How Does The Science of Time Travel in Back to the Future Work?

Time travel in Back to the Future works like a really fast car that can go backward and forward through time.

Imagine you're riding your bike, you just go forward, one pedal at a time. But the DeLorean is like a supercharged bike with a flux capacitor, which makes it zoom through time instead of just roads. It needs 1.21 gigawatts of power, that’s like lighting up a whole city, to start the time travel engine.

The DeLorean is the time machine. When it goes fast enough, it doesn’t just move through space, it moves through time, too. It's kind of like flipping pages in a book: one second you're on page 1 (1985), and poof! You’re on page 200 (2015).

When Marty goes back to 1955, it’s like stepping into a time bubble. He’s still wearing his clothes from 1985, but the people in 1955 see him as a stranger with cool shoes and a weird shirt.

Time travel isn’t about magic, it's just a really fast car that can go through time like you go through streets.