Time Travel: Consciousness vs. Physicality

In "The Constant," Faraday reveals that Desmond's consciousness, his mind, is traveling through time. I'm guessing that the natural tendencies of the island that cause this is the 'casimir effect' discussed in the Orchid orientation film. I'm also guessing that the experiments in the Orchid station are attempting to amplify this effect so that it isn't just consciousness that is caused to travel, but an entire physical being (like a bunny or a polar bear).

The Dragon Triangle

From the History Channel:

More Time/Space Clues

I listened to the latest LOST podcast which has writer/producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse answering viewer questions, although somewhat obliquely. They added some major fuel to the time travel/wormhole theory. Here's an excerpt:
------------
Damon: "Faraday was conducting some interesting experiments in 'The Economist,' and I was wondering, Carlton, if you'd like to explain to me at least, because I found it very intriguing, what's up with all this rocketry/digital watch fiasco."

Carlton: "Well there was kind of a time shift that obviously occurred. This rocket was launched and was synchronized with Faraday's watch, but in fact when it arrived the digital clock had a slightly different time. Which would suggest that there was some sort of time fluctuation that occurred in that rocket's journey from the freighter to the island, and I think that's something which is pretty important."

Damon: "That's interesting, that's why I was asking."

Carlton: "Thanks for asking, that was a good question. You picked up on something very important in that episode."

Damon: "That's good, because we wrote future episodes about that very thing, and if we hadn't picked up on it, it would have been a detriment to the show..."

------------

Carlton (reading a fan question to Damon): "How does a polar bear with a Dharma collar get in the middle of the desert?"

Damon (after some silly meandering): "There are properties of the island that are potentially capable of shall we say transporting things from the island off the island."

Carlton: "It might be helpful actually for those viewers who are interested in this question to go online and find the training film for the Orchid Station."

Damon: "Yeah, that would be a very good place to start."

Carlton: "Rarely do we actually have things that aren't in the show that are important to the show, but in this case it is important. Yet if you don't see the Orchid trailer, when we get to it later in the show..."

Damon: "But it's good to say that if you're curious about how a polar bear with a Dharma collar ends up in Tunisia, watch that film because that polar bear has certain things in common with say, bunnies with eights on their backs."

Carlton: "That's right."

------------

Carlton (answering a question regarding C. S. Lewis): "Let's just say yes, the homage to Clive Staples Lewis is very intentional, and there are definitely themes in the Narnia Chronicles that are very relevant to Lost.... Yes, I think a reading of the Narnia books is not only enjoyable but probably somewhat instructive."

Damon: "Yeah, in the same way that I think Alice in Wonderland is something that we refer to and Oz... What's great about those worlds is they're all world on the other side of earth. That is to say that they're not fantasy realms like Star Wars, Narnia is actually connected to the world that we know and so is Oz, as is Wonderland."

Carlton: "As is our Island."

Damon: "As is our Island."

Time Travel

In the book Lost Horizon, there is a crucial moment at the end of the story. Conway, the main character, and another of the plane crash victims struggle to make their way out of Shangri-La. With them is the character Lo-Tsen who looks about age 19, but has lived in Shangri-La for an untold number of years. When the three of them finally get out of the valley and into the mountains, Lo-Tsen instantly ages, becoming a frail old woman in a matter of seconds. It was as if time completely caught up with her the moment she leaves Shangri-La.

Last night on "The Economist," we were shown that due to whatever strange magnetic features the island possesses, time on the island moves more slowly. But I think the time difference between the island and the world is much more than 30 minutes. My theory is that time off of the island has progressed along with our own. While only 100 days have passed for the crash victims, in the rest of the world it's winter of 2008.

• In the ARG Find815.com created by the writers of the show, the ship Christiane I finds the remains of Oceanic flight 815 in the Sunda Trench, as later tied into the show. The timeline of the finding was very specific - it took place over Christmas of 2007. If the discovery of the wreckage took place before the freighter brought our four new characters to the island, then it must currently be 2008 or after.

• During this summer's Comic-con in San Diego, the writer/producers Damon Lindelof and Carleton Cuse were on hand to talk about the show and answer some questions. Here's an excerpt from the interview:
Damon: It’s interesting that you should ask about time because… you know… you’re making a basic assumption that they’ve been there, y’know, as long as they think they’ve been there. [Crowd murmurs, someone says “Oh, no.”] I would say by the end of Season 3… that very different idea…
Carlton: Stop right there, Damon, stop right there.
Damon: Well, I was just…
Carlton: Stop right there. Nope, nope, no.

Seems like he was talking about something very key to this season.

• In the new episode Confirmed Dead, the new character Charlotte Staples Lewis is introduced. Her name is a reference to author C. S. Lewis who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia. In those books, time passes in Narnia at a different rate - what seems like months and years in Narnia is only minutes in the outside world, and months passing in the outside world is a thousand years in Narnia.

So If time is moving the way I'm thinking, it could explain several things:

• Walt is taller because he began aging normally after he left the island. Several years have now passed for him.

• Mittelos Bioscience, the name of Richard Alpert's company, was confirmed as being the plot-significant anagram LOST TIME. This refers to the time lost while on the island.

• Alpert shows Juliet a CAT scan during the Mittelos recruitment. Juliet states that they appear to be from a woman in her 70's, while Alpert says the woman is only 26. It is possible that internal aging continues to occur at standard time, though time for the woman (and appearance) moves more slowly. It could also be the result of a woman leaving the Island; like in Lost Horizon, upon leaving the Island and reentering standard time aging may occur rapidly, thus a woman who only lived for 26 years (on the Island) could suddenly become old and die upon leaving.

• Alpert tells Juliet: "You're gonna be amazed at how time flies once you're there."


Regarding time, what might be most intriguing of all is the new orientation film for the Orchid station released by the producers last summer. In it, Edgar Halowax (aka Marvin Candle) says "The unique properties of this Island created a kind of Casimir effect, allowing us to..."
Later in the film a bunny identical to the one he's holding appears out of nowhere and everyone freaks out.

So if we do our research and look up what the hell the Casimir effect is, we learn that it's a physics term that relates to energy fields. This is a quote from the wikipedia entry:
"...the quantum mechanics of the Casimir effect can be used to produce a locally mass-negative region of space-time, and suggested that negative effect could be used to stabilize a wormhole to allow faster than light travel."

Ok, so suddenly we are introduced to the idea the the island has the capability to create wormholes in time/space. This would explain a lot.

• Perhaps when Desmond turned the failsafe key, perhaps he created a wormhole and was able to move freely about in space/time. He arrived at the place he wanted to be most - the time when he should've proposed to Penny.

• The polar bear found in Tunisia with a Dharma collar was an experiment in sending an animal through a wormhole to a different space/time.

• The reference to the book "A Brief History of Time"

• The recording in Room 23 saying "only fools are enslaved by time and space"

• Ms. Hawking (another reference to Stephen Hawking) - In an interview with ew.com the producers suggest that she travels through time.

• Sawyer is seen reading the book "A Wrinkle in Time" in the first season.

• The name of the airport that is shown to be used by Mittelos Bioscience in "One of Us" is "Herarat Aviation." Herarat is an anagram of Earhart, as in Amelia, whose plane mysteriously disappeared over the South Pacific. The reference to Amelia came back in Find815.com, when Sam overheard a transmission from the time of her disappearance on his radio in the cabin, which was unexplained by the radio station. The implication is that the transmission traveled through time.

Basically, my thought is that time on the island moves very slow, and contains the possibility of time travel.

I am dead, but I'm also here.

So far in the new season, they've presented us with plenty of new questions (Who are the Oceanic six? How do they get off the island? What is Hurley and Jack's secret? Who are the people on the boat? etc etc.). I'm guessing that the majority of these questions will be answered by the end of the season. But the main question, the big question we have for this show has to do with the biggest character of all: the island itself. What is the story of the island? Why is it the way it is? What exactly makes it so different, and why? (John Locke's character represents the search for this answer - when Ben told him that he had answers, Locke didn't want to know about the crewmen, he wanted to know what the smoke monster was, perhaps the biggest mysterious characteristic of the island) The question of the island is the big question of the show, and I don't think we'll get the full answer until the end of the entire series.

In the first two episodes of the new season, if we look past the other plotline mysteries they keep throwing at us, we'll see that they've been giving us some pretty strong clues about the nature of the island, and it has to do with death.

Naturally there've been plenty of clues about death earlier in the show, I even wrote a post about it (check it out here). But in the new episodes, there have been two larger efforts to make the presence of the dead on the island seem much more concrete. In the past, when we've seen or heard the dead on the island (Jack's dad, for example), it was treated almost as a hallucination, and it left the viewer wondering if the vision was real or imaginary. But now the dead are literally slapping us in the face. Hurley directly confronts Charlie with our own concerns. "You're dead, and this is just a hallucination, right?" But Charlie demonstrates otherwise, and another inmate sees him too.

And then we have Miles Straume. I think it's very significant that this new character, who might be even more matter-of-fact than Sayid, plays a ghost hunter. This is someone who seems incredibly practical and down to earth, unlike the new physicist Daniel Faraday. We don't doubt that he spoke to that kid in the bedroom and got the facts from dead Naomi. I think this is very intentional. Somehow the voices of the dead on this island are very real, not hallucinations, and this is a revealing bit of info on the island for us to chew on.

I see the island as a psychic amplifier. Whatever is going on with the electromagnetic anomalies it creates, it enhances all manner of psychic abilities, which also means people abilities to communicate with the dead, and vice-versa. If you are already gifted in this arena (like Walt, for example) it only makes your skills stronger.

Other thoughts:
- Perhaps all children tend to be better psychic communicators, have these skills, which is why they were being stolen.
- After seeing the ABC "Missing Pieces" short, I'm also convinced that Vincent the dog can see dead people.
- Perhaps the whispers we keep hearing are the voices of the dead.

I welcome your comments!