“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.
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