Skip to main content

Back To The Future: Time Travel Paradox


In Back to the Future, to get Marty back to 1985, it looks to me like the Doc connects a cable to the pole with the weather vane on top of the clock tower and fastens the other end to a light pole on the other side of the road. They need the power of the lightning to transport Marty to the future.


They know what time the lightning strikes, because the clock is stopped by the lightning and Marty has the pamphlet from the future with the time on.


Marty drives the DeLorean, the lightning strikes and goes along the cable. All goes according to plan and Marty is transported to the future.


Two questions:



  1. If the lightning strikes the pole and travels along the cable to the ground, would not the clock be bypassed and therefore not be stopped?

  2. If so, would this not constitute a time paradox?



Answer




Doc Brown indirectly explained this in Back to the Future II, when he was explaining to Marty what Biff had done when he brought the Sports Almanac back to his younger self.


When the clock wasn't damaged by the lightning When Marty began to alter the past a new timeline was created wherein the clock continued to work all his changes took place. This was the timeline that Marty returned to when he went back to the future/present. He never returned to his actual original timeline, as seen at the start of the Back to the Future.


Doc Brown explains time


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

fan fiction - Does the Interdict of Merlin appear in original Harry Potter canon?

In Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky a concept called the ' Interdict of Merlin ' appears: (all emphasis added) Chapter 23: His hand on the doorknob, Harry Potter already inside and waiting, wearing his cowled cloak. "The ancient first-year spells," Harry Potter said. "What did you find?" "They're no more powerful than the spells we use now." Harry Potter's fist struck a desk, hard. "Damn it. All right. My own experiment was a failure, Draco. There's something called the Interdict of Merlin -" Draco hit himself on the forehead, realizing. "- which stops anyone from getting knowledge of powerful spells out of books, even if you find and read a powerful wizard's notes they won't make sense to you, it has to go from one living mind to another. I couldn't find any powerful spells that we had the instructions for but couldn't cast. But if you can't get them out of old books,
Post a Comment
Read more

warhammer40k - What evidence supposedly supports Tau as related to the Necrontyr?

I've heard of rumours saying that the Tau from Warhammer 40K are in fact the Necrontyr. Is there anything that supports this statement, in WH40K canon? I just found this, on 1d4 chan 1 : Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants? An often overlooked issue is that Tau have no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general, just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape,stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. GW may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the JUST AS PLANNED competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Is this the connec
Post a Comment
Read more

Why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize Missy right away?

So after it was established that Missy is actually both the Master, and the "woman in the shop" who gave Clara the TARDIS number... ...why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize her right away? I remember the Tenth Doctor in The Sound of Drums stating that Timelords had a way of recognizing other Timelords no matter if they had regenerated. And Clara should have recognized her as well... I'm hoping for a better explanation than "Moffat screwed up", and that I actually missed something after two watchthroughs of the episode. Answer There seems to be a lot of in-canon uncertainty as to the extent to which Time Lords can recognise one another which far pre-dates Moffat's tenure. From the Time Lords page on Wikipedia : Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across regenerations is not made entirely clear: In The War Games, the War Chief recognises the Second Doctor despite his regeneration and it is implied that the Doctor knows him when they fir
Post a Comment
Read more