Mark Elliott 14/05/2024 Mark Elliott 14/05/2024

Time Machine - Operators Guide - DeLorean

The Back to the Future Time Machine, we explore how you would operate Doc Browns amazing Time Travelling DeLorean

The #DeLorean #timemachine is a fictional automobile-based time travel vehicle device as featured in the Back to the Future franchise.

The main operation of the time machine is the same in all three films. The operator is seated inside the DeLorean (except the first time, when a remote control is used), and turns on the time circuits using the Time Drive Switch, this activates a unit containing multiple fourteen- and seven-segment displays …..

Back to the Future DeLorean Time Machine … Operators Guide.

The #DeLorean #timemachine is a fictional automobile-based time travel vehicle device as featured in the Back to the Future franchise.

Operation of the #DeLorean #Timemachine

Destination Time and Date (Red),
Present Time and Date (Green)
Last-departed Time and Date (Yellow)

Enter in your own Time and Date into the TIme circuits using the keypad below the unit so, if you wanted to travel to 5th November 1955 at 6.00am you would enter :

11 05 1955 0600 then press enter.

The Plutonium Gauges will power up at the same time as the Time Display. After entering a target date, and with the Time Drive Switch is left on, the system is active. Once the operator accelerates the car up to #88 miles per hour (141.6 km/h), the flux capacitor actives……(and the rest is History !)

As it accelerates, several coils around the body glow blue/white while a burst of light appears in front of it as it enters the wormhole (see our ‘Is Time Travel possible’ blog)

Surrounded by electrical current (similar to a Tesla coil), the whole car vanishes in a flash of white/blue light seconds later, leaving a pair of fiery tire tracks.

A digital speedometer attached to the dashboard allows the operator an accurately gauge of the car's speed.

Observers outside the vehicle see an implosion of plasma as the vehicle disappears, while occupants within the vehicle see a quick flash of light and instantaneously arrive at the target time in the same spatial location (relative to the Earth) as when it departed.

Hover Conversion - The DeLorean Time Machine

In the destination time, (immediately before the car's arrival), three large and loud flashes occur at the point from which the car emerges from its time travel (at the speed of Sound, the Sonic Boom). After the trip, the exterior of the DeLorean is extremely cold, and frost forms from atmospheric moisture all over the car's body and thermal heaters on the back of the vehicle.

A few technical glitches with the DeLorean that could hinder time travel for its users :

In the first film, the car has starter problems and Marty McFly has a hard time restarting once stopped, much to his repeated frustration.

In the second movie, the destination time display malfunctions and shows random dates (mostly January 1, 1885), which partially cause Doc to be sent to 1885.

In the third movie, the flying circuits (added by Doc in 2015), fuel line, and fuel injection manifold are damaged, preventing the car from moving under its own power

In the feature film series, Dr. Emmett L. Brown builds a time machine from a retrofitted #DMC DeLorean car, to gain insights into history and the future. Instead, he and Marty McFly end up using it to travel across 130 years of Hill Valley history to change the past for the better and to undo the negative effects of time travel.

The car requires 1.21 gigawatts of power, and needs to reach 88 miles per hour in order to operate the Time Machine circuits so it can time travel. The official Back to the Future DeLorean (named the A Car) can now be viewed at the Petersen Automotive Museum

Hill Valley Clock Tower - Back to the Future

#DeLorean Power ..... !

The time machine circuits are electric and require a colossal power input of 1.21 gigawatts (1,620,000 hp) to operate.

Originally provided by a plutonium-fuelled nuclear reactor (in the first movie), #DocBrown has no access to plutonium in 1955, so he outfits the car with a large pole and hook in order to channel the power of a lightning bolt into the #FluxCapacitor and send #Marty back to 1985.

During Doc's first visit to 2015, he had the machine refitted to Hover above ground in addition to standard road driving, and he replaces the nuclear reactor with a Mr. Fusion generator that uses garbage as fuel.

DeLorean Time Machine - Being pushed by steam locomotive

Although the #MrFusion unit provides the required power for the time machine, the DeLorean is still powered by an internal 2.8 V6 PRV combustion engine for propulsion.

This caused a problem when the fuel line was damaged during Marty's trip to 1885 in Back to the Future Part III; after he and Doc patch it, they attempt to use whiskey as a replacement fuel since commercial gasoline is not yet available.

The test fails, damaging the car's fuel injection manifold and leaving it unable to travel under its own power.

Doc and Marty consider options to reach the required 88 mph such as :
Pulling it with horses, which fails because the car barely breaks 20 mph) but ultimately settle on pushing the car with a steam locomotive.

For the extra power needed to push the DeLorean up to speed, Doc adds his own version of "Presto Logs" (a chemically treated mixture of pressed wood and anthracite) to the locomotive's boiler and chooses a location with a straight section of track long enough to achieve 88 mph

The power required is pronounced in the film as one point twenty-one "jiggawatts".

While the closed-captioning in home video versions spells the word as it appears in the script, jiggawatt, the actual spelling matches the standard prefix and the term for power of "One Billion Watts": Gigawatt. Although rarely used, the "j" sound at the beginning of the SI prefix "giga-" is an acceptable pronunciation for "gigawatt."

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To find out more fun Future Facts by clicking our Blogs below……….!!! Please Share …..

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https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/3/31/ghostbusters-ecto-1

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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

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Back to the Future Gadgets and Trends we have in 2021

https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/2/10/34-back-to-the-future-gadgets-and-trends

Doc Browns Biography and the History of his DeLorean Time Machine

https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/1/26/doc-browns-biography-amp-history-of-the-time-machine

Marty McFly Biography also featuring Biff, George, Jennifer, Loranine

https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/2/2/biography-marty-mcfly-michael-j-fox-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

https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/1/24/back-to-the-future-detailed-storyline-

Back to the Future - How to generate 1.21 Giggawatts / Jiggawatts with Mr Fusion

https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/2021/1/25/great-scott-how-to-generate-121-giggawatts-jiggawatts-mr-fusion-

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The DeLorean Motor Company - What did it fail ? Or did it ?

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https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/fluxcapacitor

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https://www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk/blogtothefuture/istimetravelpossible

www.sandstoneproductions.co.uk

Mark Elliott 13/05/2024 Mark Elliott 13/05/2024

The Flux Capacitor and How does it work ?

The Flux Capacitor - What does it do ? How does it work ? Here we explain the theory behind Doc Browns Back to the Future invention

The Flux Capacitor is one of the central pieces of equipment in the DeLorean Time Machine which is what makes time travel possible.

In Theory :

This is essentially a storage device for the huge amount of power 1.21 gigawatts (1,210,000,000 watts) of power, once 88mph is reached power is channelled through three glowing rods. This forces microwaves to flow in one direction meeting in the centre.

A newly developed Flux Capacitor (not for time travel though) uses Quantum tubes of magnetic flux moving around a central capacitor by a process known as Quantum Tunnelling, This creates a brace of wormholes accelerating at different velocities relative to each other.

The Flux Capacitor

As featured in ‘Back to the Future’ a device imagined by Doc Brown when he was standing on the edge of his toilet, slipped and hit his head on the sink, when he came to had a revelation of the Flux Capacitor

The Flux Capacitor is one of the central pieces of equipment in the DeLorean Time Machine which is what makes time travel possible.

In Theory :

1.21 Gigawatts of energy would be released from the Flux Capacitor through the Flux Bands (mounted on the outside of the DeLorean). This would allow for the transition through the wormhole to happen at 88mph, the wormhole would have to be created by the Delorean harnessing two black holes, entangle them, and then separate them again. Except this involves ties between quantum mechanics and classical mechanics. (See our ‘Is Time Travel possible’ blog)

The Back to the Future A-Car (the DeLorean used for close up filming) Flux Capacitor consisted of 3 high pressure gas relays connected to Glass Vacuum tubes.

In this particular theory the space-time continuum is shown to be essentially spherical. The Flux bands allowing the traveller to enter the wormhole in one location in space, but emerge from it in a new location which is exactly the same in space, but entirely different in time. So you travel through time, but remain in the same relative place.

Of course this is far more complex than we have described here, but again see our blog ' Is Time Travel Possible' for more detailed explanation.

The short version is that nothing really stays in place, the world is constantly moving through space, so even a slight displacement in time would be extremely difficult to link up exactly with a particular point in space.

DeLorean Power ?

The Delorean runs on regular gas (petrol unleaded) to power its 2.8 v6 Peugeot Renault Volvo (PRV) ZMJ-159 engine. But the Time Machine conversion runs on something little more potent ….

Can a DeLorean go 88 mph? Yes it can it can :

In U.S Spec - 130 BHP - 0.60 in 9.6 Seconds - Top Speed 122 mph

In European Spec - 150 BHP - 0.60 in 8.5 Seconds - Top Speed 129 mph

One of the key problems for the flux capacitor is energy. Even theoretically, the amount of power needed to create a wormhole (as yet, still only a concept rather than a reality) is barely conceivable.

In the film, it’s defined as 1.21 gigawatts (pronounced ‘jigawatts’ in the film). That’s an awful lot of watts, the kind you can only get from a plutonium-powered nuclear reactor, or a couple of seriously huge gas turbines or, say, a bolt of lightning !

So try to explain how much power this is the nuclear power reactors in a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier produce 194 megawatts (1.94 x 10-8 watts)

But here we are talking about a Bolt of Lighting which is 300 million volts, and 30,000 amps. For comparison a household current is 240 Volts (120volts for USA) and 16 Amps. And a bolt of lighting is 5 x 10⌃9 Joules perfect for Doc Browns Delorean Time Machine

Giga is a prefix for units that typically means 10⌃9 This means 1.21 gigawatts would be 1.12 x 10⌃9 watts

What other mode of transport requires this colossal amount of power ? Try the S.H.I.E.L.D Helicarrier at 317 gigawatts

The Reactor

So how could that work? Let’s get technical for a second. If the reactor uses (for example) Plutonium-239 (dangerously radioactive by the way), then each atom of the stuff could theoretically produce 200MeV (mega electron volts) during the fission process, equivalent to 3.2×10⌃11 joules of energy. With each Plutonium-239 atom having a mass of 3.29×10-25kg, you would only need a fuel mass of 1.2×10-5kg, which could conceivably fit in the boot of a DeLorean.

So long as it didn’t explode, and 1.21 gigawatts is all the power you needed, then you could conceivably power a time-travelling car.

Then all you’d have to worry about are the complexities of relativity, space-time paradoxes and the impossibility of altering the future by changing history to make time travel by DeLorean a reality.