{"id":86732,"date":"2025-10-27T12:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T12:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/?p=86732"},"modified":"2025-10-27T12:43:04","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T12:43:04","slug":"einsteins-minute-how-far-does-a-delorean-move-when-travelling-in-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/2025\/10\/einsteins-minute-how-far-does-a-delorean-move-when-travelling-in-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Einstein\u2019s Minute. How Far Does A DeLorean Move When Travelling in Time?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How far did Einstein travel in Back To The Future during the DeLorean\u2019s first journey?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The answer that Doc Brown (and the authorial hand of Bob Zemeckis) is one minute, as in \u201cThe appropriate question is when the hell are they<\/em>,” not Marty\u2019s \u201cWhere the hell are they?!<\/em>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think I\u2019m with Marty on this one. Because for time travel to work, you also need to move through space. If the DeLorean were just a time machine, Einstein would not have moved in the one minute of travel, but the Earth\u2019s spin would have shifted Marty, Doc and the rest of Hill Valley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hill Valley is a fictional place, but for a bit of gedanken<\/a>, I\u2019m going to go with the Puene Hills Mall<\/a>, the filming location for Twin Pines \/ Lone Pines Mall in Hill Valley. It\u2019s situated at a latitude of\u00a033\u00b0 59′ 36.82″\u2026 let\u2019s go with 34 North. At that latitude, the Earth\u2019s spin speed is roughly 862 miles per hour. So Einstein\u2019s one minute of travel takes him just short of 14.4 miles.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This would put Einstein and the DeLorean in the middle of the Los Angeles River at Maywood, as pictured above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFun With Physics\u201d doesn\u2019t stop there! Because if the first jump had been 23 hours 56 minutes and 4 seconds, then Twin \/ Lone Pine Mall would have been underneath him\u2026 and then Doc\u2019s question holds because no travel in space was needed. Isn’t it? Well, to quote Monty Python’s Eric Idle<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJust remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving, and revolving at nine hundred miles an hour. That’s orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it’s reckoned, A sun that is the source of all our power. The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see, are moving at a million miles a day, in an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour of the galaxy we call the ‘Milky Way”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u2026and so on out to twelve million miles a minute in the final verse. The DeLorean has to compensate for that. Grabbing the future results of the World Series is not thinking big enough; Doc Brown has invented the greatest logistics company in the history (and the future) of the world. Just get your shipping container to 88 miles per hour, and the goodies can be sent anytime, anywhere. Doc Brown unlocked the universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marty\u2019s \u201cWhere the hell are they?!<\/em>\u201d is the exact question to ask.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How far did Einstein travel in Back To The Future during the DeLorean\u2019s first journey, and why does Eric Idle hold the answer to Doc Brown defeating FedEx?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86735,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":false},"categories":[576,26],"tags":[5546,6175,6173,6176,4248,6174,235,6171],"class_list":["post-86732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mainstream-media","category-multimedia","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-doc-brown","tag-gedanken","tag-marty-mcfly","tag-space","tag-space-travel","tag-time","tag-time-travel","comments-off"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/20251027-Back-To-The-Future-Einstein-Travel.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p58Gl0-myU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86732"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86736,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86732\/revisions\/86736"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}