One New York Life

I’d like to thank new blogroll entrant Overthinking It for finally addressing something that’s bothered me about Back To The Future since my ill-advised attempt to be a physics student my first year of college.

To make an awesomely long story very, very short… The Earth orbits the sun at a speed of about 30 km/s 20 miles/second while rotating at a speed of about 0.3 miles/second at the Equator. Since Hill Valley isn’t exactly on the Equator (but surprisingly, does appear on Google Maps) the relative speed is a little less. We’ll call it 0.25 miles/second for ease of math.

Using Einstein’s 1-minute trip, for the Delorean to appear at the exact same location it had to travel about 1200 miles along the Earth’s orbit while compensating about 15 miles along the Earth’s surface. Since we see Marty’s perspective when he goes to 1955, we know the trip is nearly instantaneous to the driver (confirmed by the human eye being unable to see any time differential on Einstein’s watch) and we can say that Einstein traveled about 1200 miles in less than a millisecond or so — about 4 times the speed of light.

I have no big point to tie this together. Only that Doc Brown doesn’t get nearly enough credit for creating a machine that can not only travel through time, but also solving the speed of light problem. And props for someone actually doing the math close to how it’s supposed to be done.

In a happy coincidence, That Bootleg Guy reviewed the movie version of The Bronx Is Burning.

Is anyone else wondering what kind of tee-time Derek Jeter can get in early October?