It’s unclear what became of the Ford after 1955, but it reappeared newly restored in 1985A where it was on display at the entrance to the Biff Tannen Museum, alongside a waxwork figure of Biff.
Trivia
During the filming of the first two films, three different Ford Super De Luxe cars were used (a 1946 car, a 1947 model and a 1948 model). The 1946 car was a black coupe, with the roof cut off, so it looked like a convertible. This car was used the most, and was also the one that got covered in manure. The other two cars (the 1947 and 1948 Fords) were used in long shot or in close-up. The 1946 car was kept by Universal after Back to the Future Part II was completed and put on display in their back lot tour, before being sold to a private collector.
Through the course of the first film, the car changes from a 1946 Ford to a 1947 Ford. This difference is noted by the fact that the 1947 Ford Super De Luxe differed from the 1946 model with the absence of the red accents on the grill and parking lights below each of the front headlights.
Another difference between the 1946 and 1947 Ford Super De Luxe is that the upholstery seating in the car changes.
As shown in Back to the Future Part II, when 1985-A Biff spoke of the manure incident from the first film, Biff states that he had "enrolled [the car] in a drag race a few days earlier". Marty correctly guessed Biff had crashed his car into a manure truck (much to the surprise of 1985-A Biff). When Biff demanded to know how he knew that, Marty lied that his father told him before he died. Also, unknown to Biff, Marty was responsible for his car being wrecked.
In Back to the Future Part II, when Old Biff gives the almanac to his younger self, the sun visors on the convertible are gone, while in the rest of the film, the sun visors are still there. The car also has sun visors in Back to the Future.
1984 GMC Value Van (Emmett Brown's van in 1985)
Doc Brown GMC Van
Doc's GMC Value Van, with the DeLorean inside, stands in the empty parking lot at Twin Pines Mall, watched over by Einstein (on the far right).
"Checking his image in a mirror, he [Doc] ruffled his wild white hair even more, perhaps perversely adding to his own reputation as a wild eccentric. He then walked to the front of the garage, opened the rear doors of the oversized step-van on the side of which was lettered DR. E. BROWN ENTERPRISES — 24 HR. SCIENTIFIC SERVICE, and peered inside. / It was, of course, still there.
Even in the sparse light of the garage, the sleek stainless steel DeLorean with its gull wings shone back at him like a giant Christmas tree ornament. How appropriate, he thought, that the vehicle which would prop mankind into the past and future should be such an extraordinarily beautiful piece of machinery. There was no doubt in his mind as he closed the doors. / "It will work," he said softly. "And I'll be famous." " —From Back to the Future by George Gipe (quote, page 27)
The GMC Value Van was a multi-step truck that was manufactured by General Motors.
Dr. Emmett Brown owned a 1984 P-60 model Value Van for his business. In 1985, he used it to transport the DeLorean time machine and the plutonium needed for the vehicle's first test at Twin Pines Mall.
Doc Browns Van
It bore on the sides the wording DR. E. BROWN ENTERPRISES — 24 HR. SCIENTIFIC SERVICES.
1978 Honda Civic
1984 Honda XL 600 R
1952 Hudson
1955 International Harvester R-160
1984 Jeep Cherokee
Jeep CJ-7 Unknown (Second vehicle that Marty skitches on through Courthouse Square)
Jeep CJ-7
Marty skitching on the Jeep close to Courthouse Square.
The Jeep CJ-7 was a compact 4X4 car manufactured from 1976 to 1986 by American Motors, who owned the Jeep brand.
Jeep CJ-7
History
On October 25, 1985, a skateboarding Marty McFly grabbed onto a blue Jeep CJ-7 in Courthouse Square. The Jeep had no doors or roof, and its licence plate was 726 BXG. The driver was a middle-aged man, who wore a Mountain Dew baseball cap.
At the same street where Marty would accelerate the DeLorean time machine up to 88 m.p.h. in 1955 in order to return to his own time, the driver noticed there was a young man holding onto his car. Marty was late for school because all Dr. Emmett Brown's clocks were exactly twenty-five minutes slow, which is why he was grabbing onto cars.
Marty also performed a similar car-grabbing act, this time while riding a hoverboard, on a hover-converted Jeep Wrangler YJ which landed on Second Street on October 21, 2015 while he was fleeing from Griff's gang.
1953 Kaiser Manhattan
1954 Mercury Monterey
1951 Nash Statement
1948 Packard Custom Eight Victoria (Doc's car in 1955)
The Packard parked at Hill Valley High School.
The Packard was a make of car in the 1950s.
History
Doc Browns Car
Dr. Emmett Brown owned a cream-colored 1949 Packard Custom Eight Victoria in 1955, which was used along with a flatbed trailer on November 5 to transport the DeLorean time machine — concealed beneath a tarpaulin — to his lab, and to Courthouse Square on the night of November 12 for Doc's 'weather experiment'.
Doc let Marty McFly borrow the Packard for the Enchantment Under the Sea dance at Hill Valley High School on November 12. The car became the scene of the scuffle between Biff Tannen, Lorraine Baines, and George McFly.
During Marty's second visit to 1955, he drove Doc home after he fainted in Courthouse Square on seeing Marty again — having only just sent him back to 1985.
After Doc restored the DeLorean to perfect working order, including installation of vacuum-tubed time circuits and new whitewall tires, the Packard and flatbed trailer were used once again to haul the DeLorean to the Pohatchee Drive-In Theater in preparation for Marty's trip to 1885 to rescue Doc's older 1985 counterpart.
The Packard's license plate number was 8N39742.
Behind the scenes
Only one Packard was used for all three films in the Back to the Future trilogy. The exact same car was also used in the 1991 film The Marrying Man starring Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger. It is now in a private collection in Massachusetts.
1953 Plymouth Cranbrook (Fuels at Texaco service station in 1955)
1950 Plymouth De Luxe (Nearly hits Marty in 1955)
1954 Plymouth Savoy
1985 Pontiac Sunbird
1953 Studebaker Starliner
1984 Toyota Celica Supra Mk.II
1984 Toyota Van
1979 Volvo 242
Cab B25
Cab B25 from the Luxor Cab Company arrives in Hilldale. The DeLorean time machine, with Marty McFly standing next to it, can be seen in the background.
The cutout Collector Card for the Back to the Future Taxicab (bottom right-hand corner) on the rear packaging of Funrise, Inc.'s Back to the Future Part II three-vehicle pack gave a little more information about Cab B than was mentioned in either the movie or the novelization — namely, its on-board 'Entertainment System'.
" The oldster [Biff Tannen] pointed a quivering finger at a sleek silver car that was just taking off overhead. / "Follow that DeLorean!" he croaked. / Follow that DeLorean? That was the sort of thing people said in old, 2-D movies! Where was this old guy coming from? / Still, a fare was a fare. Fred eased the cab out and up. " —From Back to the Future Part II by Craig Shaw Gardner (quote, page 60)
Cab B25 was a flying taxicab from the Luxor Cab Company in Hill Valley in 2015.
History
The cab was a Citroën DS driven by Fred, who drove Biff Tannen in pursuit of the DeLorean time machine to Hilldale on October 21.
It was fitted with six cylinders, and was fuel injected via a fusion turbine accelerator.[1] Cab B25 was capable of 90 m.p.h. on the ground and over 170 m.p.h. in the air with thrusters.[1] It also came with an 'Entertainment System' consisting of "200 local channel stereo, mobile phone, food, beverage and snack dispensing systems". A warning to embarking passengers, WATCH YOUR HEAD, was printed on the roof above the rear doors.
The taxicab with which the DeLorean nearly collided when it departed from Lyon Estates in 1985 and appeared in the wrong lane of Skyway C25, facing oncoming traffic, was also a Citroën DS. Whether this was Cab B25 or another cab of the same make and model remains unclear.
Behind the scenes
The Citroën DS was marketed from 1955 to 1975, so had such a vehicle appeared during the 1955 sequences in Back to the Future it wouldn't have looked out of place.
The same Citroën DS used as Cab B25 reappears later in Back to the Future Part II as one of the wrecked vehicles in 1985A.
The cutout Collector Card for the toy Back to the Future Taxicab on the rear packaging of Funrise, Inc.'s Back to the Future Part II three-vehicle pack, released as part of their Micro Action Super Cars series in 1989 (the other two being the DeLorean Car (Modified Engine) and the Back to the Future Police Car), gives additional information about the vehicle. This was not derived from any information given on-screen or in the novelization.
The taxicab is now in France where it has been owned by the company Tadico Events since January 2019, and is operated under the name The DeLorean Experience and Luxor Cab DS Taxi.
BMW 633CSi
Griff BMW 633 CSI
Griff's BMW 633CSi being waxed by his grandfather, Biff Tannen.
This model of BMW was built between 1976 and 1989.
History
In 2015, Griff Tannen owned a heavily modified hover-converted version of the BMW 633CSi, which was a convertible orange and black model waxed for him (two coats, naturally) by his grandfather Biff Tannen, and in which Whitey, Data and Spike traveled with him as passengers.
Griff accidentally smashed the car's nearside taillight with his bat while swinging furiously at Marty McFly.
Whether the BMW could not be started by anyone except Griff, like the Ford Super De Luxe Convertible owned by his Grandpa Biff in 1955, remains unrecorded.
Behind the scenes
In the novelization by Craig Shaw Gardner, Griff's car is described as being "a beat-up old convertible" (quote, page 32), rather than the perfect, futuristic-looking BMW seen on-screen.
Anyone expecting to see in 2015 a futuristic, flying BMW of the make and model featured in Back to the Future Part II is going to be disappointed, as the BMW 633CSi is no longer being produced — something the movie makers obviously did not foresee.
As far as is known, BMW have no plans to produce a flying model in the foreseeable future.
Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud I
The Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud I is nearly hit by Needles' truck.
"A horn blared up ahead, followed by a squeal of brakes. They [Marty and Jennifer] both looked out the windshield [of Marty's truck] as Needles' truck swerved, barely missing a Rolls-Royce that had started out of a side street." — From Back to the Future Part III by Craig Shaw Gardner (quote, page 210)
"Jeez! I would've hit that Rolls-Royce!" — Marty
History
In the original timeline, on October 27, 1985, Marty McFly was racing Douglas J. Needles in his Toyota Hilux. He collided with a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud I that had just pulled out of a side street and broke his hand in the crash, preventing him from ever playing the guitar again.
The owner of the Rolls-Royce pressed charges against Marty for the damage to his vehicle. As a result, Marty gave up on his musical career and spent decades feeling sorry for himself.
When Marty returned from 1885, he and Jennifer Parker encountered Needles and his gang at a red traffic light near the very spot where he would crash his truck.
However, Marty has already learned his lesson, that he should not lose his temper and act recklessly when someone called him "a chicken"; thus, at the last second, while Needles wasn't looking, he put the truck in reverse while Needles raced ahead when the light changed to green, and witnessed the Rolls-Royce nearly hit Needles' Ford F-150.
It was at this moment that Jennifer saw the words "YOU'RE FIRED!!!" disappear from Ito T. Fujitsu's fax to Marty, a copy of which she had taken from the McFly residence in 2015. The dismal events of Marty's future were averted.
A StarCar (on the far left) parked on Second Street in 2015 as a flying Jeep comes in to land.
The StarCar was a futuristic car in 2015.
History
In 2015, a StarCar was parked on Second Street when the flying Jeep landed; and Spike, Data and Whitey chased Marty McFly on hoverboards around Courthouse Square.
Behind the scenes
Star Car in Back to the Future
The StarCar was a fictional car which appeared in the 1984 science-fiction movie The Last Starfighter, and was built by Gene Winfield. The 1963 show car the Strip Star and the Spinner from the 1982 neo-noir science-fiction movie Blade Runner were also built by Winfield; both vehicles appeared in Back to the Future Part II as futuristic cars.
The design of the StarCar was inspired by the DeLorean DMC-12, including its gullwing doors. However, the DeLorean DMC-12 would not become familiar to science-fiction movie fans as Dr. Emmett Brown's DeLorean time machine until the following year.
The current whereabouts of the StarCar is unknown, but it is rumored to now be in France and been repainted red.
The StarCar was built specially for The Last Starfighter, and thus has never entered mass production.
A Texaco tank truck at the Texaco service station was a motor vehicle used by a fuel company to transport and deliver gasoline to service stations.
History
A Ford F-5 tank truck was owned by Texaco, and was present at the Texaco service station in Courthouse Square, Hill Valley on the morning of November 5, 1955, when Marty McFly was watching the attendants at work — indicating there had been a delivery of gasoline.
The tank truck was a small one in Texaco's signature color of bright red, with the Texaco star logo on the doors of the cab and the name TEXACO in large white letters along the sides of the tank.
Behind the scenes
A futuristic, flying Jeep Wrangler YJ lands on Second Street in 2015.
The Jeep Wrangler YJ was a 4X4 car manufactured from 1986 to 1995 by American Motors, who owned the Jeep brand.
History
A futuristic, flying Jeep Wrangler YJ landed on Hill Valley's Second Street on October 21, 2015.
A hoverboarding Marty McFly caught hold of a rope on the back of the car while he was fleeing from Griff Tannen and his gang, in a similar manner to when, while skateboarding in 1985, he had grabbed onto a Jeep CJ-7 in order to get to school.
Behind the scenes
American Motors stopped manufacturing the Jeep Wrangler YJ in 1995, something the movie makers obviously did not foresee.
Actuality
As far as is known, Jeep have no plans to produce a flying model in the foreseeable future.
Pulse
Pulse in BTTF
A Pulse on display during the Universal Studios Backlot tour.
The Pulse was a model of vehicle classified as an "autocycle" — an enclosed motorcycle with two main wheels and two outrigger wheels, one on each side. About 347 Pulse vehicles were produced by the Owosso Motor Car Company from 1985 to 1990.
It was a fairly common model of car by 2015, since at least two of them were in downtown Hill Valley at about the same time. A red Pulse was the first vehicle Marty McFly saw as he exited the alleyway opposite the courthouse, driving along Main Street from right to left. A white Pulse could briefly be seen parked in front of True Blues during the hoverboard chase.[2]
Behind the scenes
Bob Butts of Fantasy Cars leased seven Pulse cars to Universal Studios for the filming. One of them, known as #74, was originally red, but rolled over in an accident and was repainted white. This same car was later used in the films Hologram Man and Lawnmower Man II, and was modified for the television series Seaquest DSV.
O.K this is not a car but it was Griff’s 2nd mode of transport …… The Pit Bull Hoverboard
Pit Bull Hoverboard
" As if to demonstrate the meaning of power, Griff tossed his hoverboard to the ground. And what a hoverboard! It was three times the size of the board Marty was riding, with twin jets in the back, and fins beside, not to mention those spikes all around the edges. In fact, it didn't look much like a skateboard — or hoverboard — at all. It looked, Marty thought, more like a chain-saw. Trapped over the pond, he had plenty of time to read the name of the board, too, written in gold letters on a jet black background: / THE PIT BULL. "
—From Back to the Future Part II by Craig Shaw Gardner (quote, page 45)
"Keep it! I got a Pit Bull now!"
—Little girl to Marty when he attempted to give her back her Mattel hoverboard
The Pit Bull was a model of rocket-powered hoverboard that was used to make extremely fast trips.
History
Unlike most other hoverboards which had to be pushed with one foot on or near the ground, the Pit Bull's two directional rockets provided enough power for travel over water. It also had three tow cables that allowed additional hoverboarders to be towed behind the main unit.
Griff Tannen was a known owner of one, but after his arrest it came into the possession of a little girl, who in turn let Marty McFly keep her Mattel hoverboard.
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www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk
To find out more fun Future Facts by clicking our Blogs below……….!!! Please Share …..
Ghostbuster - Ecto 1
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/3/31/ghostbusters-ecto-1
Cars of Back to the Future
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/2/10/the-cars-of-back-to-the-future-55-
Back to the Future Fashion
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/2/19/back-to-the-future-fashion-te2yx
Ariel Leader
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/2/17/ariel-leader
Back to the Future - Hill Valley History
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/2/2/hill-valley-history-jxrr4
Back to the Future Gadgets and Trends we have in 2021
Doc Browns Biography and the History of his DeLorean Time Machine
Marty McFly Biography also featuring Biff, George, Jennifer, Loranine
Back to the Future - Hill Valley History
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/2/2/hill-valley-history
Back to the Future - Detailed storyline
Back to the Future - How to generate 1.21 Giggawatts / Jiggawatts with Mr Fusion
What is a Fat Bike ? And where did the idea of Fat Bikes come from ?
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/1/10/fat-bike-what-is-a-fat-bike-history
The Time Paradox explained - Back to the Future
The Sinclair C5
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/1/9/sinclair-c5-
Mini Jeep Mini Review
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/minicoolsterjeepreview
Hoverboards - Back to the Future
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2020/12/13/hoverboards-
How does the Time Machine work - Back to the Future
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2020/11/22/how-does-the-time-machine-work
The DeLorean Motor Company - What did it fail ? Or did it ?
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2020/11/22/whydiddeloreanmotorcompanyfail
The DeLorean Motor Company - History
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2020/11/22/deloreanmotorcompany
The Flux Capacitor - Back to the Future
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/fluxcapacitor
Is Time Travel Possible ? And what would it take ? Back to the Future
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/istimetravelpossible
Is Time Travel Possible
Is Time Travel Possible and What would it Take ?
Can humans time travel? It’s a question that countless science fiction authors have asked, and have created answers to. Two of the most famous examples of this are Doctor Who and Back to the Future, as both have characters who find themselves able to time travel. However, the easiest one to take a deeper look at is probably Back to the Future, given that Doc Brown lived on Earth in the 80s and built his time machine out of an DeLorean.
The question still stands today: are we able to time travel? But first, in order to understand time travel and break down the DeLorean, we have to understand two big concepts:
The physics behind time travel, and what it takes to warp spacetime. If we approach the question with the belief that spacetime is something which is linear, or a fabric (although it could take multiple shapes, perhaps being fluid and constantly changing), then we have to understand what it would take to rupture spacetime and travel to a different point in it. However, there are also spatial phenomena which could be contenders for time travel.
Theories which already encompass time travel and our understanding of it. The biggest problem with understanding time travel is that no one’s ever managed to do it before. The closest we’ve come as of now are theories and science fiction ideas, both of which we can analyze for validity and see if they can explain more of how time travel could work.
Despite having these big categories in mind, time travel is still a very large unknown, making all theories about it mere speculation. However, could we use these speculative theories and a hearty spoonful of physics to actually determine whether we could build our own DeLorean time machines? Maybe! Here’s a good question to ask: before deciding if time travel is possible, what is time?
Is time Travel Possible
Defining Time
That’s probably the vaguest title for a section, especially since it’s defining one of the biggest immaterial ideas humans have had. But what is it?
Well, time fits into its own dimension. People always describe there being three dimensions, length, width, and depth — in this case, defining a definition as a measurable extent of some kind. The universe is considered to have around nine or ten dimensions, leaving spacetime with only three or four.
So if “time” is a measurable extent (which it is) then logically in the same way you should be able to move “up” the length of the universe, you should also be able to move into a different point in time.
Even in our experience, the phenomena of special relativity occurs, in which time can speed up or slow down depending upon how close to the speed of light you go.
Astronauts and other space farers are affected by this, often slightly younger than twins or people born the same time who had remained on Earth due to the speeds at which they had been moving and living at.
So that’s a breakdown of what exactly time is, although it’s still a relatively abstract concept.
However, assuming we can travel it, we have to address the next steps, which involves seeing how designing a time travel device could possibly work — and debunk the DeLorean. So what are the main questions to ask to figure out if it’s possible or not?
What are the physical undertakings of an object time travelling? From human knowledge of travelling from one place to another at fast speeds or through dangerous environments usually requires physical protection. If you did try to rip a DeLorean through the fabric of spacetime, what physical protection would be required to keep the DeLorean intact for the entire journey?
How much speed/force would you have to have to rupture the fabric of spacetime? In order to break the sound barrier, an object must travel at least 767 miles per hour. Although we haven’t been able to actually break the fabric of spacetime yet (assuming that spacetime is a fabric), which means the amount of force is also an unknown value.
Sound Barrier 767 mph
A jet makes it through the sonic boom, breaking the sound barrier.
What would the displacement be like for anyone experiencing time travel? We probably wouldn’t just send a machine through time, so let’s assume that this trip involves a human. How would the spacetime displacement affect the person? And how long would the trip from one time to another take?
How would space displacement occur and affect the landing of the time machine? So, let’s say that you did successfully launch your DeLorean, then what? If your goal is to travel back three months, the Earth is revolving around the sun.
This means that three months ago, the Earth was in a different place, leaving you in empty space in your DeLorean. So would you have to modulate your precise space coordinates for the landing date? Or is there actually universe movement which would bring you to a complete different location (since the universe is constantly expanding)?
Despite all these questions (and many more), there’s still the question of if we can actually turn a car into an epic time machine. So back to the basics: let’s tackle each question, deem if it works with theories and physics, and then evaluate if the DeLorean time machine is actually possible.
The best place to start is looking at what we already know about physics and how this could affect our capabilities of time travel.
Going Down The Wormhole: Physics And Wormholes
The first question to ask here is how spacetime is shaped, because this will affect travel first. It’s like figuring out the layout of the road before a street race: you want to know if it’s curved, flat, has many hills, is paved, etc. That way you can prepare. The same goes with the shape of spacetime and time travel.
Right now, spacetime is considered a fabric, in a flat, non-curved universe. Of course, we can’t prove this, but right now that’s what modern physics leans more towards. Time travelling would be leaving one point in spacetime and entering another (likely instantly, although it could take a lot longer). From our current knowledge here, spacetime can be warped by dense objects with a lot of gravity — like black holes. But at what point does this become officially “ripping” the fabric of spacetime?
Most physicists agree that there isn’t exactly a point in which the spacetime is “ripped”. On the assumption that spacetime is continuous, then it can’t necessarily be ripped, a term which is mostly used only in science fiction. However, if it’s a fabric, two points can fold in on one another, creating a pathway from one point in spacetime to another.
The Physics Wormhole
Sun, Nautron Star, Black Hole
This could include (but isn’t limited to) change of location, time, universe, or a combination of all three. This theory, known more commonly as “The Wormhole Theory”, is consistent with Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
However, no one has actually seen a wormhole, although there is speculation on whether or not black holes could actually provide a similar connection to wormholes.
So the easiest way for the DeLorean to get from point A to point B in time might seem like just creating a wormhole, but it probably can’t.
That’s because wormhole would likely be formed by creating two entangled black holes and then pulling them apart, making a pathway between the two black holes. At least that’s the way that would actually work in the universe.
There’s also the possibility of having a white hole and a black hole connect, forming a wormhole, which would work except for the fact that white holes don’t exist.
They’re the theoretical stark opposite of black holes, being a point in space where nothing could enter (unlike black holes, from which nothing can escape).
So this means in order to create a mini wormhole and travel back in time, the DeLorean would have to harness two black holes, entangle them, and then separate them again.
However, there’s another possibility for making wormholes, except this one involves ties between quantum mechanics and classical mechanics.
Applying Quantum Mechanics To Wormholes And Time Travel
Applying Quantum Mechanics to Wormhole and Time Travel
So we’ve already established that setting up a regular wormhole would be pretty difficult, but as it turns out, maybe there are answers when we look more at the details.
Going into the tiny world of quanta, scientists have started to see ties between the theoretical wormholes and spooky action at a distance.
One possibility involves string theory, in which tiny strings could snap and cause energy flow which could result in the creation of two black holes intertwined in the way necessary for a wormhole.
However, the energy would overpower the black holes, causing them to spiral off in separate directions and straight up collapse the wormhole.
Another analysis of this possibility resulted in the idea that the curvature of spacetime could possibly counteract the acceleration of the black holes, even though the whole idea is pretty unlikely.
On top of that, this wormhole wouldn’t permit time travel, meaning that even if you could create it and keep it stable, there wouldn’t be any time travel happening.
So it doesn’t look like quantum mechanics is a huge help in designing a wormhole, either, especially not one which could be created by a time-machine DeLorean.
So what other options do we have?
Well, time travel isn’t just narrowed down to a wormhole option — in fact, there are a lot of connections between quantum mechanics and time travel paradoxes and theories.
Deutsch’s Prescription — The Quantum Mechanics Of Time Travel Logic
So although we’re still disputing the idea of whether or not someone would be able to travel back in time, there are still the long running theories on what would happen if someone travelled back in time, and how the science would look at that. In 1991, a physicist named David Deutsch proposed a solution for time evolution equations, specifically ones which suggested resolution for both the grandfather paradox and nondeterminism.
Grandfather Paradox
The grandfather paradox is the idea that a time traveller goes back in time and kills their grandfather before their father is born, thus rendering it impossible for them to return to the present time.
Essentially a loop through which the grandfather is both lives and doesn’t, creating timelines in which the grandson exists and therefore creates the time machine and kills the grandfather as well as timelines in which the grandfather is dead, meaning the grandson is never born and can’t build the time machine to kill him, so he lives.
CTC Quantum System
Nondeterminism is the term for when a computer algorithm which will provide different output for the same input.
This is like going to a soda fountain and pushing on the button marked ‘Sprite’ but getting Sprite, Coke, Santa Fe, and Root Beer once each of the four times you try to get Sprite.
Some people don’t agree with the solution provided with Deutsch’s Prescription, because it involves the time traveller entering a parallel universe in which the quantum state is quantum superposition, meaning the time traveller both does and doesn’t exist at the same time — something with also technically can’t happen.
So in the Deutsch Prescription, the quantum system is split into two categories, state A and the CTC (closed time-like curves).
There is a tensor product which is a result of the combine states of both systems. He assumes that the density isn’t necessarily the same in both categories, but that the density state of the CTC is restricted to a fixed point.
This is how a CTC would work/is designed, as it’s basically the rotation which exists to create a timelike curve.
From there, he suggested that fixed points like this always exist, due to the fact that after a repeated trials with the CTC value, the expectation value will match. This just means that the percentage of potential outcomes will come out the same if tried again and again. To some extent, though, this implies that there must also be parallel universes in order for the prescription to be filled.
So You Want To Build A Time Machine?
Delorean Time Machine
But of course, in Back to the Future, Doc Emmett Brown is able to traverse spacetime in his souped-up car and a case of plutonium.
This, too, isn’t very likely — although most people consider time machines to require some exotic matter called “negative energy density”, the machine would have to work without it.
That’s because this matter is theoretical — and even if it did exist, it would likely exist in too-small quantities to be used in an actual time machine.
Thankfully, there’s a potential alternative: if you start within a doughnut shaped vacuum inside a normal sphere of matter, you could use focused gravitational fields to create a closed time-like curve (CTC).
To go back into the past, the traveller would have to loop around and around in the doughnut, constantly moving faster, until he/she moved sufficiently back in time.
However, the gravitational fields would have to be very precise and directed at certain locations.
A Final Breakdown — Is Time Travel Possible
The short answer is yes, by all means, theories allow time travel to be very possible and an option. Although it’s not something we as humans in our current development are capable of experiencing, perhaps time travel will have a bigger chance to occur in the distant future.
Is Time Travel Possible ?
Right now, there are still many aspects of the world we have to understand, and whether that’s breaking down paradoxes with quantum computers, exploring the theoretics of science and understanding how string theory connects classic mechanics and quantum mechanics, and understanding the fabric of the universe better…
well, it’s clear we’ve got our work cut out for us.
So the next time you think about tooling around the decades in a plutonium-loaded car, remember that getting there might be the hardest part!
Thank you so much for reading my article! I hope you enjoyed reading it, and maybe learned a little about time travel! If you’d like to talk more, give feedback, or just comment, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, follow this Medium account, or even email me at amesett@gmail.com!
Follow our Hashtags …..
#backtothefuture #martymcfly #delorean #bttf #s #docbrown #michaeljfox #dmc #deloreantimemachine #timemachine #christopherlloyd #fluxcapacitor #hillvalley #outatime #timetravel #mcfly #movie #hoverboard #movies #deloreandmc #greatscott #backintime #art #backtothefuturetrilogy #bifftannen #bhfyp #timemachine #mcfly #marty #docbrown #greatscott #fluxcapacitor #christopherlloyd #backtothefuture2 #backtothefuture1 #backtothefuture3 #dmc12 #deloreantimemachine #deloreandmc12 #BTTF #bttf1 #bttf2 #bttf3 #time #timecircuits #docbrown #1980s #popculture #props #flux #fluxbands #glow #giggawatts #jiggawatts #1.21 #power #mrfusion #carsofbacktothefuture #cars #bttfcars #backtothefuturecars #timetravelpossible #istimetravelpossible #timetravelexplained #science
To find out more fun Future Facts by clicking our Blogs below……….!!! Please Share …..
Ghostbuster - Ecto 1
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/3/31/ghostbusters-ecto-1
Cars of Back to the Future
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/2/10/the-cars-of-back-to-the-future-55-
Back to the Future Fashion
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/2/19/back-to-the-future-fashion-te2yx
Ariel Leader
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/2/17/ariel-leader
Back to the Future - Hill Valley History
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/2/2/hill-valley-history-jxrr4
Back to the Future Gadgets and Trends we have in 2021
Doc Browns Biography and the History of his DeLorean Time Machine
Marty McFly Biography also featuring Biff, George, Jennifer, Loranine
Back to the Future - Hill Valley History
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/2/2/hill-valley-history
Back to the Future - Detailed storyline
Back to the Future - How to generate 1.21 Giggawatts / Jiggawatts with Mr Fusion
What is a Fat Bike ? And where did the idea of Fat Bikes come from ?
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/1/10/fat-bike-what-is-a-fat-bike-history
The Time Paradox explained - Back to the Future
The Sinclair C5
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/1/9/sinclair-c5-
Mini Jeep Mini Review
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/minicoolsterjeepreview
Hoverboards - Back to the Future
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2020/12/13/hoverboards-
How does the Time Machine work - Back to the Future
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2020/11/22/how-does-the-time-machine-work
The DeLorean Motor Company - What did it fail ? Or did it ?
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2020/11/22/whydiddeloreanmotorcompanyfail
The DeLorean Motor Company - History
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2020/11/22/deloreanmotorcompany
The Flux Capacitor - Back to the Future
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/fluxcapacitor
Is Time Travel Possible ? And what would it take ? Back to the Future
https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/istimetravelpossible
Great Scott !!! How to generate 1.21 Giggawatts (Jiggawatts) with Mr Fusion ...... in the DeLorean Time Machine
Sending you Back to the Future ! But how could Doc Brown invent, design, and build a Time Machine out of a DeLorean ? …. And could it be possible in the Future ? We explore the science behind this amazing Si/Fi Stainless Steel Car
We all know what Doc Brown said in the first movie.
"I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need".
Doc Brown
Hill Valley Clock Tower - Lighting strike Credit : Universal Pictures Amblin Entertainment
Your Built a Time Machine ….. Out of a DeLorean ! ….. We explore the science behind Doc Browns amazing Time Machine, starting with what is 1.21 Gigawatts and how can you generate that kind of Power …….
Great Scott! Marty: What? What the hell is a gigawatt?
1.21 Gigawatts was pronounced (on set) as it were spelled with a "j", as in jigawatts (or jigowatts)..
So, how much is 1.21 gigawatts you ask?
Well, a gigawatt is equal to one billion (10 9) watts or 1 gigawatt = 1000 megawatts.
A watt is a unit of power.
Your typical 100 watt incandescent light bulb draws 100 watts of energy, so 1.21 gigawatts would be able to light over 12 million 100 watt light bulbs. 1.21 gigawatts is also equivalent to 1,621,400 horse power
How does the plutonium in the BTTF car generate 1.21 gigawatts in less than a couple of minuets?
Well the meaning of power (the watt is a unit of power). Power refers to the rate at which energy is produced. Power can be one of several things. The most often way to describe it is the change in energy in a certain amount of time.
1 watt = 1 joule per second where a joule is a unit of energy. Horsepower is another unit of energy where 1 hp = 746 watts.
(roughly equivalent to the amount of energy it takes to lift a medium large apple 3 feet)
If energy is measured in units of Joules, and the time interval is in seconds the power would be in Watts.
What about the giga? Giga is a prefix for units that typically means 10 to the power of 9.
This means that 1.21 gigawatts would be 1.21 x 10 to the power of 9
This means producing a given amount of power in a limited amount of time is not an important problem.
If you have a battery that can store only 1 joule of energy : but will discharge in a nanosecond the power output will be a gigawatt, but only for that nanosecond.
A large marine battery can store 8 megajoules and could theoretically produce 1.21 gigawatts for .066 seconds.
Nowhere in the movies is it stated for how long the 1.21 gigawatts needs to be produced, but we can estimate an upper limit based on the properties of lightning.
A typical bolt of lighting contains about a gigajoule of energy and lasts for .2 seconds.
The dynamics of how the lightning was used to power the flux capacitor indicates that it was directly powered by the lightning and no storage battery was involved. We can therefore deduce that the maximum energy needed to create a temporal shift is 1.21 gigajoules/sec X .2sec = 242 megajoules.
We now have two ways to power the flux capacitor:
The Flux Capacitor Credit : Universal Pictures Amblin Entertainment
1) Feed it directly from gigawatt capable generator or
2) Use a lower power generator to charge up a 242 megajoule battery.
A currently available 242 megajoule battery weighs a little over 200 pounds and is the size of a standard blue home recycling bin.
While this type of battery is not rechargeable and cannot deliver all of it’s energy in .2 seconds it gets us in the ballpark of what is needed.
On the other hand there are no gigawatt generators currently available that could fit in a container sized truck , much less a Delorean.
We therefore conclude that in standard mode the flux capacitor is battery powered for the .2 seconds or less it is in use and the plutonium generator does not need produce 1.21 gigawatts.
A micrometer-sized circulators that can be fabricated on a microchip.
We figured out how to integrate magnetic flux quanta — the smallest units of magnetic field — with microfabricated capacitors and other superconducting circuit elements, so that time-reversal symmetry can be broken.
This led to our new circulator proposal. As with conventional circulators, there is a magnetic field present. But because we can use just one magnetic flux quantum, our design can be microscopic.
See the design similarity: (left) the fictional flux capacitor from the movie and (right) a schematic representation of the proposed circulator. Tom Stace/Screenshot from Back to the Future, Author provided
We’ve nicknamed the device the quantum flux capacitor as its circuit diagram has a passing resemblance to Doc Brown’s mythical invention (which are for sale, sort of).
Sadly for history buffs, our design won’t help much in your DeLorean time machine: it doesn’t reverse time. But its magnetic field does break time-reversal symmetry as advertised and we expect these devices will find applications in future quantum technologies.
Even sooner, they may help in high-bandwidth communications environments like mobile phone base stations in very dense populations, or for ultra-high sensitivity radar where every photon of the electromagnetic field counts.
www.theconversation.com
Great Scott Doc Brown -
If we allow for a 24 hour recharge time for the battery then the generator only needs a continuous output of 2600 watts. No problem for an eccentric genius.
Paul Grimshaw - IT Architect in the Computer Industry (1983-present)
How many AA batteries would it take to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity needed to send Doc Brown’s Delorean back to 1985?
Let’s see, you can squeeze around 5A at 1V out of a decent NiMH AA cell, so that’s 5W.
To get 1.21GW you would therefore require 242,000,000 cells
NiMH AA batteries weigh around 30g per cell, so 242 million of them would total 7,260 tonnes!. With cabling that’s around the weight of a modern Navy Destroyer ship.
AA batteries are 14mm diameter and 50mm long. Allowing a little room for cabling, you can squeeze 100 batteries in 1000 cubic cm (1 litre).
So for 242,000,000 cells you would need 2,420 cubic metres. That’s about the size of 10 double decker buses.
So probably not the most practical of options.
Instead, ironically, capacitors would be a much better idea for powering a flux capacitor.
The Flux Capacitor
Not just any old capacitors, but some of the capacitors capable of outputting the highest powers as listed here:
SERIES CMX - Self-Healing Energy Storage Capacitors
The 3330CMX2205 looks particularly suitable, each one capable of outputting 100,000A at 3,300V.
So just four of these could generate a colossal 1.32GW - that’s more than enough to send Doc to 1985 AND power his heated car seats at the same time.
Weighing in at 49kg each, four of these capacitors weigh a mere 196kg - let’s round up to 200kg with some mounting brackets. Spacewise, the bank of four capacitors occupy 0.66 x 0.41 x 0.56m, so these would fit comfortably in the trunk, with room for a set of golf clubs to spare.
Did anybody spot the name of the capacitor manufacturer in the link? Yep, it’s General Atomics. So it may not be Plutonium, but it’s still Atomic powered!
Just the job. To be fair, these capacitors can only output this level of power for a fraction of a millisecond, but I’m pretty certain that’s more than enough time to get back to 1985 as long as the car is going fast enough.
Also they would be ideal for recharging by lightning ready for the trip back. As you can see in the picture, they even have a convenient warning on the front not to handle the lightning whilst it’s running through the cable.
On a slightly more serious note, capacitors are commonly used to provide very high power short duration energy bursts. One example is at the US National Ignition Facility, where they have 4,000 capacitors similar to those above, in this case to power their laser.
The energy stored is again released in a fraction of a millisecond, but this time at a power exceeding 1 TeraWatt. That’s a thousand times that used by Doc, and it exceeds the peak electricity demand of the entire US.
Scott Soloway - Degree in math and physics but majored in pinball
Paul Grimshaw - IT Architect in the Computer Industry (1983-present)
The lower thrust fusion rocket produces 187.1 GW of power. Ten of these plants would power all industry on Earth.
How Do You Get 1.21 GigaWatts For Your Time Machine?
DeLorean Time Machine
Nizmitz Class Aircraft Carrier
Is that a large amount of power?
Yes. Just for comparison, the nuclear power reactors in a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier produces 194 megawatts (1.94 x 108 watts).
Or perhaps you would like to compare this to the flying S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier. With my calculations, I get a power requirement of 317 gigawatts.
S.H.I.E.L.D Helicarrier
First look at the DeLorean Time Machine Credit : Universal Pictures Amblin Entertainment
What Does Doc Brown Even Mean?
How much power does it take to travel through time?
Well, Doc said 1.21 gigawatts.
If I want to calculate the energy required for time travel, I will need the power (given) as well as the time.
How Long Does it Take to Travel in Time?
That's actually looks like a stupid question. Oh well. Let's take a look at the actual real life footage of the time machine (from the historical archives).
Time travel is possible if you get the car up to 88 mph.
Is this car going 88 mph? Is there any way to tell? Oh, yes. Yes, there is. All I need to do is to look at this car (a DeLorean) and use – video analysis. The clip isn't perfect, but I think it will give a good enough estimate. I can scale the video using the wheel base of 2.413 meters.
Time Machine being chased by VW Camper Van in Twin Pines Mall Credit : Universal Pictures Amblin Entertainment
Here is a plot of the position of the DeLorean in the first time travel (with the dog in the car).
The slope of this line puts the car's speed at 56.7 m/s (127 mph). Yes, that is faster than 88 mph. I'm not sure why the one frame repeated. Also, there could be a problem with my scale since it was rather difficult to see the car. Here is the next time the car gets to a speed near 88 mph (when Marty first goes back in time).
DeLorean Time Machine - Flux - in Twin Pines Mall Credit : Universal Pictures Amblin Entertainment
DeLorean being struck by lighting Credit : Universal Pictures Amblin Entertainment
Well that's not good. This give a speed of 29 m/s (65 mph). For this video, the car isn't quite up to 88 mph so this seems ok. I guess I should look at the last time travel speed (when Marty goes BACK TO THE FUTURE). Oh, actually there is not a good shot to analyze there. Oh well, the second shot is close enough to 88 mph, that I will just stick with that.
What about the time interval? For the first test, I looked at the time from just when the car started to shoot sparks until it "exploded".
This gives a time of 4.3 seconds. But wait !
What about the case when a lightning bolt is used to power the car? For that case, the time machine is only getting power for at most 0.46 seconds. So, there are two different time intervals for two different trips through time.
Time Travel Energy
Now that I have the power AND the time, I can calculate the required energy. Let's just do it (for both time interval estimates).
That's not so bad. I have an energy range with the high end just a factor of 10 higher.
Now, how do you get 5 x 108 - 5 x 109 Joules?
Doc Brown's first choice was to use plutonium. Although he didn't give too much of the details, I guess he was using Plutonium-239. Pu-239 is radioactive, but I don't think that's how it gave energy in this case.
Instead, I guess that there was some type of fission process that broke the nucleus into smaller pieces. Since the pieces have less mass than the original, you also get energy (E = mc2). The Wikipedia page on plutonium as the details, but let's just say that one Plutonium atom produces 200 MeV (mega electron volts) in the fission process (3.2 x 10-11 Joules).
Doc Brown refuelling the DeLorean Time Machine Credit : Universal Pictures Amblin Entertainment
Doc Brown Plutonium Case - Credit : Universal Pictures Amblin Entertainment
In a typical nuclear reactor (which probably wouldn't use Plutonium-239), this energy is used to increase the temperature of water to make steam. The steam then turns an electric turbine to produce electricity. Clearly, that's not happening here. I'm not sure what's going on - but surely it's not a 100% efficient process. I am going to say it's 50% efficient.
In order to get 5 x 108 Joules, I would need:
Since 1 Plutonium-239 atom has a mass of 3.29 x 10-25 kg, this would require a fuel mass of just 1.2 x 10-5 kg. That seems possible.
What about a lightning bolt? Could you get this much energy from lightning? According to Wikipedia, a single bolt of lightning can have about 5 x 109 Joules. That would be just perfect for the time traveling machine.
Refuelllng the DeLorean Time Machine Credit : Universal Pictures Amblin Entertainment
Hill Valley Clock Tower being stuck by lighting Credit : Universal Pictures Amblin Entertainment
But what if lightning & Plutonium for an energy sources are just difficult to get hold of ?
Maybe batteries would be an interesting way to power this machine.
How many AA batteries would you need? From a previous post,
I already know that a high quality AA battery has about 10,000 Joules of energy. In order to get 5 x 108 Joules, I would need 5 x 104 AA batteries. Of course, that assumes that I could completely drain these batteries in just half a second. Damn, those things would get hot.
AA Batterys
Homework
Clearly, there are other questions. Here are some that I can think of.
How much space would a DeLorean need to get up to 88 mph? You can look up the time for it to get from 0-60 mph and assume that it has a constant acceleration.
At the end of Back to the Future, Doc Brown replaces the Plutonium energy source with a Mr. Fusion. Estimate how much energy he could get from a banana peel.
Mr Fusion Fuel Credit : Universal Pictures Amblin Entertainment
· If you watch all three movies in the Back to the Future series, there are several times that the car gets up to 88 mph. Use video analysis to check the speeds.
·
How long would it take current from the lightning strike to travel from the clock tower to the car?
·
Suppose that Marty is 1 second late on his start to get to the lightning wire. How much greater of an acceleration would he need to make it to the wire on time (assuming that over 88 mph works just as well as 88 mph)?
·
What if there wasn't a known source of lightning? What other ways could Doc get energy to power the DeLorean in 1955 (or whatever the year was)?
·
Assume that the energy needed to time travel was directly proportional to the mass of the object. Would the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier have enough power to go back to 1957?
Pushing the DeLorean to 88mph Credit : Universal Pictures Amblin Entertainment
S.H.I.E.L.D - Helicarrier
Carmen Drahl Former Contributor Science
Wheres Mr Fusion ?
To get some answers, I spoke with Egemen Kolemen. He’s a specialist in the control of fusion plasmas at Princeton University, where he is an assistant professor with joint appointments at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.
Egemen Kolemen, Princeton University (Credit:
Our Q&A is below, and is lightly edited for clarity.
Carmen Drahl:
Thanks for talking futuristic fusion with me, Dr. Kolemen!
In Back to the Future, the central time travel device was originally powered by plutonium, but this was replaced by the Mr. Fusion reactor.
Mr Fusion Home Energy Reactor Credit : Universal Pictures Amblin Entertainment
What’s the difference between how radioactive plutonium might generate electricity and how a fusion reactor would?
Egemen Kolemen: Radioactive plutonium produces energy by splitting up to smaller elements, which is known as the fission reaction.
In a fusion reactor, we combine small nuclei to make energy. Soon enough, we hope to move from fission to fusion technology just as Back to the Future II predicted.
This would help Doc Brown avoid troubles with the terrorists in the original movie— we use water as fusion fuel and you cannot make an atomic bomb with water!
CD: Mr. Fusion was able to generate power from household garbage— a banana peel, Miller beer, and even a beer can! What are the typical starting materials that are used in fusion reactors today?
EK: We use isotopes of the element hydrogen (known as deuterium and tritium) in current fusion reactors. There is enough heavy hydrogen fuel in sea water, H2O, to fuel the world’s energy needs for billions of years.
CD: In theory, could Mr. Fusion have been generating power by fusing together several different atoms or isotopes contained inside the garbage?
Mr Fusion ReFuelling
Or could the reactor only work by fusing deuterium and tritium in the garbage? In other words— could you generate energy from fusing many different nuclei?
EK: Theoretically, fusing elements lighter than iron releases nuclear energy. If a clever physicist could overcome the engineering problems, a machine like Mr. Fusion could physically make energy by fusing banana or beer which mostly consists of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. (It would even work for a beer can made of aluminum!). This is the process that happens in the core of large stars which is the birthplace of all the heavy elements in the universe.
Time Machine refuelled
However, as the elements get heavier, the fusion process gets harder and requires more energy to initialize and becomes less economical. That is why we use the isotopes of hydrogen, the lightest element in the universe.
Mr Fusion
There is no physics reason why you could not fuse many different nuclei.
Stars fuse many different elements with each other.
However, just as cars are designed to run with only one specific type of fuel (gasoline, diesel, etc.) to make them more efficient and economical, fusion reactors that work on preset fuels would be cheaper and an easier engineering challenge.
CD: Mr. Fusion was the size of a coffee maker.
That’s pretty tiny compared to the typical fusion reactor—
the experimental reactor being built in France will be over 5000 tons!
What are the challenges to making fusion reactors small?
EK: The fusion process happens when two particles hit each other each other at high velocity inside the reactor.
So, the energy production in a fusion reactor grows roughly in proportion to the volume (or the number of particles inside) of the reactor.
At the same time, the energy loss occurs mostly due to the drifting particles out from the surface of the reactor. As the reactor size gets bigger, volume which grows roughly as the cube of the radius increases much faster than the surface which grows as the square of the radius.
As a fusion reactor gets bigger the ratio of energy production to losses increases making it easier to produce net energy.
We use very strong magnetic forces to be able to confine the deuterium, tritium and electrons inside the reactor. If one can build superconducting coils that can produce much stronger magnetic fields (i.e. a stronger trap) than the ones available today, a smaller machine might be possible. This is an active research topic!
Interior of the National Spherical Torus[+]
CD: We’ve all seen car engines malfunction. Could Mr. Fusion explode in a mushroom cloud destroying everything in a 250 mile radius if something went wrong?
EK: Fusion is a delicate process that needs constant control. Unlike fission reactors, fusion cannot have a runaway chain reaction. If the “engine” malfunctions, the fusion process would stop immediately. So no explosion is possible. That is one of the many advantages of fusion energy.
CD: Mr. Fusion would have to be doing hot fusion, because cold fusion is a myth, right?
EK: There is no scientifically known net energy-producing cold fusion reaction.
CD: So since you do have to heat your starting materials to extremely high temperatures to achieve fusion, how cool can we make the outside of a fusion reactor—cool enough to safely attach to a vehicle?
EK: The wall inside the fusion vessel would be hot just as the inside of the car engine. However, the reactor would have a cooling system, similar to the radiator in a car, making the outside of the reactor at room temperature. The reactor would be as safe as the car engine.
CD: We still haven’t passed the break-even energy point in nuclear fusion— where we get more energy out of fusion than we had to put in. What gives you reason to think we’ll get there?
EK: We have been running experiments on many different fusion reactors all around the world and comparing the experimental data we obtain to computed simulations of the physics process.
We have been upgrading our simulation capabilities using new numerical methods and tools and checking against the experimental data.
At this point, we can reproduce and predict experimental outcomes in existing fusion reactors. We believe that our understanding of the physics and capability to simulate processes are advanced enough to roughly predict how a reactor will behave.
Based on this understanding, we designed the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) nuclear fusion reactor. ITER is under construction under an international collaboration, and it is expected to come online in a decade.
We predict that we will obtain 10 times more fusion energy output as the power we put in. As with any research, we can only know the exact answer after running the machine but we try to do our best to predict the reactor behavior.
CD: Thank you for your time, Dr. Kolemen!
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I'm an independent journalist specializing in chemistry, in particular the places where chemistry meets biology. I was a staff science writer at Chemical & Engineering…Read More
As a renewable energy source, cold fusion is potentially unlimited clean energy. But what is fusion energy, how does it work, and is there such a thing as cold fusion?
You may have heard about cold fusion, the idea that atoms can be fused together without using any significant heat or other type of energy and yet producing a great deal of energy.
This philosopher’s stone has been the object of the quest of many a modern-day alchemist, so we shall leave it to them.
Hot fusion, however, is real. It’s what happens inside the sun and other stars. Nuclei of atoms crash into each other at great speed, resulting in fusion and a great deal more energy released. Research and development into fusion energy is trying to create similar reactions here on Earth at over 100 million degrees Celsius.
The opposite of nuclear fission
Fusion energy, in a way, is the opposite of what we conventionally call nuclear energy – although fusion energy also deals with the nucleus of atoms. In current nuclear power plants, the energy comes from splitting the atom.
Fusion, as the name suggests, produces energy not by breaking atoms apart, but by fusing them together.
The real difference comes from the kind of elements involved in these processes. What we know as nuclear energy requires elements with big, heavy atoms like uranium or plutonium that can be split into smaller atoms.
However, uranium, plutonium, and their fission products are radioactive, which means that when they decay they emit ionising radiation, which in certain circumstances might be dangerous to humans.
Back to the Future Darth Vader Credit : Universal Pictures Amblin Entertainment
Fusion energy instead is based on combining two lightweight atoms – usually hydrogen. When two hydrogen atoms fuse, they create helium.
So not only does fusion energy rely on the most abundant element in the universe, its byproduct can be easily used for medical purposes, or to blow up balloons.
Try pushing two magnets together
How do you fuse two atoms?
The challenge comes from the fact that the nucleus of an atom contains positively charged protons and neutral neutrons, as you will surely recall from your physics class.
Therefore, the nucleus of an atom will always carry a positive charge. Trying to combine it with another one with a positive charge is like trying to push two magnets towards each other. They will resist. This is why fusion energy uses the lightest atoms possible. But it is still very hard.
Inside the sun, fusion occurs because the immense gravity draws atoms together, creating extreme density and enormous heat, which makes the atoms collide with each other at great speed.
The force of gravity is much weaker on Earth, because of the relatively small size of this planet, and the temperature – despite global warming – is nowhere close to the heat of the sun. So how can we create similar conditions here for fusion to occur?
Hotter than the sun
The answer is fairly obvious. To make up for our lower gravity, you simply have to create a temperature hotter than the sun.
Six to ten times hotter, up to 150 million degrees Celsius. Here on Earth this tremendous heat will create the conditions to allow the hydrogen atoms to bump into each other, resulting in fusion and generating even more energy.
Sounds easy? There are quite a few details that need to be ironed out.
First issue: where could you create such a temperature, so that the heated substance wouldn’t destroy everything it touches?
Again, the solution is simple: don’t allow it to come into contact with anything. To achieve this, Russian scientists in the middle of the 20th century developed the tokamak, a chamber the shape of a hollow doughnut, surrounded by powerful magnets.
Inside this chamber, the hydrogen gas is heated to an extremely high temperature and transformed into a plasma state.
The plasma state is one of the four fundamental states of matter, in which the gaseous substance becomes ionised – because electrons orbiting the atomic nuclei are stripped away.
The ionised matter is electrically conductive and therefore the magnetic fields can dominate the behaviour of the matter. That is where the magnets come in.
Magnets can keep this electrically conductive substance from approaching the tokamak’s walls, hovering above it. Inside the plasma, the conditions are suitable for the atoms to bump into each other and to fuse, releasing energy.
The world’s largest experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor – called ITER – is under construction in France, to prove the feasibility of thermonuclear fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy.
ITER is an international research and engineering megaproject involving the European Union, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the US.
If successful, the facility will turn 50 MW of power inserted into the system – to initially heat the plasma – into fusion power output of 500 MW.
A lot of doughnut
The ITER reactor will be huge:
the ITER tokamak will be as heavy as three Eiffel Towers;
the structure of the 1 000-tonne electromagnet in the centre of the machine must be strong enough to contain a force equivalent to twice the thrust of the Space Shuttle at take-off (60 meganewtons, or over 6 000 tonnes of force);
there will be 18 D-shaped electromagnets around the doughnut-shaped tokamak chamber, each of them 17 metres high and 9 metres wide, weighing 310 tonnes, the approximate weight of a fully loaded Boeing 747-300 aeroplane.
270 million degrees Fahrenheit to ignite fusion—a full ten times hotter than the sun's core.
But how could we get that enormous energy out of the doughnut and safely channel it into our homes as electricity?
This is done via the main chamber wall and a region called the divertor, positioned at the bottom of the tokamak. The divertor controls the exhaust of heat, waste gas and impurities from the reactor and withstands the highest surface heat loads. The surface of the divertor is covered by tungsten, the metal with the highest melting point (3422°C).
In 2019, with the backing of the European Fund for Strategic Investments, the European Investment Bank signed a €250 million loan to the Italian research agency ENEA to help build the divertor and tokamak test facility. The plant will test various alternatives to exhaust the huge amount of heat flowing into the divertor component of a nuclear fusion reactor.
A glorified steam turbine
Researchers continue to look for alternatives, but as it stands now the whole process of transitioning the heat to electric power then becomes rather old-fashioned.
The heat received by the plasma-facing wall and the divertor will be used to turn water into steam, which will drive a steam turbine. divertor, positioned at the bottom of the tokamak“The scientific advances towards fusion energy are not likely to occur like the apple falling on Newton’s head,” says Istvan Szabo, a senior engineer in the European Investment Bank’s energy security division. “You need many more resources.”
Szabo concedes it is possible that tomorrow someone will come up with a completely different solution to harness fusion energy, or a different answer to the need for sustainable energy to power us into the future.
“There are other ideas to compress matter and fuse atoms. For example to use lasers or mechanical compression. And maybe someone will one day solve cold fusion,” Szabo says. “But testing these will all require immense resources.
Thermonuclear fusion is furthest along the research and development phase. It offers the most hope.”
Cold fusion remains elusive—but these scientists may revive the quest
The first public results from a Google-funded project reveal renewed interest in the long-sought but controversial nuclear energy source.
BY MICHAEL GRESHKO
PUBLISHED MAY 29, 2019
Sparking a controversy
Nuclear fusion occurs when pairs of light nuclei fuse together to form a nucleus of net lighter mass, releasing huge amounts of energy as described by Einstein's iconic equation E = mc2.
Inside the sun, hydrogen atoms fuse to produce helium and energy. If successfully harnessed on Earth, fusion could provide humankind with abundant, emissions-free energy—a huge boon to efforts to combat climate change. (As a byproduct, fusion on Earth might also help to address a global helium shortage.)
But getting fusion to work on Earth is tricky, since it's hard to get two nuclei close enough to combine; atomic nuclei are positively charged, so they fiercely repel one another, a hurdle known as the Coulomb barrier.
Crossing this barrier and realizing fusion power is possible at high densities and temperatures, if the nuclei are confined for a sufficiently long time. But to achieve these conditions, scientists seem to need large, expensive machines and huge amounts of initial power.
“What nature does with the enormous force of gravity in the sun's core is what mankind has been trying to do under controlled conditions in the laboratory,” says physicist Amitava Bhattacharjee, the head theorist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, one of the leading fusion research groups in the U.S.
“For the last 60 years we’ve been at this, and I think the progress has been enormous,” he adds. “But we still continue to have a challenge to make nuclear fusion power inexpensively available to people.”
But what if cleverly structured materials could somehow lower the energy needed for fusion? That's what chemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons at the University of Utah thought they had achieved.
On March 23, 1989, University of Utah chemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons announced their "cold fusion" device to the world—sparking a scientific firestorm.
But for many, excitement quickly gave way to skepticism. Early outside attempts to replicate the results didn't turn up massive amounts of heat, nor did the setup appear to yield many high-energy neutrons, a signature of conventional nuclear fusion.
“In March 1989, everybody jumped on this topic, even serious fusion physicists (like me),” Hans-Stephan Bosch, the head of the Wendelstein 7-X fusion experiment at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, writes in an email.
“However, we didn’t find any positive result confirming their claims. Therefore we finished our work, published it, and closed the topic. My impression is that most physicists and chemists did the same, regarding cold fusion as an 'interesting' episode.”
Ever since, cold fusion largely served as a parable on the perils of irreproducibility. But a small group of researchers and enthusiasts has remained convinced that the phenomenon is real and nuclear in nature, though not necessarily the same thing as fusion.
This scientific circle still does experiments and reports its results in its own meetings and journals, though it has shed the “cold fusion” name for low-energy nuclear reactions, or LENR
Small modular reactors (SMRs) are a type of nuclear fission reactor which are smaller than conventional reactors.
This allows them to be manufactured at a plant and brought to a site to be assembled. Modular reactors allow for less on-site construction, increased containment efficiency, and enhanced safety due to passive nuclear safety features.[1]
SMRs have been proposed as a way to bypass financial and safety barriers that have plagued conventional nuclear reactors.[1][2]
Several designs exist for SMR, ranging from scaled down versions of existing nuclear reactor designs, to entirely new generation IV designs.
Both thermal-neutron reactors and fast-neutron reactors have been proposed, as well as molten salt and gas cooled reactor models.[3]
A main hindrance to the commercial application of SMRs as of 2015 is licensing, since current regulatory regimes are adapted to conventional nuclear power plants and have not been adapted to SMRs in terms of staffing, security etc.[4] Time, cost and risk of the licensing process are critical elements for the construction of SMRs.[5]
Some larger SMRs require more significant on-site construction, such as the 440 MWe 3-loop Rolls-Royce SMR, which targets a 500-day construction time.[9]
SMRs are particularly useful in remote locations where there is usually a deficiency of trained workers and a higher cost of shipping. Containment is more efficient, and proliferation concerns could be lowered.[10] SMRs are also more flexible in that they do not necessarily need to be hooked into a large power grid, and can generally be attached to other modules to provide increased power supplies if necessary.
Companies that are planning new nuclear units are currently indicating that the total costs (including escalation and financing costs) will be in the range of $5,500/kW to $8,100/kW or between $6 billion and $9 billion for each 1,100 MW plant.
The smallest nuclear reactor in operation today isn't from some startup or a cutting-edge nuclear agency: It's tiny, frozen Bilibino Nuclear Plant in Chukotka, Russia, where up to four different 12 MWe modular reactors have run since 1974.16 Dec 2019
Is it legal to own a nuclear reactor?
While they might un-nerve the neighbours, fusion reactors of this kind are perfectly legal in the US
Back to the Future Time Machine
Doc Brown The Flux Capacitor
Other questions are :
How can we generate 1.21 Gigawatts in real life, now that we're 20 years ahead of Doc Brown?
Was a bolt of lightning really the only way to produce 1.21 gigawatts back in 1955?
How can we generate 1.21 Gigawatts in real life, now that we're 20 years ahead of Doc Brown?
Was a bolt of lightning really the only way to produce 1.21 gigawatts back in 1955?
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