Evolution is Just a Theory

The next time someone comes up to you and says, “Evolution is just a theory.”  You say, “You’re goddam right it is.”  And then ask them if they even know what a theory is.  Chances are they haven’t a clue.

In science, the term “theory” is used differently from the commonly used term in a significant way.  Both theories are guesses, but whereas one theory requires no evidence, the other depends upon it.

Despite its apparently problematic title as a theory, evolution is fact.  In science a theory is the best model you have going to describe a phenomenon and, as your understanding changes, so does the model.  It’s related to the mathematical term “theorem” which is used in the same way, except theorem’s rely on mathematical logic instead of observation and experimentation (I wonder if it would sound just as convincing to say, “Well, no one knows, it’s just a theorem.”).  Atomic theory used to include electrons that flew around the nucleus like planets around the sun, but when we found out through experimentation they actually move around in three-dimensional clouds, like a bunch of flies buzzing around a piece of…nucleus, the theory was revised.  Then we found out that atoms are not only made of up protons, neutrons and electrons but that each of these particles are made up of quarks and gluons and muons and a whole slew other smaller and fascinating particles.  Again the theory was revised.  The case is so for gravitational theory, relativity theory, quantum mechanical theory, electromagnetic theory (anyone want to argue that electricity doesn’t exist?).  When the word theory is used this way it describes a synthesis of ideas that is our best guess as to how something works—it doesn’t dispute, however, that the something being described does exists.   Gravity is fact, atoms are fact, electricity is fact, and evolution is fact.  Just because we don’t know everything about evolution—because the theory is not complete—doesn’t mean evolution doesn’t exist.  Richard Dawkins, an evolution biologist in England, defines a fact as “something for which there is so much evidence that to think otherwise is ludicrous.” (He follows this up by pointing out that “There are politicians in the United States that hold to the idea that the Earth is ten to fifteen thousand years old.  That’s not just wrong, it’s so far off the mark as to border on insanity.”  Not unrelated, National Geographic magazine recently published a poll measuring acceptance of evolution in 33 developed countries.  Iceland was most accepting, England, Japan, and France were close behind, but the United States was the second to last in acceptance of evolution, placing 32^nd, just beating out Turkey.)  Gravity, atoms, electricity and evolution fall in this “fact” category.  Another theory that falls in this category is the Big Bang theory.  Like evolution, the Big Bang theory is resisted widely by religious people who see the theory as a threat to their belief system.  So these people will question the evidence for the Big Bang and claim that no one really knows, despite the Big Bang being accepted by virtually all cosmologists (Well, maybe not the ones in Turkey.).

All scientific discoveries come about by accident.  We don’t know what we’ll find tomorrow.  The problem with religion is that, for many people, it defines what they won’t find tomorrow.  But it’s really interesting to listen to people who deny evolution or the Big Bang.  They claim that there are holes in evolutionary theory.  Ok, but tell me a theory that doesn’t have holes in it.  So we’re missing a few fossils.  Actually, we’re missing a whole whole whole lot of fossils.  Because evolution theory claims to account for 100% of the biodiversity on Earth, a complete fossil record by definition must include 100% of the life forms that have ever existed on Earth.  I don’t think paleontologists have that much lab space.  Anyway, the incomplete fossil record argument is—and this can be said about all of the arguments invoked by creationists—strong-sounding but fatally weak.  Think about this:  You’re taking a tour across Corrigidor Island in the Philippines.  The tour-guide points out a U.S. building that was bombed by the Japanese in WWII.  This building is by no means a complete building.  It doesn’t have a roof at all, there are three gaping holes six feet across on the front side of the building, and a whole one-third of the south side is missing—so the guide tells us.  Apply the incomplete fossil record logic to the situation and you have an incomplete building argument.  You stand up and call the tour guide a liar, than no one knows for sure whether or not that formation of cinderblock and rubble are in fact remnants of a building.  These kinds of exercises in stupidity are fun.  Go and try it for yourself.  Borrow the logic of the creationists and employ it in your everyday life.  See how far that gets ya.

There is, however, a response by scientists addressing doubters of evolution.  Sure we can’t “prove” evolution, by definition science doesn’t prove anything, it can only disprove.  As a scientist to prove the sun exists and he’ll give you a million ways to detect it but he’ll never say—there, it’s proven.  Using the term now, I’m not even sure how to define “proof.”  It carries with it an absolute quality.  Absolute notions are kryptonite for scientists.  Never and always are words that don’t exist in the scientists’ vocabulary—well, maybe except for extremely rare cases (ßSee!!?).  There is always something more to learn about the universe.  We’ll never know everything there is to know.

The Big Bang theory is another problem.  You talk to people who don’t believe in the Big Bang and they say, “Well, I just don’t think there’s enough evidence.”  Really?  Do you even know what the evidence supporting it is?  Do you know about red shift or background microwave radiation or the Higgs field or the universal constant or space-time?  I do know about those things as a lay person who reads books by Brian Greene, Mario Livio, Leon Lederman, Alan Lightman, and Stephen Hawking.  But I’m no cosmologist.  I don’t do Big Bang science.  I leave that up to the cosmologists and I take their word for it.  Big Bang theory was first formulated in the early 20^th century and was immediately scoffed by the vast majority of astronomers.  Only with key observations in the following years did other astronomers embrace the theory.  Today, virtually all cosmologists adhere to Big Bang theory.  Not enough evidence?  Ask the critical thinker to send you a letter detailing his concerns about the theory, what its weak points are, what of the telescopic data is uncertain, those types of things.  Of course, it is possible that he’s right, that the cosmologists got it wrong, that the Big Bang never happened.  But the evidence right now, as a whole, points to a Big Bang, just as fossil, anatomical, geological and DNA evidence points to the evolution of life over time.

An evolution biologist was asked one time what it would take to disprove evolution.  He answered, “Rabbits in the Precambrian.”  The Precambrian Era is the time since the Earth’s formation to about half a billion years ago.  The first mammals, as far as we can guess, appeared about 265 million years ago.  Before them were reptiles, fish, algae.  It wouldn’t make sense to find a rabbit fossil a billion years old, or four billion years old.  If evolution’s right, then we won’t.  Okay, I’ll say it: we will never find a Precambrian rabbit.  If it turns out I’m wrong I’ll buy all the creationists at the Discovery Institute their bibles for the rest of their lives.

The fact is, the evidence looks exactly how it should look if evolution was real.  Darwin first proposed the theory in 1859.  It’s been almost 150 years since and there has yet to be proposed another theory to account for the biodiversity on Earth.

Lastly, I want to say don’t buy the whole “people just don’t understand evolution” defense.  I’m typically not guilty of overestimating people, but c’mon:  Species changing over time to adapt to environment.  Voila!  Now that’s a hell of a lot easier to understand than the theory of relativity.  No one at a bar is ever going to tell you they don’t believe the theory of relativity, are they?  No, I can prove it.

Update on the Neurogenesis Debate - Yes, There's a Neurogenesis Debate

            In 1999, Princeton investigators Elizabeth Gould and Charles Gross announced the discovery of newborn neurons in the brain’s neocortex, the area involved in complex thought.  Working with monkeys, they claimed that 4,000 new neurons were born each day in the primate neocortex, a finding that carried with it great promise as these cells could potentially be a cure for brain diseases if we can learn to control them.  This finding refutes a 1985 paper by Yale scientist Pasko Rakic, a giant in the field of neurogenesis, whose studies led him to conclude that what you’re born with is what you get, and that’s it.  At the time of the study, the thirty-six year old Gould was the youngest tenured professor at the Princeton psychology department while seventy-two-year old Rakic was (still is) chair of the neurobiology department and Yale and a former president of the 40,000-member Society for Neuroscience.  The study pitted Princeton against Yale and Gould against Rakic—the young, open-minded and female against the craggedy, oldschool, male-dominated scientific establishment.  It pitted the hope of new approaches to fighting brain disease against dark reality.

After Gould published her study in the top journal, Science, Rakic got right to work to see if he could replicate her findings.  In an interview later, Rakic said indeed he did identify newborn cells in the neocortex—but they weren’t neurons.  Instead he found that glial cells—cells that surround and support the function of neurons (their name derives from “glia,” the Greek word for glue) and observing the proliferation of which is nothing new—were the ones being born anew.  He said the mistake is understandable, that the glial cells sit flat like a pancake on top of the neurons and could easily be mistaken for neurons.  He suggested that Gould’s methods were flawed.

Ouch.

Gould responded by saying that she had replicated her initial study in a new group of primates: “These are neurons.”

Rakic took a trip to New Jersey and visited the Gould lab.  Gould handed over her slides so Rakic could take a look for himself.  After returning to Yale and analyzing the slides, Rakic once again concluded that he wasn’t seeing the newborn neurons that Gould was seeing.  The Rakic lab questioned the cell-labeling competency of the Gould lab and the Gould lab in turn questioned whether or not the man was adept enough in his old age to grasp the latest and most powerful techniques.  Who says scientists don’t have pizzazz?  (In earlier days of the neurogenesis field, one group at the University of New Mexico announced that they had seen newborn neurons in the neocortex to which Rakic replied, “Those [cells] may look like neurons in New Mexico, but they don’t in New Haven.”)

That’s how the debate stood in 1999.  Because of the promising implications for medicine a number of labs around the world picked up the torch and tried to see if they could spot Gould’s newborn neurons for themselves.  To this date no one has been able to replicate her results. 

The new data that settles the debate.

            Jonas Frisen’s group at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden are coming out with a paper in tomorrow’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that convincingly puts the controversy to rest.  Frisen’s group used an ingenious approach to answer the question of whether or newborn neurons are being formed in the adult human neocortex.  They exploited the fact that during the mid-twentieth century atmospheric levels of the carbon isotope, C-14, increased on a global scale as a result of above-ground nuclear testing.

Cells replicate by splitting in half.  You start with one, then you have two.  The original cell is called a parent cell and the two resultant cells are called daughter cells.  Before dividing, parent cells first replicate their DNA so that they have two copies.  The copies are then passed on to each of the daughter cells.  Any DNA synthesized in an environment enriched in C-14 would incorporate the isotopes into its structure.  The amount of C-14 present in the DNA can then be detected in laboratories.  Any cells—in the brain or elsewhere—born during this period of high atmospheric C-14 could be identified based on the presence of C-14 in their DNA; cells born before this period would have no C-14.  Frisen’s group did autopsies on individuals born in northern Europe before, during, and after the above-ground test period and checked for cells labeled with C-14 in the neocortex.  The verdict?  I’ll quote Rakic here: “Read my lips—no new neurons.”  The Frisen group didn’t find a single neuron in the neocortex labeled with C-14.  The only cells they found labeled with C-14 was, not surprisingly, glia cells.

That wasn’t the only experiment they conducted though.  Looking for C-14 in cells integrates the formation of new cells over fifty some years (making it extremely sensitive and goddamn so cool!) but it fails to address the question of whether or not some neurons are born and, after a short but electrifying stay, die off.  To answer this question, Frisen’s group again exercised imagination and took advantage of a technique commonly used in the treatment of cancer patients.  Cancer cells are cells in which the replication machinery screws up, causing the cells to proliferate out of control and form tumors.  To locate these tumors doctors will inject the patient with a chemical that, like C-14, incorporates itself into freshly-made DNA.  The power of this technique regarding the Frisen study lies in the short amount of time between injection of the chemical and the death of the patient.  In Frisen’s study, the shortest of these was four months.  That means if you don’t see any new neurons in that patient you can be sure that newborn neurons, if indeed they do exist in the brain but only transiently, they don’t live longer than four months.  This is an important point for Elizabeth Gould, as she’d always held the position that the newborn neurons were transient, saying “The brain is not being weighed down by mounds of new neurons.  They die off eventually.”

So what if Gould’s right?  What if new neurons are formed in the neocortex only to die off soon thereafter?  The Frisen group considered this possibility and based on the injection data calculated a theoretical upper limit of neuronal production.  The number they came up with was a mere 0.02% of the total neurons in the neocortex.  That translates to one new neuron every 50 years in what are called cortical columns, the basic functional units of information processing in the neocortex.  It’s hard to believe that that new neuron would mean anything at all.

I think we can agree with the reviewer of the Frisen paper, that the Frisen study “settles a hotly contested issue, unequivocally.  The data show that virtually all neurons (i.e., >99%) of the adult human neocortex  are generated before the time of birth of the individual, exactly as suggested by Rakic.”

The Modal Bacter Existential

           On the cover of a past issue of Science is a picture of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus.  If you look closely, you’ll notice that one half of the surface is rough, pock-marked with craters, while the other half is comparatively smooth and, as far as I can tell, completely devoid of craters.  This type of texture delineation is not uncommon in the solar system, the dark spots on our moon result from the less reflective material that erupts from beneath the surface as a result of volcanic activity—together with the rough, more reflective areas, it’s what makes the “man in the moon.”  Like our moon, scientists at NASA speculated that portions of Enceladus’ surface had been smoothed over by ice flows originating from beneath the surface, a process called cryovolcanism.  The complete lack of craters on the smooth side told the scientists that the volcanic activity occurred relatively recently on the geological timescale as even the most recent craters had been covered up—not a single one remained.  In March of 2005 Cassini, the spacecraft that has been buzzing around the Saturnian system since 1 July 2004 beaming data back to Earth including these breathtaking images, detected a strong outflow of ions emanating from Enceladus’ south pole.  Cassini then took aim at the ion flow and, in July 2005, passed through the streaming gas at an altitude of just 168 km above Enceladus’ surface.  There’s a good possibility that the plume is made of water, originating from a liquid water reservoir located beneath the surface.

            To witness active extraterrestrial geology is exciting enough, and Enceladus joins Jupiter’s moon Io as the only two bodies in the solar system—besides the Earth—upon which surface geological activity has been witnessed.  But what’s most exciting to me is the possibility that goes along with the existence of subterranean water.  Just as scientists postulate took place here on Earth approximately 4.5 billion years ago, the basic ingredients of water, energy and organic molecules might have also broiled together in an Enceladusian version of the “primordial soup” with the identical eventual result as occurred on Earth: the emergence of life.

If we follow the “water + energy + organic molecules = life” formula then Enceladus becomes only one of three locations in the solar system in which there’s hope of finding extraterrestrial life.  Mars, with its colossal canyons presumably carved eons ago by running water and water ice at its north pole, is one possible location.  Another is Jupiter’s moon Europa that, like Enceladus, is covered entirely by ice but displays evidence for recent geological activity, which again implies a heat source and activity beneath the surface (Both Mars and Europa have captured the imaginations of ET seekers, Mars in 1997 when the controversial discovery of the ALH84001 Martian meteorite containing possible fossil evidence for microbial life and a couple decades earlier when Europa was the cradle of life chosen by the unseen monolith-dispensing aliens in the Arthur C. Clarke classic “2010: Odyssey Two”.).  In fact missions have already been drawn up by NASA to investigate the presence of life on both Mars and Europa, and I’m sure Enceldaus will be similarly targeted if indeed a heated water source beneath its surface is confirmed.

            I can think of no other finding than the discovery of life elsewhere from Earth that would be more transforming to, not only how we view our universe, but also to the way in which we view ourselves.  Since the dawn of time we’ve looked to the heavens in search of meaning, and ever-present is the question, “Are we alone?”  What would it mean to finally find an answer?

            For one, we would for the first time be able to make a comparison.  For me there are two questions I find incredibly interesting: How inevitable is life, and how inevitable is our form of life?  Both of these questions can only be helped along with the discovery of extraterrestrial life.  Both questions are useless in the absence of other life.  So let’s suppose we do find life.

            The first question is one of abundance.  How abundant is life across the universe?  Has it only occurred on this one planetary body among over one-hundred comparable planetary bodies in our solar system, in orbit around this one star of 200 to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, a galaxy that is clustered closely with approximately 30 other galaxies which, in turn, is just one of many clusters in the Virgo Supercluster that is comprised of some 2000 member galaxies?

            And that’s just one corner of the universe.  Given such odds, I consider it extremely unlikely that life would have arose on planet Earth and nowhere else.  Like Jodie Foster’s character, Ellie, said in Carl Sagan’s “Contact,” “The Universe is a pretty big place; it’s bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space…”

            But without evidence we’ll never know.  So then, think of what it would mean to find life right here in our own backyard.  If life were to be found on Mars or Europa or Enceladus that would mean life had arisen within the same solar system two to five times.  Multiple occurrences of life within our little nine-planet system corner of the galaxy makes it extremely hard to argue that life in the universe, rather than the rule.  Imagine that: realizing there’s a good probability that we’re not alone and that, in fact, chances are the universe is teeming with life.  What would it feel like to look to the heavens then?

            The other question is one of form.  How inevitable is the evolutionary process that occurred on planet Earth and resulted in the biodiversity we see around us today?  There are many ways to answer this question, depending on the scale at which we make analysis.  The first question I’d like answered is “Is DNA inevitable?”  An incredibly exciting question!  Here on Earth, with extremely limited exception, all life of life’s heredity is passed by way of DNA (The few exceptions use RNA instead, a single-stranded partner of double-stranded DNA that is similar enough in structure and mechanism of heredity as to be thought of as indistinguishable when considering different modes of heredity as we are here.).  Genetic inheritance by way of DNA is elegant in its simplicity and at the same time its enormous utility—four different bases code for twenty different amino acids which are the building blocks for all of life’s tens of thousands of proteins—but is it obvious?  If we start out with the same raw materials do we end up with the same machine?  Is random interaction pointed in the same direction every time?  Are the constraints to self-replicating systems that take form in the primordial soup so stringent as to only use DNA as the mode of heredity?  Again, we can think of DNA as the way to go for all forms of life on Earth.  Will it be the same for life elsewhere?

            And of course, regarding form, we’ll want to know: What do they look like?  To make a comparison with life on Earth we should pick a representative that best characterizes life on Earth, that best embodies evolutionary progress as it has unfolded here on Earth.  This crowning achievement of evolution, this supreme being, of course, is bacteria.

            Don’t believe me?  By any criteria of survivability we can think of bacteria is tops.  Bacteria vastly outnumber every other life group in number of species, diversity of environments they’ve adapted to—from deep sea vents of 650°F and pressures 265 times that of sea level to environments the acidity of concentrated sulfuric acid to eternally dark rock worlds packed miles beneath the surface—to representation of the total biosphere.  By representation I mean the proportion of total species that make up the totality of life on Earth at any given time throughout life’s history.  The late evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould argued that the best way to characterize a skewed statistical distribution was to take the mode—that is, the measure most represented by individuals in a distribution.  Taking the average—what we normally do—is misleading when the distribution is skewed, as in the case of Bill Gates giving the per capita income of the people in Medina, Washington a disproportionate boost.  It’s more accurate to characterize Medina’s livelihood by taking the salary range within which most people in Medina fall.  If we do this for evolutionary change—determine what life form has numbered the highest as evolution progressed—we find that it has never changed since evidence first showed up in the earliest fossil records.  The mode falls on the life form bacteria.  The life form mode is bacteria from life’s appearance at 4.5 billion years ago and it remains that today.  This unchanging characterization of life since its appearance is what Gould refers to as the modal bacter.  Gould claims that humans are simply a statistical consequence, variation to the modal bacter, outliers on the curve, freaks of nature (He rejected the notion of evolutionary “progress.”).

            But what’s right for us might not be right for them.  Gould proposes that if we start life over here on Earth a thousand times then the products at the end of the curve—the creatures with the highest degree of complexity such as humans and, more generally, mammals—would be different a thousand times.  The chances of humans arising was very slim the first go ‘round, and most likely would never occur again in identical fashion.  But I wonder if the same could be said for bacteria, that single great representative of life on Earth.  Would the modal bacter be law elsewhere?  Again, how inevitable was it really?

            Finding life on Mars, or Europa or Enceladus would provide these questions I’ve mentioned with another dimension within which to maneuver; a third dimension from which we can distance ourselves from the flat, two-dimensional confine of knowing only ourselves as example for life.  The questions we’ve been asking ourselves for eons would finally be given breath; they would be given data, and the questions would be transformed from those of philosophy to those of philosophy and science.

Mind Over (Brain) Matter

            Human nature has been a favorite focus of deep thinking since the earliest philosophers.  The words, “Know thyself,” inscribed at the entrance of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, which dates back to 4^th century B.C., are early evidence of the uniquely human fascination with ourselves.  Over the centuries questions of human nature have increasingly overlapped with questions of the human brain.  We are all familiar with the 17^th century philosopher Rene Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am.”  Descartes believed the capacity to think was the only reliable proof of existence.  Perception via the senses is subjective and different for different people and thus an insufficient tool to go about answering the question of whether or not you and I are real.  So it is impossible to think of ways to prove our existence, but even the simplest thought is proof enough.  And since the brain is the seat of thought, it follows logically that the brain is key to our existence and to understanding ourselves.

            Or does it?

            Descartes himself probably wouldn’t have bought this.  His dualism philosophy posits a mind-body dichotomy such that the mind interacts with but exists separate from the body, separate from the brain.  This was a powerful idea.  The idea that the mind and the brain are two separate entities is prevalent in our society today (I once had a conversation with a neuroscience graduate student on this topic and she asked, “But what about the intangibles, like love?”).  I suspect that the power of Descartes’ dualism, however brilliant he was, lies not in the spread of one man’s idea, but in the ability of that man to identify and package an idea that was already instinctive to humans throughout history.  However, many of today’s cognitive neuroscientists are fighting that instinct in favor of a mechanistic approach.  The days of Cartesian dualism may be numbered.

            One example is a recent study in the journal Science that investigated the influence of genes on cognitive abilities. Ten sets of siblings, each consisting of a pair of male identical twins and a non-twin brother had their brains scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they performed a memory task.  The siblings were asked to memorize a short span of digits, then they were then given a “distraction” task to disrupt that memory: either a simple arithmetic problem (2 + 4 = 7, yes or no?) or instructions to categorize a picture of an object.  They were then shown a number and asked if it was among the numbers in the memory task.  The team, led by Jan Willem Koten Jr. of RWTH Aachen University in Germany, found that the men used two different strategies to retain the digits in their memory.  Some used brain areas associated with language while others used the visual-spatial memory system, something like counting on fingers.  They found that the memory task took longer when the language pathways were employed.  And this is where the influence of genes was seen.  The pairs of twins, who share 100% genetic identity, used the same strategy more often than their non-twin brothers, who share 50% of their genes.  Says Koten, “There are qualitative differences in how individuals think, and these differences have a substantial genetic component.”

            Normally, during fMRI studies, the data on brain activation is averaged over groups.  The Koten study suggests that averaging subjects can miss individual differences in how their brains accomplish a task.  Not only might this be problematic for interpreting the data, but by not appreciating the variability between individuals, we might be missing an opportunity to learn about the relationship between genes and brain activity.  Richard Haier of the University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine states, “This combination of neuroimaging and genetic analysis marks the beginning of new efforts to explain, rather than explain away, individual differences in cognitive intelligence.”

            Other neuroscientists are sounding more and more anti-Cartesian.  Eric Kandel, Columbia University neuroscientist and Nobel laureate, wrote (one of my all-time favorite quotes): “What we commonly call the mind is just a set of operations performed by the brain.”   He elaborates this point in his book, In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind, where he argues that we should reconsider the word “mind” not as a noun but as a verb.  The brain does something.  To mind is the job of the brain.  To refer to the mind—as virtually all of us do—is to imply that there exists something separate from the brain that allows us to remember numbers or, if we’re lucky enough, to fall in love.

            Understandably, many people are uncomfortable with the idea that genes determine in part how our brains function; that is, how smart, violent, ambitious, shy, benevolent, republican we are.  But such concerns shouldn’t prevent us from studying whether or not—or how—they do.  Even if we do discover that human nature can be read from DNA sequences that are not created equally, human society can make the choice to treat them as such.  Hmmm, sounds like a job for a philosopher.

Getting LOST (a completely outdated post)

            Anyone who watches the ABC television series, LOST, has to love Hurley.  He’s the guy on the show we can relate to—not leader Jack, cowboy Sawyer, pouty Kate, spiritual Locke, vengeful Sun, English-as-a-second-language Jin, or super kick-ass ninja torturer Sayid.  Frequent discussions about who is hotter between Jack and Sawyer or Kate and Sun aside (the grocery store scene resolved that question for me), it’s the heroes who get talked about most because they get to do all the cool stuff.  But Hurley, to me, represents the normal guy, the guy without any super powers.  Every time he says “Dude” it’s an anthem to the vast majority of LOST viewers who also do not have any super powers.  An episode a few weeks back proves this point.  Hurley spent a large part of the episode chasing Miles around, asking him questions about time travel.

“Can we die in 1977 if we’re supposed to be on a plane in 2004?”

“If this is my past why don’t I remember it?”

“If this is Ben’s past, why doesn’t he remember being shot by Sayid?”

These are the kinds of questions LOST viewers have been asking each other since this season began with its dizzying plot time warps.  I suspect in this instance the writers were using Hurley and Miles as a tutorial for the viewers.  I also took it as an indication that the writers have created a world that is based on real science, not hocus pocus.  My hunch—and I will be really, really disappointed if I’m wrong—is that in the end the island, the numbers, the time travel, the ageless Richard Alpert, the monster, the dead people who aren’t actually dead—all of these things will be explained scientifically.  Of course, poetic license is being used heavily, but I think the writers have a set of rules that are based on real physics, and their story—as strange and confusing as it is—will turn out to be consistent with those rules.  LOST is more akin to Jurassic Park than Star Trek where, when a producer was asked, “How do the inertial dampers work?” he answered, “Just fine.”

For those of you who haven’t yet jumped on the LOST bandwagon I suggest, after the season finale tomorrow night, you use the summer months to catch up and watch all five seasons.  When school starts up again this fall, you’ll be one of the cool kids.

            But if you’re the type of person who is interested in relative physics, as the creators of LOST obviously are, you already know that we live in a universe that is shockingly strange compared to our everyday experience.  I like to tell people that time slows down for all moving objects.  No, it’s not some abstract conclusion that mathematicians reach at the end of a series of impenetrable equations—well, okay, it is that, but it’s also something that’s been demonstrated.  In 1971, Joe Hafele and Richard Keating flew atomic clocks that can measure time with extreme precision on commercial British Airway flights around the world two times.  When the flying was done they compared the flown clocks to clocks on the ground that had synchronized prior to the flights.  The clocks on the plane were tens of nanoseconds behind the clocks on the ground.  This was the first demonstration of time dilation, a consequence of Einstein’s theory of relativity in which time slows down for objects that are moving within a frame of reference compared to objects within the same frame of reference that are stationary. 

Still with me Hurley?

An even more fascinating consequence, in my opinion, comes from string theory.  It’s the idea that all times are equal—the past, the future, and the present are equivalent.  Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos, says we can better understand this idea by imagining time as a really long wall such that the future, the past and the present are all just different parts of the same object, an object you happen to be made aware of only a small portion at a time.  Picture yourself walking along this really long wall and seeing only what is illuminated by your flashlight.  So that means the moment you were born, the moment you had your first kiss, the moment you became a grandfather...all of these moments are equivalent.

Then what makes time…tick?

According to string theory, although time does not move—the wall is fixed in place—we perceive the movement of time because of entropy, the tendency of a system toward greater disorder.  There is no physical law that prevents the egg from spontaneously reassembling itself and flying back up onto the table whole.  This is exactly what would happen if time were to “run” in reverse.  But because of entropy we perceive only one direction of time movement—we only walk in one direction along the wall.

The question that popped into my mind after all this was:  What about free will? As far as I know I cannot change the events surrounding my birth. But if then and now and the future made up of soon-to-be nows are equivalent, then what makes me think I can change the events at any given moment? Greene says the jury is still out on free will. Stephen Pinker, cognitive neuroscientist at Harvard takes the deterministic view that there is no such thing as free will but that our minds are complex enough to give us the illusion that we have it.

Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction, but it’s fiction that made me watch 9 straight hours of DVDs on my computer a couple years ago.  And since this is (kind of) an article on LOST, I would be remiss if I did not venture a theory.  Just as I was after watching season 1, after season 2, after season 3 (then I gave up), I am sure that this theory is correct.  So if you are a LOST fan you should consider this a spoiler and stop reading now.

The island is a nexus of some sort with really cool properties.  These properties are valuable to—wait for it—aliens!  But there are actually two groups of aliens and they’re fighting over use of the nexus, but for some reason they can’t just go down to Earth and do it because Earth is like kryptonite to them so the only way they can win is to manipulate the humans on Earth to fight their battles for them.  Unlike Hurley, these aliens actually do have super powers.  But maybe if he’s on the side that wins, Hurley can get some too.