Flux capacitor

DeLorean time machine
Side view of the DeLorean time machine
Plot element from the Back to the Future film series
Publisher	Amblin Entertainment
First appearance	Back to the Future (1985)
Created by	Robert Zemeckis Bob Gale
Genre	Sci fi
In-story information
Type	Time machine
Function	Allows the occupants to travel through time along with the car

The DeLorean time machine is a fictional automobile-based time travel device featured in the Back to the Future franchise. In the feature film series, Dr. Emmett Brown builds a time machine based on a DeLorean DMC-12 car, to gain insights into history and the future. Instead, he ends up using it to travel over 130 years of Hill Valley history (from 1885 to 2015) with Marty McFly to change the past for the better and to undo the negative effects of time travel. One of the cars used in filming is on display at Universal Studios Hollywood.

The control of the time machine is the same in all three films. The operator is seated inside the DeLorean (except the first time, when a remote control is used), and turns on the time circuits, activating a unit containing multiple fourteen- and seven-segment displays that show the destination (red), present (green), and last-departed (yellow) dates and times. After entering a target date, the operator accelerates the car to 88 miles per hour (141.6 km/h), which activates the flux capacitor. As it accelerates, several coils around the body glow blue/white while a burst of light appears in front of it. Surrounded by electrical current similar to a Tesla coil, the whole car vanishes in a flash of white/blue light seconds later, leaving a pair of fiery tire tracks. A digital speedometer is attached to the dashboard so that the operator can accurately gauge the car's speed. Various proposals have been brought forth in the past by fans of the movie franchise for why the car has to be moving at 88 mph to achieve temporal displacement, but actually the production crew chose the velocity simply because they liked how it looked on the speedometer.

Observers outside the vehicle see an implosion of plasma as the vehicle disappears, while occupants within the vehicle see a quick flash of light and instantaneously arrive at the target time in the same spatial location (relative to the Earth) as when it departed. In the destination time, immediately before the car's arrival, three large and loud flashes occur at the point from which the car emerges from its time travel. After the trip, the exterior of the DeLorean is extremely cold, and frost forms from atmospheric moisture all over the car's body.