"They're exactly 25 minutes slow"- Doc Brown to Marty McFly Find out why:
	Have you ever wondered what on earth Doc was doing in Back to the Future part 1 by setting all his clocks 25 minutes slow, thereby making Marty McFly late for school? That had often bugged me, as I couldn't see the point is his setting the clocks 25 minutes slow. I mean, what on earth did that have to do with the DeLorean or the Flux Capacitor? Well, it seems that someone has finally come up with an extremely feasible explanation for this strange experiment of Doc's, and they have kindly agreed to let me put it on my website. Here it is, enjoy! The answer to Doc's experiment! This has taken me some time to figure out; I began researching this back on March 9th, when the first post of "My experiment worked!"--What experiment? was made by 24hourscientificservices. We all know that the Earth rotates around its axis approximately every 24 hours. This is the time it takes the Sun to appear at the same point in the sky from the day before (high noon.) We call this solar time. There is another unit of time measurement called sidereal time which measures one complete rotation of the Earth in relation to the stars. Astronomers use sidereal time, instead of solar time, to know the position of the stars each night. The stars are in the same exact position in the sky every 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.09566 seconds of solar time. So, in other words, if you are looking straight up at a 90° angle at "Star A" at midnight, you can expect to see that same "Star A" in the same exact position in the sky (90° looking straight up) at 11:56:04.09566pm (eleven fifty-six and four-point-zero-nine-five-six-six seconds) the next evening or 3 minutes and 55.90434 seconds earlier than the night before. However, if you have a "sidereal clock," it measures 24 "sidereal hours" which is equal to 23:56:04.09566 "solar hours." Now, here's the tricky part: My belief, based on calculations comparing solar time to sidereal time, is that Doc had all his clocks set to sidereal time and wanted to convert them to solar time. To do this, he would have to slow his clocks' gear mechanisms down so that they would all move slower by approximately 4 minutes. Now, unless Doc wants to come back to his clocks in 24 hours to see that they have indeed slowed by approximately 4 minutes, he would have to come up with a way for his clocks to do it for him. How? He must find a specific time to change his clocks from sidereal to solar. Then, he must find a time in the future that will allow his clocks to all go off on the top of the hour (when most wall clock alarms go off), and at the same time, they must go off at an exact number of minutes slower than the actual time. This will allow Doc to know that his clocks are synchronized with solar time. According to my calculations, if Doc changes his clocks to record solar time at midnight on Saturday, October 19th, 1985, then at 8:25AM on the morning of Friday, October 25th, 1985, his "sidereal clocks" will all be exactly 25 minutes slow in relation to solar time! He now knows that his clocks are synchronized to record solar time and can set them to the correct time when he gets back to the lab. This explains his crying out, "My experiment worked!" Why does this work out so great? When Marty answers the phone in Doc's lab, just before the clocks go off, he asks Doc, " 'Where have you been all week?' " This coincides with the time period I mentioned above. The time between October 19th, 1985 at midnight and October 25th, 1985 at 8:25AM is 6 days, 8 hours and 25 minutes. This is approximately one week's time!!! Doc probably wanted to have an experiment in the works, back at his lab, while he was away working on the final preparations for the time machine. There is a two-fold reason for Doc's phone call to Marty: 1.) he wants Marty to be at the Twin Pines Mall at 1:15am, 2.) he wants to be able to hear if his clocks will go off at the precise moment he expects them to go off. So, my opinion is that the clock experiment had nothing to do with any temporal displacement of the clocks. It was just to resynchronize his sidereal clocks to record solar time. I couldn't believe it myself, but I have the Excel Spreadsheet to prove it. I hope you all were able to follow this; it's very complicated. If you want more info on sidereal time, just type it into a search engine and a multitude of sites will pop up for your viewing pleasure. By Paul Lambert E-mail: paul@bttf.com Used With Permission First posted on the BTTF.com Message Board, which can be found at http://www.bttf.com. (Also a link off my Links' page)