Dr. Emmett Brown Wins Nobel Prize for Successfully Setting All His Clocks 25 Minutes Slow
Stockholm, Sweden – On one of the biggest days of the year for the field of Physics, Dr. Emmett Brown was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics today for his experiment in which he successfully set all of the clocks in his workshop/house precisely 25 minutes slow.
The experiment, deemed “groundbreaking” by all five members of the The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Committee, puts Dr. Brown in an exclusive club whose members include Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Max Planck, and Erico Fermi.
The experiment, which involved just over 100 clocks, was so intricate, took hours to set up. After the award ceremony, Brown recalled that, “The experiment took a while to set up because of all the clocks I had to hang, but the execution itself took only an hour and forty-three minutes. I woke up early one morning and at precisely 5:25, I set the first clock to 5:00, then a minute later I synchronized the second clock to 5:01, and I repeated this for the next 141 clocks. Then, when the clocks read 8:00 [actually 8:25], all of their alarms went off! It was brilliant!”
Adding even more to the amazing accomplishment is the fact that Brown actually had two experiments nominated for the prize. Apparently he was also being considered for transforming a DeLorean into a working time machine. However, when it came time to crown the winning idea, the committee felt the clock experiment had more merit.
Though the experiment ended as a major success, the experiment wasn’t without some tense moments. Brown added, “I was almost unable to use any electrically powered clocks, as the power reading into the building showed that there was a slight possibility of overload. However, I found that everything worked as long as I didn’t turn on the giant guitar amplifier I had built.”
Brown said that the idea came to him on November 4, 1955 and took him 30 years to procure all the clocks that made the idea a reality. He recalls, “I remember it vividly, I was standing on the edge of toilet hanging a clock. The porcelain was wet, I slipped, hit my head on the edge of the sink, and when I came to, I had two revelations. The first was that I should wait until tomorrow before I tried hanging that clock again, and the second was, I know exactly how I’m going to set every clock I own to be 25 minutes slow.”
As for what he will do with the 10 million Swedish kronor [approx. US$1.5 million] in prize money, Brown said he hopes to buy back some of the 435 prime acres of property he had to sell off to developers after his mansion burned down and the high cost of pursuing his time machine left him bankrupted.
