The London Daily Mail had a recent article describing what an Australian professor claims that our entire existence could be an elaborate illusion controlled by a genius evil scientist.
The premise is that you are not where you think you are.
Your brain has been expertly removed from your body and is being kept alive in a vat of nutrients that sits on a laboratory bench.
The nerve endings of your brain are connected to a supercomputer that feeds you all the sensations of everyday life.
This is why you think you're living a completely normal life.
Do you still exist? Is the world as you know it a figment of your imagination or an illusion constructed by this evil supercomputer network?
Could you prove to someone that you are not actually a brain in a vat?
As the article states, the philosopher Hilary Putnam proposed this famous version of the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment in his 1981 book, Reason, Truth and History, but it is essentially an updated version of the French philosopher René Descartes' notion of the Evil Genius from his 1641 Meditations on First Philosophy.
While such thought experiments might seem glib – and perhaps a little unsettling – they serve a useful purpose. They are used by philosophers to investigate what beliefs we can hold to be true and, as a result, what kind of knowledge we can have about ourselves and the world around us.
Descartes thought the best way to do this was to start by doubting everything, and building our knowledge from there. Using this skeptical approach, he claimed that only a core of absolute certainty will serve as a reliable foundation for knowledge.
He said: If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
It is from Descartes that we get classical skeptical queries favored by philosophers such as: how can we be sure that we are awake right now and not asleep, dreaming?
To take this challenge to our assumed knowledge further, Descartes imagines there exists an omnipotent, malicious demon that deceives us, leading us to believe we are living our lives when, in fact, reality could be very different to how it appears to us.
This premise has been discussed as a possible explanation to the LOST mythology.
For example, who did Patchy of the Others survive being killed by the sonic fence and the island visitors to somehow come back to kill Charlie with an underwater explosive? To have nine lives, a human has to be unrealistically lucky or be reincarnated many times over. Or in this premise, he never really died because he was never really alive. He was a computer simulation, a reusable prop, to infuse the subject jar brains with conflict, reality, drama and emotional responses.
Another explanation of the evil genius controlling everything was inferred from the huge military industrial complex that was the island. Human experiments were part of the mission of the island scientists. It is not a great leap to see how an unseen overlord could have been directing the action, just like the man behind the curtain in the series nod to the Wizard of Oz.
And this article does touch upon the embedded theme throughout the series: philosophy. Characters like Locke and Hume were named after famous philosophers. The characters had to make philosophic decisions between right and wrong, free will or capture. LOST could be viewed as an interactive thesis of philosophic questions being run through various programs in a supercomputer.
Because of the various continuity errors and story line red herrings, many LOST fans questioned the truth of the series story lines. There was doubt that the story writers and show runners actually knew what they were doing. Many have been searching for answers to explain or cover-up the show's big flaws. So, in a way, many continue to do a philosophic autopsy on the show to glean new information and explanations to make the show better in their own minds.
The mind is a powerful but not very well understood thing. It is an intangible element incorporated in the tangible brain. Our current science studies state how we "think" the mind works, but no one has shown the ability to download, in real time, the mental images of a human being onto a monitor. It is merely speculation, educated guess, theory. But what if there were a higher being who could actually tap into the conscious and subconscious mind of human beings - - - for entertainment or research purposes? That would put the human race on par with gold fish in an cosmic aquarium.
Showing posts with label explain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label explain. Show all posts
Friday, August 5, 2016
Monday, July 4, 2016
MAKING WAVES
For the second time this year, scientists have found evidence of gravitational waves.
Gravitational waves are ripples in the curvature of spacetime that propagate as waves. generated in certain gravitational interactions and traveling outward from their source. The possibility of gravitational waves was discussed in 1893 by Heaviside using the analogy between the inverse-square law in gravitation and electricity.
Albert Einstein based his theory of general relativity on gravitational waves transporting energy as gravitational radiation. In his theory , gravity is treated as a phenomenon resulting from the curvature of spacetime. This curvature is caused by the presence of mass. Generally, the more mass that is contained within a given volume of space, the greater the curvature of spacetime will be at the boundary of its volume. As objects with mass move around in spacetime, the curvature changes to reflect the changed locations of those objects. In certain circumstances, accelerating objects generate changes in this curvature, which propagate outwards at the speed of light in a wave-like manner. These propagating phenomena are known as gravitational waves.
Gravitational waves cannot exist in the Newtonian theory of gravitation since Newtonian theory postulates that physical interactions propagate at infinite speed.
Astronomers which aims to use gravitational waves to collect observational data about objects such as neutron stars and black holes to supernova events to help explain the universe and the Big Bang Theory.
Understanding these concepts is important in figuring out if humans can leave Earth to make deep space explorations. In science fiction writings, the universe is so large it is impossible to travel long distances during a normal human life time. By bending the known rules, writers have given the prospect of space travel by bending time and space ("warp drive") to bounce around the vastness of space like driving cross country with an Interstate Highway map.
This adds to the discussion of whether time itself is linear. We currently perceive time as linear because our calendars and clocks march forward along a single line of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years. But ancient people did not see time as linear, but as a cycle of spring, summer, fall and winter as based upon the rotation of objects in the sky.
For a space traveler, the concept of time and distance is important. The universe is expanding which means there are great forces pushing everything outward. It is up to us to figure out how to tap this unseen and unknown force to break the known boundaries of physics.
In physics, Acceleration is the rate of change of velocity of an object. An object's acceleration is the net result of any and all forces acting on the object, as described by Newton's Second Law. The second law states that the rate of change of momentum of a body, is directly proportional to the force applied and this change in momentum takes place in the direction of the applied force.
If gravitational waves are forces that ripple across the universe, those forces can be used to help propel objects in space. For example, if one is in the ocean, waves created by the force of currents, push any surface objects toward the shoreline at variable speeds depending upon atmospheric conditions (such as wind velocity). A surfer rides the wave at the same speed of the wave. But if the surfer adds to his own speed (such as adding a wind sail or a power prop to the board), he could go faster than the actual wave he is riding.
In theory, if one can ride a gravitational wave in space, you can use it to propel your rocket faster because you are adding more applied force than the rocket produces on its own. And if gravitational waves are moving at light speed, then adding any additional force to it could mean you can propel an object at greater than light speed (the key to interstellar travel).
Scientists wonder if black holes, star degradation or supernova events that expel mass into the universe have some corresponding effect on gravity and other unknown elements in space (such as dark matter or dark energy).
When Daniel arrived on the island, he noticed that the light acted differently and time did not sync with the freighter several miles off shore. The light may have had a ripple effect such as to disclose that the island was riding a gravitational wave away from the ship. This anomaly in nature could have been a great power source or portal across the spacetime universe. And that was the reason why Widmore and Linus were fighting for its control.
What was under the Hatch could have been a complex tied to the island's electromagnetic energy that could have created gravitational waves since the island itself was accelerating away from known objects in the same ocean space. The ripple in spacetime by using gravitational waves would phase the island out-of-sync with normal objects - - - in a way to make the island disappear because its gravity and mass would be different than Earth's. If true, the ramifications would have changed how man would fight future wars or explore space.
Gravitational waves are ripples in the curvature of spacetime that propagate as waves. generated in certain gravitational interactions and traveling outward from their source. The possibility of gravitational waves was discussed in 1893 by Heaviside using the analogy between the inverse-square law in gravitation and electricity.
Albert Einstein based his theory of general relativity on gravitational waves transporting energy as gravitational radiation. In his theory , gravity is treated as a phenomenon resulting from the curvature of spacetime. This curvature is caused by the presence of mass. Generally, the more mass that is contained within a given volume of space, the greater the curvature of spacetime will be at the boundary of its volume. As objects with mass move around in spacetime, the curvature changes to reflect the changed locations of those objects. In certain circumstances, accelerating objects generate changes in this curvature, which propagate outwards at the speed of light in a wave-like manner. These propagating phenomena are known as gravitational waves.
Gravitational waves cannot exist in the Newtonian theory of gravitation since Newtonian theory postulates that physical interactions propagate at infinite speed.
Astronomers which aims to use gravitational waves to collect observational data about objects such as neutron stars and black holes to supernova events to help explain the universe and the Big Bang Theory.
Understanding these concepts is important in figuring out if humans can leave Earth to make deep space explorations. In science fiction writings, the universe is so large it is impossible to travel long distances during a normal human life time. By bending the known rules, writers have given the prospect of space travel by bending time and space ("warp drive") to bounce around the vastness of space like driving cross country with an Interstate Highway map.
This adds to the discussion of whether time itself is linear. We currently perceive time as linear because our calendars and clocks march forward along a single line of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years. But ancient people did not see time as linear, but as a cycle of spring, summer, fall and winter as based upon the rotation of objects in the sky.
For a space traveler, the concept of time and distance is important. The universe is expanding which means there are great forces pushing everything outward. It is up to us to figure out how to tap this unseen and unknown force to break the known boundaries of physics.
In physics, Acceleration is the rate of change of velocity of an object. An object's acceleration is the net result of any and all forces acting on the object, as described by Newton's Second Law. The second law states that the rate of change of momentum of a body, is directly proportional to the force applied and this change in momentum takes place in the direction of the applied force.
If gravitational waves are forces that ripple across the universe, those forces can be used to help propel objects in space. For example, if one is in the ocean, waves created by the force of currents, push any surface objects toward the shoreline at variable speeds depending upon atmospheric conditions (such as wind velocity). A surfer rides the wave at the same speed of the wave. But if the surfer adds to his own speed (such as adding a wind sail or a power prop to the board), he could go faster than the actual wave he is riding.
In theory, if one can ride a gravitational wave in space, you can use it to propel your rocket faster because you are adding more applied force than the rocket produces on its own. And if gravitational waves are moving at light speed, then adding any additional force to it could mean you can propel an object at greater than light speed (the key to interstellar travel).
Scientists wonder if black holes, star degradation or supernova events that expel mass into the universe have some corresponding effect on gravity and other unknown elements in space (such as dark matter or dark energy).
When Daniel arrived on the island, he noticed that the light acted differently and time did not sync with the freighter several miles off shore. The light may have had a ripple effect such as to disclose that the island was riding a gravitational wave away from the ship. This anomaly in nature could have been a great power source or portal across the spacetime universe. And that was the reason why Widmore and Linus were fighting for its control.
What was under the Hatch could have been a complex tied to the island's electromagnetic energy that could have created gravitational waves since the island itself was accelerating away from known objects in the same ocean space. The ripple in spacetime by using gravitational waves would phase the island out-of-sync with normal objects - - - in a way to make the island disappear because its gravity and mass would be different than Earth's. If true, the ramifications would have changed how man would fight future wars or explore space.
Thursday, June 9, 2016
WARPING SPACE-TIME
One of the mysteries of the island was its ability to shift in time and space.
On June 30th, 1905, Albert Einstein started a revolution with the publication of theory of Special Relativity. This theory, among other things, stated that the speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers, regardless of the source. In 1915, he followed this up with the publication of his theory of General Relativity, which asserted that gravity has a warping effect on space-time. For over a century, these theories have been an essential tool in astrophysics, explaining the behavior of the Universe on the large scale.
However, since the 1990s, astronomers have been aware of the fact that the Universe is expanding at an accelerated rate. In an effort to explain the mechanics behind this, suggestions have ranged from the possible existence of an invisible Dark Energy to the possibility that Einstein’s field equations of General Relativity.
As published in Universe Today, scientists from Japan using the Fiber Multi-Object Spectrograph (FMOS) on the Subaru Telescope created the deepest 3-D map of the Universe to date. All told, this map contains some 3,000 galaxies and encompasses a volume of space measuring 13 billion light-years.
As part of their effort to ascertain the
origins of cosmic acceleration, this project relies on data collected by
the Subaru telescope to create a survey that monitors the redshift of
galaxies. The expansion of the universe has been accelerating since the universe entered its dark energy era, at redshift z≈0.4 (roughly 5 billion years ago). Within the framework of Einstein's general relativity, an accelerating expansion can be accounted for by a positive value of the cosmological constant.
If gravity can warp space-time in a way to show that the universe is expanding at an accelerated pace, then this can be the sci-fi basis for the island's time and space shifts. It would also mean that the frozen donkey wheel tie in to the island's unique electromagnetic energy could be complex or wrong. The Hatch was the station that kept the EM energy levels in check. It was the FDW that was turned to created a different result: time teleportation of matter (abet, selective matter and people which is a real continuity problem). If the island EM was intersecting a universal stream of dark energy gravity, that could explain why the island acted beyond the normal boundaries of Earth's physics. This intersection of two different properties could lead to the creation of micro-universes within the present universe. This warping of space-time at a localized level would have been of great value to the scientific, military and industrial world.
On June 30th, 1905, Albert Einstein started a revolution with the publication of theory of Special Relativity. This theory, among other things, stated that the speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers, regardless of the source. In 1915, he followed this up with the publication of his theory of General Relativity, which asserted that gravity has a warping effect on space-time. For over a century, these theories have been an essential tool in astrophysics, explaining the behavior of the Universe on the large scale.
However, since the 1990s, astronomers have been aware of the fact that the Universe is expanding at an accelerated rate. In an effort to explain the mechanics behind this, suggestions have ranged from the possible existence of an invisible Dark Energy to the possibility that Einstein’s field equations of General Relativity.
As published in Universe Today, scientists from Japan using the Fiber Multi-Object Spectrograph (FMOS) on the Subaru Telescope created the deepest 3-D map of the Universe to date. All told, this map contains some 3,000 galaxies and encompasses a volume of space measuring 13 billion light-years.
Experimental
results looking at the expansion of the universe, in comparison to that
predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity in green. Credit:
Kavli IPMU/Okumura et al.
If gravity can warp space-time in a way to show that the universe is expanding at an accelerated pace, then this can be the sci-fi basis for the island's time and space shifts. It would also mean that the frozen donkey wheel tie in to the island's unique electromagnetic energy could be complex or wrong. The Hatch was the station that kept the EM energy levels in check. It was the FDW that was turned to created a different result: time teleportation of matter (abet, selective matter and people which is a real continuity problem). If the island EM was intersecting a universal stream of dark energy gravity, that could explain why the island acted beyond the normal boundaries of Earth's physics. This intersection of two different properties could lead to the creation of micro-universes within the present universe. This warping of space-time at a localized level would have been of great value to the scientific, military and industrial world.
Sunday, June 5, 2016
THE ISLAND MAGNETISM
For the first time, physicists have observed a
mysterious process called magnetic reconnection—wherein opposing
magnetic field lines join up, releasing a tremendous burst of energy.
The discovery, published last month in Science, may help us unlock the secrets of space weather and learn about some of the weirdest, most magnetic objects in the universe. And it could be the basis of solving a LOST mystery.
The Hatch was the underground bunker where the Numbers were put into an ancient computer every 108 minutes to avoid the destruction of the world. When the Numbers were not entered, there was a large electromagnetic explosion which may have caused time shifts via the purple sky event.
Perhaps, the explanation of the island's location corresponds with the alignment of opposing magnetic fields ("reconnecting every 108 minutes') which needs to have a controlled release of its energy or it would disrupt or destroy the magnetosphere, which would "destroy" Earth.
Likewise, one can see why the American Military-Industrial Complex from the 1950s on would want to study and harness a naturally forming magnetic energy source. It could be a source of unlimited free energy. Or it could be used as a planetary weapon (diverting the energy to orbiting satellite weapons). The person who controlled the island would control actual power.
Sunday, May 15, 2016
FLASH OF LIFE
One of the mysteries of The End was the last flash of light when Christian opened the doors in the sideways church.
What was that flash of light supposed to represent?
We were told that the characters were "moving on." To what? Where? How? and Why?
A wild yet intriguing science article could shed some "light" on the ending.
Scientists at Northwestern University have found that human life begins in bright flash of light as a sperm meets an egg. This flash is caused by a sudden release of zinc when the egg is fertilized which causes light to be seen under the microscope.
The reports state that an explosion of tiny sparks erupts from the egg at the exact moment of conception.
Scientists had seen the phenomenon occur in other animals but it is the first time is has been also shown to happen in humans.
One of the early issues in the series was the theme of the island stopping conception or babies being born. We were never told why the island with alleged "healing" powers (such as seen to Rose for cancer and Locke for paralysis) could abort a fetus.
What was that flash of light supposed to represent?
We were told that the characters were "moving on." To what? Where? How? and Why?
A wild yet intriguing science article could shed some "light" on the ending.
Scientists at Northwestern University have found that human life begins in bright flash of light as a sperm meets an egg. This flash is caused by a sudden release of zinc when the egg is fertilized which causes light to be seen under the microscope.
The reports state that an explosion of tiny sparks erupts from the egg at the exact moment of conception.
Scientists had seen the phenomenon occur in other animals but it is the first time is has been also shown to happen in humans.
Researchers noticed that some of the eggs burn brighter than others,
showing that they are more likely to produce a healthy baby.
What could be the possible symbols for light? Light is energy in a pure form. Light is a positive influence. Light can be representative of god in many religious contexts. Light can represent life. It could represent a soul. And now science adds conception to the list of possible symbols for life.
When a egg is fertilized, the human DNA of two people merges to create a new life.
Was the fact that both Claire and Sun birthed their children for the second time in the sideways world, a clue that the characters were precursors to conception?
It is possible when the show writers grappled with their big question, what is life and death, that they masked the symbolism too tightly in reality.
Each of us carries the genetic material of our parents. That genetic material is code. Code that creates the complex biochemical factory called the human body. Code that is similar to that of a computer operating system.
Many fans thought LOST was merely a computer video game with the characters being avatars of the players. But instead of looking at the show as an illusion of a video game, look at it as symbolic embodiment of the genetic material of each characters' parents. For example, Jack was not Jack a human being. Jack was the collective code of his father and mother's life, traits, predication, personality, faults, emotions and intelligence. Jack was a double helix compiling his parents data into his own data set just prior to "conception" with another double helix (specifically Kate's ancestry).
Other scientific studies indicate that many people are predisposed for disease, alcoholism, illness or athletic because of genetic disorders hard wired in a person's DNA. Each of the main characters traits and characteristics could represent a genetic pattern for that future human being.
The idea that the sideways church is merely a vessel for the fully developed sperm and egg DNA of ancestors reaching puberty (the waxing and waning of hormones) is an interesting concept. The last flash of bright light in the final episode could have marked the real beginning of the story.
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
THE MOMENTS OF DEATH
Scientists continue to probe on what happens to a person at the time of death. They have tracked down the chemical components that are released on death which may explain how people perceive and feel death.
Inside the center of one's brain is a vestigial gland. It was thought to have little function. The pineal gland, roughly the size of a grain of rice, is more heavily protected than even the heart with its literal cage of protection, because if something happens to your heart you die, but if something happens to your pineal, some say you can’t go to heaven.The pineal gland influences on both melatonin and pinoline, its end of life role in the creation of dimethyltriptamine or DMT. This chemical, DMT, may well be the reason we, as a species, are capable of sentience itself.
DMT is a narcotic substance. It is a powerful psychedelic. The pineal gland produces this substance every day.
DMT is also the trigger that elicits dreams. So the reason one has dreams is that the brain is producing a narcotic.
However, at the time of death, the gland floods the brain with massive amounts of DMT.
Science has studied the effects of DMT on normal people. These drug users experience two major themes while under the influence:
1)
A stretching of time – they experience the hectic 6 or 7 minutes as a
near eternity or lifetime. 2) They experience religious incarnations with a tilt toward whatever sect the subject is affiliated with.
This compound has been known for a long time. Cultures have known about the pineal, more widely known as the inner eye, all-seeing eye, or the like – considered the body’s gateway to the soul.
Egypt had its "Eye of Horus" Hindu culture has its bottu (the familiar forehead dot). Even the ancient art of yoga recognizes the brow chakra, or ajna, as blossoming at the pineal, or third eye.
Since science is aware that DMT is released at death, they have also observed that there is a mysterious several minutes of time after death where the brain still functions. These last few minutes after death, subjectively, are experienced as an eternity, engrossed in the DMT universe. Also, the trip itself is a highly personal experience dictated by the deepest realms of the subconscious.
The scientific chemical basis of death helps explain LOST.
Each person was experiencing a traumatic event (the plane breaking a part mid-flight). They were charged with adrenaline, anxiety and fear. Their minds would have "flashbacks" on their lives, their experiences, their families and their regrets. "Your life flashes before your eyes" is a common recall from near death experiences. But at the moment of death, the people on board Flight 815 did "survive" for several minutes through the massive release of DMT into their brain. A wash with an intense psychedelic narcotic drug which induces a dream state. A dream state that would seem to last for an eternity because there is no "time" barrier in the subconscious. One could feel or experience days, months, years of livid events in the minutes after death.
Those passengers whose final thoughts were centered on the will to survive the crash did so in their last dream state upon death.
So we did not view one coherent interaction between the survivors and the island, but hundreds of layers of final dreams stitched together like an overlapping quilt.
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
TWO LOSTS
There is a position in the LOST universe that says that the fans who hated The Ending never understood it. Or that they were never real fans of the show. Or they expected too many answers to the questions posed in the story lines.
In order to justify this viewpoint, it is said that the final season of LOST was its own universe, its own independent story - - - its own self-contained bubble. It's features and attributes do not reflect what was happening in the island world. In other words, the fact that the characters in the sideways world were dead did not mean that the characters were dead all along. But that in itself is only a supposition.
Except, there were connections between the two worlds. In the sideways world, it was a character's "awakening" that flooded back island memories to re-bond with lost friends and lovers.
But if you do want to separate LOST into two distinct, independent stories, here is what you get:
THE ISLAND world would apparently have ended with Juliet detonating the bomb, killing everyone on the island. Or, as the science would tell, you can't detonate an atomic bomb with a rock (there needs to be a complex chain reaction explosion to detonate a nuclear device), so the bomb did not work. That would mean the island characters were still "alive" and battling among themselves in the Jacob-MIB feud.
THE SIDEWAYS world would be totally different. For example, none of the characters were ever in a plane crash or lived on the island. They were normal people with normal problems. Ben was a school teacher taking care of his disabled father. Locke was a disabled substitute teacher who was happily married to Helen. Jack was divorced but from Juliet. He had a son. Hurley was a successful businessman after winning the lottery; a confident community leader. Sun and Jin had made it to the US. She was expecting their child.
Now, complete separation of the characters time lines has to be part of any independent universe view. In the linear story telling of the show, the sideways events happened AFTER the island events. And that creates a clear paradox. The children were born in the prior island time, but were not born in the sideways world until the end. And the End was a place of death so how can children be born in the sideways world? Again, the theory that the sideways is self-contained means it is not fair to ask that broad question.
Then you have to look at LOST as two franchises. The island and first 5 seasons were the original. The sideways episodes were the "re-boot" of the franchise (as JJ Abrams did with Star Trek). But that seems too confusing and inconsistent with what the show writers were telling fans at the end of Season 5.
One could divide the worlds into one where the gritty danger of real life engulfs a person with one where a person's dreams and imagination of a perfect life controls. If you take the sideways world as the collective dreams of the island characters, folding it like whipped cream into a cake batter, then you would discount Season 6 as mainly unimportant filler.
If, as some fans thought at the time, the sideways world was truly a glimpse of the characters if Flight 815 did not crash, then that would be fine . . . . until the point when the writers merged the fantasy with the island "awakenings" and the poor choices to conclude the series, such as Sayid embracing his alleged soul mate, Shannon, instead of Nadia. In fact, the whole structure of Season 6 was premised upon Eloise trying to keep Desmond and Penny a part in the sideways world - - - because she knew it would open a Pandora's box of memories to the characters which would cause her son, Daniel, to remember how cruel she was to him.
The two LOSTs explanation is one way of looking at the series. Two distinct character studies of the cast members. But that is a dry, academic explanation. And really unnecessary. If you wanted to show the good and moral side of a character, such as Ben, you could have made those changes in the island world story. You could have had the characters leave the island and try to adapt to LA instead of creating a conflicting, parallel universe.
LOST was one show and one series. It has to be accepted as being one, complete, and coherent story. The last part is what continues to cause fans the most problems. The blanket explanation that the show was only about the characters and their actions and reactions to events is shotgun logic. It does not explain the important mysteries the writers gave us to solve. It does not give closure. It just keeps fans debating the merits of the ending.
In order to justify this viewpoint, it is said that the final season of LOST was its own universe, its own independent story - - - its own self-contained bubble. It's features and attributes do not reflect what was happening in the island world. In other words, the fact that the characters in the sideways world were dead did not mean that the characters were dead all along. But that in itself is only a supposition.
Except, there were connections between the two worlds. In the sideways world, it was a character's "awakening" that flooded back island memories to re-bond with lost friends and lovers.
But if you do want to separate LOST into two distinct, independent stories, here is what you get:
THE ISLAND world would apparently have ended with Juliet detonating the bomb, killing everyone on the island. Or, as the science would tell, you can't detonate an atomic bomb with a rock (there needs to be a complex chain reaction explosion to detonate a nuclear device), so the bomb did not work. That would mean the island characters were still "alive" and battling among themselves in the Jacob-MIB feud.
THE SIDEWAYS world would be totally different. For example, none of the characters were ever in a plane crash or lived on the island. They were normal people with normal problems. Ben was a school teacher taking care of his disabled father. Locke was a disabled substitute teacher who was happily married to Helen. Jack was divorced but from Juliet. He had a son. Hurley was a successful businessman after winning the lottery; a confident community leader. Sun and Jin had made it to the US. She was expecting their child.
Now, complete separation of the characters time lines has to be part of any independent universe view. In the linear story telling of the show, the sideways events happened AFTER the island events. And that creates a clear paradox. The children were born in the prior island time, but were not born in the sideways world until the end. And the End was a place of death so how can children be born in the sideways world? Again, the theory that the sideways is self-contained means it is not fair to ask that broad question.
Then you have to look at LOST as two franchises. The island and first 5 seasons were the original. The sideways episodes were the "re-boot" of the franchise (as JJ Abrams did with Star Trek). But that seems too confusing and inconsistent with what the show writers were telling fans at the end of Season 5.
One could divide the worlds into one where the gritty danger of real life engulfs a person with one where a person's dreams and imagination of a perfect life controls. If you take the sideways world as the collective dreams of the island characters, folding it like whipped cream into a cake batter, then you would discount Season 6 as mainly unimportant filler.
If, as some fans thought at the time, the sideways world was truly a glimpse of the characters if Flight 815 did not crash, then that would be fine . . . . until the point when the writers merged the fantasy with the island "awakenings" and the poor choices to conclude the series, such as Sayid embracing his alleged soul mate, Shannon, instead of Nadia. In fact, the whole structure of Season 6 was premised upon Eloise trying to keep Desmond and Penny a part in the sideways world - - - because she knew it would open a Pandora's box of memories to the characters which would cause her son, Daniel, to remember how cruel she was to him.
The two LOSTs explanation is one way of looking at the series. Two distinct character studies of the cast members. But that is a dry, academic explanation. And really unnecessary. If you wanted to show the good and moral side of a character, such as Ben, you could have made those changes in the island world story. You could have had the characters leave the island and try to adapt to LA instead of creating a conflicting, parallel universe.
LOST was one show and one series. It has to be accepted as being one, complete, and coherent story. The last part is what continues to cause fans the most problems. The blanket explanation that the show was only about the characters and their actions and reactions to events is shotgun logic. It does not explain the important mysteries the writers gave us to solve. It does not give closure. It just keeps fans debating the merits of the ending.
Monday, September 14, 2015
NOSEBLEEDS
Another LOST element may have an alleged scientific claim.
A boarding school in central Massachusetts is being sued by parents who claim the school’s Wi-Fi signal is making their son sick, according to Boston media reports.
The Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported that the unidentified plaintiffs have filed a lawsuit against the Fay School in Southboro. The parents say their 12-year-old son has “Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity Syndrome” and has suffered headaches, nosebleeds and nausea since the school activated a stronger wireless signal in 2013.
The family is seeking $250,000 in damages and wants the school to switch to Ethernet cable Internet or turn down the Wi-Fi signal, according to The Telegram.
The school said in a statement that a company analyzed the Wi-Fi and found the signal is well within federal safety limits.
WBZ-TV’s Dr. Mallika Marshall previously reported that a number of people believe invisible rays are making them sick, but some doctors say there is no evidence of a link between Wi-Fi and illness.
These are just allegations that electromagnetic signals cause illness such as nosebleeds.
But that was a major clue in trying to explain the LOST inconsistently confusing time-skip story arc. Daniel claimed that when a person's mind "time skipped" it needed to have a constant in both time spheres or the brain would be affected causing nosebleeds then death. The problem with the idea of only a mental time shift was that we saw that full physical time shifts of people to different eras.
So what if Daniel's theory was totally wrong. That in itself is a good enough basis to explain the time shift arc. If we take the island's unique electromagnetic properties as true, then the idea of a hypersensitivity to magnetic waves in some people could cause a serious illness is plausible. Yet the consistent exposure to the waves (and the light force) would have affected the people who time shifted the most the worst (in theory). But Locke, Ben, half of the returning O6 did not suffer from any nosebleeds.
The time shift story arc was the least logically constructed element to LOST. It really was a bad filler story line which added many story tangents but little foundational support for the LOST mythology.
A boarding school in central Massachusetts is being sued by parents who claim the school’s Wi-Fi signal is making their son sick, according to Boston media reports.
The Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported that the unidentified plaintiffs have filed a lawsuit against the Fay School in Southboro. The parents say their 12-year-old son has “Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity Syndrome” and has suffered headaches, nosebleeds and nausea since the school activated a stronger wireless signal in 2013.
The family is seeking $250,000 in damages and wants the school to switch to Ethernet cable Internet or turn down the Wi-Fi signal, according to The Telegram.
The school said in a statement that a company analyzed the Wi-Fi and found the signal is well within federal safety limits.
WBZ-TV’s Dr. Mallika Marshall previously reported that a number of people believe invisible rays are making them sick, but some doctors say there is no evidence of a link between Wi-Fi and illness.
These are just allegations that electromagnetic signals cause illness such as nosebleeds.
But that was a major clue in trying to explain the LOST inconsistently confusing time-skip story arc. Daniel claimed that when a person's mind "time skipped" it needed to have a constant in both time spheres or the brain would be affected causing nosebleeds then death. The problem with the idea of only a mental time shift was that we saw that full physical time shifts of people to different eras.
So what if Daniel's theory was totally wrong. That in itself is a good enough basis to explain the time shift arc. If we take the island's unique electromagnetic properties as true, then the idea of a hypersensitivity to magnetic waves in some people could cause a serious illness is plausible. Yet the consistent exposure to the waves (and the light force) would have affected the people who time shifted the most the worst (in theory). But Locke, Ben, half of the returning O6 did not suffer from any nosebleeds.
The time shift story arc was the least logically constructed element to LOST. It really was a bad filler story line which added many story tangents but little foundational support for the LOST mythology.
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
AN EXPLANATION OF LOST ELEMENTS
Three of the oddest plot points in LOST may now have a theoretical scientific basis.
Scientific America reports that Spanish physicists have crafted a wormhole that tunnels a magnetic field through space.
"This device can transmit the magnetic field from one point in space to another point, through a path that is magnetically invisible," said study co-author Jordi Prat-Camps, a doctoral candidate in physics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain. "From a magnetic point of view, this device acts like a wormhole, as if the magnetic field was transferred through an extra special dimension."
The idea of a wormhole comes from Albert Einstein's theories. In 1935, Einstein and colleague Nathan Rosen realized that the general theory of relativity allowed for the existence of bridges that could link two different points in space-time. Theoretically these Einstein-Rosen bridges, or wormholes, could allow something to tunnel instantly between great distances (though the tunnels in this theory are extremely tiny, so ordinarily wouldn't fit a space traveler). So far, no one has found evidence that space-time wormholes actually exist.
The new wormhole isn't a space-time wormhole per se, but is instead a realization of a futuristic "invisibility cloak" first proposed in 2007 in the journal Physical Review Letters. This type of wormhole would hide electromagnetic waves from view from the outside. The trouble was, to make the method work for light required materials that are extremely impractical and difficult to work with, Prat said.
This discovery gives some basis for several bizarre and troubling aspects of the LOST story.
First, many fans theorized that the island was at the gateway of a space-time vortex, a wormhole, as a gateway to explain why the island would shift in time when the light cave FDW was turned. Since wormholes are not controllable (they are destructive galaxy inhalers), it was hard to wrap a scientific basis for this plot element. But if the island was conducting electromagnetic experiments, the Dharma-military complex could have been attempting to create an artificial "wormhole." It makes sense that Dharma would be funded as part of black ops defense budgets. A space-time device would be a radical new weapon to actually "replay" and re-position assets to guarantee victories.
Second, the artificial wormhole could be used as a "cloaking device." This would explain how the O6 helicopter "saw" the island disappear. In our known physical universe, an island is attached to the ocean bottom miles from the surface. If the island vanished as seen, the displacement of millions of square feet of earth in the ocean would have caused a massive whirlpool tsunami effect. But none of those physical ocean changes were seen by the O6 survivors. The conclusion was that the island had to have been cloaked (and in the confusion the pilot overshot the island and crashed in the ocean.)
Third, the idea of an artificial wormhole with layers of invisible EM energy would help explain why the island was hard to find. It would also explain the light differentials Daniel observed on the island (because the island shifts between dimensions in order to be obscured, and more energy would make the island then shift in time.)
Scientific America reports that Spanish physicists have crafted a wormhole that tunnels a magnetic field through space.
"This device can transmit the magnetic field from one point in space to another point, through a path that is magnetically invisible," said study co-author Jordi Prat-Camps, a doctoral candidate in physics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain. "From a magnetic point of view, this device acts like a wormhole, as if the magnetic field was transferred through an extra special dimension."
The idea of a wormhole comes from Albert Einstein's theories. In 1935, Einstein and colleague Nathan Rosen realized that the general theory of relativity allowed for the existence of bridges that could link two different points in space-time. Theoretically these Einstein-Rosen bridges, or wormholes, could allow something to tunnel instantly between great distances (though the tunnels in this theory are extremely tiny, so ordinarily wouldn't fit a space traveler). So far, no one has found evidence that space-time wormholes actually exist.
The new wormhole isn't a space-time wormhole per se, but is instead a realization of a futuristic "invisibility cloak" first proposed in 2007 in the journal Physical Review Letters. This type of wormhole would hide electromagnetic waves from view from the outside. The trouble was, to make the method work for light required materials that are extremely impractical and difficult to work with, Prat said.
This discovery gives some basis for several bizarre and troubling aspects of the LOST story.
First, many fans theorized that the island was at the gateway of a space-time vortex, a wormhole, as a gateway to explain why the island would shift in time when the light cave FDW was turned. Since wormholes are not controllable (they are destructive galaxy inhalers), it was hard to wrap a scientific basis for this plot element. But if the island was conducting electromagnetic experiments, the Dharma-military complex could have been attempting to create an artificial "wormhole." It makes sense that Dharma would be funded as part of black ops defense budgets. A space-time device would be a radical new weapon to actually "replay" and re-position assets to guarantee victories.
Second, the artificial wormhole could be used as a "cloaking device." This would explain how the O6 helicopter "saw" the island disappear. In our known physical universe, an island is attached to the ocean bottom miles from the surface. If the island vanished as seen, the displacement of millions of square feet of earth in the ocean would have caused a massive whirlpool tsunami effect. But none of those physical ocean changes were seen by the O6 survivors. The conclusion was that the island had to have been cloaked (and in the confusion the pilot overshot the island and crashed in the ocean.)
Third, the idea of an artificial wormhole with layers of invisible EM energy would help explain why the island was hard to find. It would also explain the light differentials Daniel observed on the island (because the island shifts between dimensions in order to be obscured, and more energy would make the island then shift in time.)
Saturday, September 5, 2015
SIMPLE
Ockham's Razor is a philosophy described by
the following eponymous laws:
"With all things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the right one"
The complexity and tangential aspect of the LOST stories makes it hard to find the simple explanation for the show. The Big Premise may be lurking in the shadow of many other story tropes.
We have tried to digest the story lines from front to back, and back (ending) to start (landing on the island). There are so many u-turns, dead ends and filler arcs (like the other 48 days) it makes it hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.
The simplest question to ask may be "what was LOST about?" The snarky answer would be "about six years." But in a basic review, the answers could include:
1. A survival story of plane crash victims on a Pacific Island.
2. A story of lost people trying to find purpose in their miserable lives.
3. The secret lives between strangers trapped in an uncomfortable situation.
4. The fantasy dream world of an individual or group of individuals.
5. A metaphoric journey from life to death.
"With all things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the right one"
The complexity and tangential aspect of the LOST stories makes it hard to find the simple explanation for the show. The Big Premise may be lurking in the shadow of many other story tropes.
We have tried to digest the story lines from front to back, and back (ending) to start (landing on the island). There are so many u-turns, dead ends and filler arcs (like the other 48 days) it makes it hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.
The simplest question to ask may be "what was LOST about?" The snarky answer would be "about six years." But in a basic review, the answers could include:
1. A survival story of plane crash victims on a Pacific Island.
2. A story of lost people trying to find purpose in their miserable lives.
3. The secret lives between strangers trapped in an uncomfortable situation.
4. The fantasy dream world of an individual or group of individuals.
5. A metaphoric journey from life to death.
Friday, November 21, 2014
DEJA VU
Have you ever been somewhere that you have never been before, but
felt like there was something about it that struck a chord in your mind
and seemed familiar? If so, you've experienced the mental phenomenon
known as deja vu.
Deja vu happens to most people but it's something that no one has yet to fully understand. Approximately 60 to 70 percent of people have experienced deja vu on at least one occasion in their lives. When it happens, one of our senses - be it our sight, sound, smell or taste - can convince us that we have lived through an experience before even if we know on a rational level that we have not.
Scientists have come up with physiological hypotheses of why deja vu exists but to date nothing has been proven conclusively. It is important to stop here and note that deja vu, which is being convinced that a first visit to a place seems known or familiar even when it is not, is not the same as other similar phenomena such as precognition and clairvoyance.
Precognition is when an individual has a premonition about an event that will occur in the future. Clairvoyance is when an individual is able to perceive something that is out of the natural range of any of the five senses. These two phenomena are closely linked to deja vu but are not exactly the same.
In the context of LOST, this can be a possible explanation of the split universes, the island vs. the sideways world. Even in the apparent island time line, where Desmond meets Jack at the stadium for the first time, there is a deja vu moment. And when Jack meets Desmond at the Hatch, there is a immediate flash back connection even though their past meeting was minor and short. Likewise, the characters in the sideways world are living lives with a certain deja vu that something is hidden under the surface; things are not quite right.
Deja Vu Categories
Deja vu can be broken down into two categories. These categories include associative deja vu and biological deja vu.
Associative deja vu is more common. This is the kind of deja vu that the average healthy individual experiences. In this case the person can see, hear, smell, or touch something that evokes a feeling in them that is associated with a similar sensation to something they have experienced in the past. Researchers believe this kind of deja vu is connected to the memory centers found in the brain.
Biological deja vu happens to those individuals who suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy. In fact, these people often have an unusual experience such as this before they have a seizure. deja vu of this kind is often described as being very intense. It's an easier way for scientists to study the phenomenon and has helped them identify the parts of the brain that play a role in the sensations that arise. However, many researchers believe that associative deja vu, sometimes called typical deja vu, and biological deja vu are very different in nature.
Theories Regarding Deja Vu
Many individuals, including those in the scientific and medical community, have tried to explain away the phenomena of deja vu. Is it a psychic phenomenon or is it not? Why do some people experience it and not others? What is at work here when a person believes they have visited a place before but in reality have never set foot in that spot? These are all questions that at present defy answers.
Parapsychologists are psychologists who study paranormal phenomena. These professionals have theorized that deja vu is a past life experience re-emerging in a person's mind. Some individuals believe that it's an emotional response to an event that taps into some incident from the past.
Still others believe that the brain is short circuiting and that it is a neurochemical action taking place that has no connection whatsoever to any life events. In other words, an individual is overcome by a strange feeling and connects it to a memory when really it is something that is all together new and unfamiliar to them.
At the present time deja vu remains yet another one of the fascinating mysteries of life that involves secrets locked away in the brain that it is not ready to reveal. It is believed that the sense of sight is most often connected with the experience but that, too, is up for debate and requires more research. The knowledge we have gleaned about deja vu is only the tip of a much larger iceberg.
And here is where LOST intersections with the mysteries of science.
If deja vu is a paranormal phenomena, then the symptomatic use of deja vu in the series could be considered a clue as the premise of the show. There is an underlying medical condition to a primary character(s) who feed upon a mental abnormality to create the action we viewed throughout the series. This goes beyond a theory that this is all in Hurley's head (living in a mental institution with imaginary friends). This could postulate that the feelings of deja vu are more interdimensional memories and thoughts that bleed through time and space (life events on island bleed through to the sideways world, or vice versa). Deja vu is the packet (like computer signals on the internet) of information that registers in a person's subconscious, which other researchers believe is the key to evaluating and making later conscious decisions.
Deja vu happens to most people but it's something that no one has yet to fully understand. Approximately 60 to 70 percent of people have experienced deja vu on at least one occasion in their lives. When it happens, one of our senses - be it our sight, sound, smell or taste - can convince us that we have lived through an experience before even if we know on a rational level that we have not.
Scientists have come up with physiological hypotheses of why deja vu exists but to date nothing has been proven conclusively. It is important to stop here and note that deja vu, which is being convinced that a first visit to a place seems known or familiar even when it is not, is not the same as other similar phenomena such as precognition and clairvoyance.
Precognition is when an individual has a premonition about an event that will occur in the future. Clairvoyance is when an individual is able to perceive something that is out of the natural range of any of the five senses. These two phenomena are closely linked to deja vu but are not exactly the same.
In the context of LOST, this can be a possible explanation of the split universes, the island vs. the sideways world. Even in the apparent island time line, where Desmond meets Jack at the stadium for the first time, there is a deja vu moment. And when Jack meets Desmond at the Hatch, there is a immediate flash back connection even though their past meeting was minor and short. Likewise, the characters in the sideways world are living lives with a certain deja vu that something is hidden under the surface; things are not quite right.
Deja Vu Categories
Deja vu can be broken down into two categories. These categories include associative deja vu and biological deja vu.
Associative deja vu is more common. This is the kind of deja vu that the average healthy individual experiences. In this case the person can see, hear, smell, or touch something that evokes a feeling in them that is associated with a similar sensation to something they have experienced in the past. Researchers believe this kind of deja vu is connected to the memory centers found in the brain.
Biological deja vu happens to those individuals who suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy. In fact, these people often have an unusual experience such as this before they have a seizure. deja vu of this kind is often described as being very intense. It's an easier way for scientists to study the phenomenon and has helped them identify the parts of the brain that play a role in the sensations that arise. However, many researchers believe that associative deja vu, sometimes called typical deja vu, and biological deja vu are very different in nature.
Theories Regarding Deja Vu
Many individuals, including those in the scientific and medical community, have tried to explain away the phenomena of deja vu. Is it a psychic phenomenon or is it not? Why do some people experience it and not others? What is at work here when a person believes they have visited a place before but in reality have never set foot in that spot? These are all questions that at present defy answers.
Parapsychologists are psychologists who study paranormal phenomena. These professionals have theorized that deja vu is a past life experience re-emerging in a person's mind. Some individuals believe that it's an emotional response to an event that taps into some incident from the past.
Still others believe that the brain is short circuiting and that it is a neurochemical action taking place that has no connection whatsoever to any life events. In other words, an individual is overcome by a strange feeling and connects it to a memory when really it is something that is all together new and unfamiliar to them.
At the present time deja vu remains yet another one of the fascinating mysteries of life that involves secrets locked away in the brain that it is not ready to reveal. It is believed that the sense of sight is most often connected with the experience but that, too, is up for debate and requires more research. The knowledge we have gleaned about deja vu is only the tip of a much larger iceberg.
And here is where LOST intersections with the mysteries of science.
If deja vu is a paranormal phenomena, then the symptomatic use of deja vu in the series could be considered a clue as the premise of the show. There is an underlying medical condition to a primary character(s) who feed upon a mental abnormality to create the action we viewed throughout the series. This goes beyond a theory that this is all in Hurley's head (living in a mental institution with imaginary friends). This could postulate that the feelings of deja vu are more interdimensional memories and thoughts that bleed through time and space (life events on island bleed through to the sideways world, or vice versa). Deja vu is the packet (like computer signals on the internet) of information that registers in a person's subconscious, which other researchers believe is the key to evaluating and making later conscious decisions.
Thursday, November 13, 2014
DEAD ENDS & VERSES
How does one get one's self out of a painted corner?
The LOST writers continually put themselves into mystery corners without an explanation to free themselves from their own dead ends.
And there were too many such instances of huge plot inconsistencies to understand let alone explain.
Here are few of the nagging writing problems:
1. If Aaron was born on the island; why was he not born already in the sideways world?
2. If Ben was shot as a boy in the chest by Sayid, why didn't Ben remember him when 815 crashed?
3. Generally, why did so many characters fail to ask basic questions to their fellow castaways?
Here is a possible deux es machina explanation for the writing inconsistencies: multiverses.
Science is still trying to grapple with the workings of the cosmos. The discovery of the minuscule mass of the Higgs boson, whose relative smallness allows big structures such as galaxies and humans to form, falls roughly 100 quadrillion times short of expectations. Trying to put math to the known quantum pieces yields a result that none of us should be in our universe. Instead, there has to be another theory to explain our place in space.
Leading cosmologists like Alan Guth and Stephen Hawking envision our universe as one of countless bubbles in an eternally frothing sea. This infinite “multiverse” would contain universes with constants tuned to any and all possible values, including some outliers, like ours, that have just the right properties to support life. In this scenario, our good luck is inevitable: A peculiar, life-friendly bubble is all we could expect to observe.
Many physicists loathe the multiverse hypothesis, deeming it a cop-out of infinite proportions. But as attempts to paint our universe as an inevitable, self-contained structure falter, the multiverse camp is growing.
The problem remains how to test the hypothesis. Proponents of the multiverse idea must show that, among the rare universes that support life, ours is statistically typical. The exact dose of vacuum energy, the precise mass of our underweight Higgs boson, and other anomalies must have high odds within the subset of habitable universes. If the properties of this universe still seem atypical even in the habitable subset, then the multiverse explanation fails.
When a science fiction show can tap a real scientific theory (however unproven), it can free itself of the dead end badness of a misplayed plot line.
Our characters were not jumping around in time travel when the island shifted, but our characters were jumping between multiverse bubbles, different parallel dimensions.
Instead of seeing a bubble, the LOST explanation is clear with a deck of cards analogy. In each island time skip, the deck was shuffled and a new card would be the "current" universe while the characters would continue on unknowingly in the other 51 parallel story verses. For example, boarding the plane in Sydney is Universe 1. When the plane hits turbulence, we are not shown a continuation of Universe 1 but a switch to Universe 2. As such, Universe 1's time line may continue the plane to LA (as seen in the sideways flashbacks). But then, when the island goes critical when Locke trips the numbers computer for a lockdown, Universe 2 switches to a different but similar Universe 3. When Ben turns the FDW, he triggers a series of multiverse quakes shifting through several different universes. This may be why we see Locke's paralysis come back on the island, for in a different universe he did not recover. When Locke vanishes the island with his FDW turn, this may be the clearest evidence of the multiverse concept: the shift to Universe X meant that the island was not in that X location.
After enough shuffling of multi-dimensions, a few individuals who can remember the "constants" in each plane of existence have a great advantage to control other people and events (such as Eloise Hawking and Desmond). One can guess more accurately if they had experienced an event generator of possible outcomes before making a final decision.
The multiverse explanation can help cushion the frustration of so many plot dead ends in the series, but it is still a trick to skip to a happy ending.
The LOST writers continually put themselves into mystery corners without an explanation to free themselves from their own dead ends.
And there were too many such instances of huge plot inconsistencies to understand let alone explain.
Here are few of the nagging writing problems:
1. If Aaron was born on the island; why was he not born already in the sideways world?
2. If Ben was shot as a boy in the chest by Sayid, why didn't Ben remember him when 815 crashed?
3. Generally, why did so many characters fail to ask basic questions to their fellow castaways?
Here is a possible deux es machina explanation for the writing inconsistencies: multiverses.
Science is still trying to grapple with the workings of the cosmos. The discovery of the minuscule mass of the Higgs boson, whose relative smallness allows big structures such as galaxies and humans to form, falls roughly 100 quadrillion times short of expectations. Trying to put math to the known quantum pieces yields a result that none of us should be in our universe. Instead, there has to be another theory to explain our place in space.
Leading cosmologists like Alan Guth and Stephen Hawking envision our universe as one of countless bubbles in an eternally frothing sea. This infinite “multiverse” would contain universes with constants tuned to any and all possible values, including some outliers, like ours, that have just the right properties to support life. In this scenario, our good luck is inevitable: A peculiar, life-friendly bubble is all we could expect to observe.
Many physicists loathe the multiverse hypothesis, deeming it a cop-out of infinite proportions. But as attempts to paint our universe as an inevitable, self-contained structure falter, the multiverse camp is growing.
The problem remains how to test the hypothesis. Proponents of the multiverse idea must show that, among the rare universes that support life, ours is statistically typical. The exact dose of vacuum energy, the precise mass of our underweight Higgs boson, and other anomalies must have high odds within the subset of habitable universes. If the properties of this universe still seem atypical even in the habitable subset, then the multiverse explanation fails.
When a science fiction show can tap a real scientific theory (however unproven), it can free itself of the dead end badness of a misplayed plot line.
Our characters were not jumping around in time travel when the island shifted, but our characters were jumping between multiverse bubbles, different parallel dimensions.
Instead of seeing a bubble, the LOST explanation is clear with a deck of cards analogy. In each island time skip, the deck was shuffled and a new card would be the "current" universe while the characters would continue on unknowingly in the other 51 parallel story verses. For example, boarding the plane in Sydney is Universe 1. When the plane hits turbulence, we are not shown a continuation of Universe 1 but a switch to Universe 2. As such, Universe 1's time line may continue the plane to LA (as seen in the sideways flashbacks). But then, when the island goes critical when Locke trips the numbers computer for a lockdown, Universe 2 switches to a different but similar Universe 3. When Ben turns the FDW, he triggers a series of multiverse quakes shifting through several different universes. This may be why we see Locke's paralysis come back on the island, for in a different universe he did not recover. When Locke vanishes the island with his FDW turn, this may be the clearest evidence of the multiverse concept: the shift to Universe X meant that the island was not in that X location.
After enough shuffling of multi-dimensions, a few individuals who can remember the "constants" in each plane of existence have a great advantage to control other people and events (such as Eloise Hawking and Desmond). One can guess more accurately if they had experienced an event generator of possible outcomes before making a final decision.
The multiverse explanation can help cushion the frustration of so many plot dead ends in the series, but it is still a trick to skip to a happy ending.
Friday, November 7, 2014
DARK MATTERS
Science knows about the element called dark matter. It can be observed by the gravitation pull of other objects. It makes up about a quarter of the universe. But science does not know what it really does.
Some researchers have tried to postulate that dark matter may attach itself to dying pulsars, in such a fashion that the density becomes so great that a black hole is created in the universe.
Scientists also believe that at the edge of any black hole, where the gravitational forces are the greatest, physics and notions of time and space are out of whack. Even a pinpoint black hole singularity could disrupt time and space.
These are known concepts. Using known science concepts is a good basis for science fiction.
LOST posters have often looked to black holes, dark matter and strange energy as a basis of trying to explain the underlying events in the series. The show's time travel events became quite problematic. Even the island's "re-sets" have inconsistent triggers which does not lead to a clear explanation.
Humans are curious; we want answers to mysteries.
What is the universe? What is our role in the universe? What is life? Is there something after life? Why can't we take all the chemicals found in a human body and mix up a human being in the lab?
To explain sporadic time events on the island, one must assume that the cork has to be shifted in some manner to release the built up energy. However, the Swan computer station was not tied directly the heart of the island. In fact, the cork was a large stone, not a mechanical device. So was the Swan station a pressure value to release energy used to keep the light source in check? And why would anyone need to do that anyway? The light source was on the island long before humans. Did the ancient Egyptians first harness its power, i.e. ability to time travel through space portals, in the quest to actually get the after life? That makes some sense in the realm of the burial temple rituals. But in order to create such a time riff, one must have the pull of a black hole singularity.
So it is possible that the island is the bridge between a dark matter pocket creating a black hole and the unique electromagnetic light source (the Big Bang so to speak) from which all life in the universe got its component parts. So is the island the location of a possible Second Big Bang?
We think the island was returned to balance when Jack died. So the existing universe would have been saved from destruction. But then again, a second parallel universe was created from the island which we called the sideways world - - - one in which Desmond was aware of on the island prior to his awakening in the sideways plane of existence. So the fabric of normal space time had to have been altered by the island time shifts. Then, was the sideways truly an after life experience, or merely an alternative dimension populated by the memories of the island castaways? A echo, a memory, a fiction created by the disruption of the known universe carried about on the nodes of dark matter.
Some researchers have tried to postulate that dark matter may attach itself to dying pulsars, in such a fashion that the density becomes so great that a black hole is created in the universe.
Scientists also believe that at the edge of any black hole, where the gravitational forces are the greatest, physics and notions of time and space are out of whack. Even a pinpoint black hole singularity could disrupt time and space.
These are known concepts. Using known science concepts is a good basis for science fiction.
LOST posters have often looked to black holes, dark matter and strange energy as a basis of trying to explain the underlying events in the series. The show's time travel events became quite problematic. Even the island's "re-sets" have inconsistent triggers which does not lead to a clear explanation.
Humans are curious; we want answers to mysteries.
What is the universe? What is our role in the universe? What is life? Is there something after life? Why can't we take all the chemicals found in a human body and mix up a human being in the lab?
To explain sporadic time events on the island, one must assume that the cork has to be shifted in some manner to release the built up energy. However, the Swan computer station was not tied directly the heart of the island. In fact, the cork was a large stone, not a mechanical device. So was the Swan station a pressure value to release energy used to keep the light source in check? And why would anyone need to do that anyway? The light source was on the island long before humans. Did the ancient Egyptians first harness its power, i.e. ability to time travel through space portals, in the quest to actually get the after life? That makes some sense in the realm of the burial temple rituals. But in order to create such a time riff, one must have the pull of a black hole singularity.
So it is possible that the island is the bridge between a dark matter pocket creating a black hole and the unique electromagnetic light source (the Big Bang so to speak) from which all life in the universe got its component parts. So is the island the location of a possible Second Big Bang?
We think the island was returned to balance when Jack died. So the existing universe would have been saved from destruction. But then again, a second parallel universe was created from the island which we called the sideways world - - - one in which Desmond was aware of on the island prior to his awakening in the sideways plane of existence. So the fabric of normal space time had to have been altered by the island time shifts. Then, was the sideways truly an after life experience, or merely an alternative dimension populated by the memories of the island castaways? A echo, a memory, a fiction created by the disruption of the known universe carried about on the nodes of dark matter.
Friday, October 31, 2014
LOVECRAFTIAN
According to author H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, somewhere sunken in the South Pacific there is a “nightmare corpse-city” called R’lyeh, “built
in measureless eons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that
seeped down from the dark stars.”
In his house in this city, the great
old god Cthulhu waits, dead and dreaming, for his return to power. In a story, a crew of sailors accidentally discover a
risen part of the city, an island with a “coast-line of mingled mud,
ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry,” accidentally wake Cthulhu from his sleep, and are either killed or driven mad.
Exploring the island, the sailors soon
discover that “all the rules of matter and perspective seemed upset,”
and they struggle to comprehend and describe their surroundings. “One
could not be sure that the sea and the ground were horizontal, hence the
relative position of everything else seemed phantasmally variable,” one
of the sailors, Gustaf Johansen, wrote in his log. Even when they
discover a simple door, the sailors couldn’t tell if it “lay flat like a
trap-door or slantwise like an outside cellar-door” because the
“geometry of the place was all wrong.”
Of course, none of it—the sailors, the city, the island,
the dead-dreaming god—are real. If it was, though, would science be able
to explain the weird geometry of the city? Benjamin Tippett, a
theoretical physicist and mathematician at the University of New
Brunswick, tries to bring fiction into science with a “unified theory of Cthulhu.”
After poring over the clues and descriptions left by
Lovecraft’s characters and employing his “mad general relativity
skills,” Tippett thinks that the geometry of R’lyeh was
all wrong—not because the architecture curves and angles in strange
ways, but because of the space the city occupies. R’lyeh, he says, lies
in a “region of anomalously curved spacetime,” and the bizarre geometry
of the buildings and changing alignment of the horizon are the consequences of the “gravitational lensing of images therein.”
In a region of curved spacetime, Tippett explains, light
doesn’t travel in reliably straight trajectories, so objects beyond the
curved region appear warped and skewed, and the relative positions of
two objects, or the flatness of a large object, in the region are
difficult to discern. A visitor to R’lyeh, he says, would “see the
outside world (and other distant objects upon the island) as if through a
large fishbowl. Thus, the horizon would no longer be reliably straight,
and the sun and moon would swing wildly through the sky depending on
one’s position.”
Tippett thinks his “spacetime bubble hypothesis” can also
explain the oddities of how time is perceived in R’lyeh, and maybe even
address the “central myth of the Cthulhu cult.” Time, he says, passes
slower inside an area of curved spacetime than it does outside of it.
This time dilation is probably what allowed the sailor Johansen
to “survive adrift at sea for nearly two weeks … in a state of helpless
dementia.” It could also mean that Cthulhu, whose cultists describe him
as dead and dreaming, neither alive nor truly dead, is simply “in a
position where it does not feel the passage of time.” At the center of
the spacetime bubble, the god could wait, unchanging, for aeons.
As to what caused or created the curved spacetime bubble
surrounding R’lyeh, Tippett can only guess. “An exotic type of matter
with which human science is entirely unfamiliar is required for such a
geometry to exist,” he says. “Indeed, this is the very species of energy
which is theoretically required to build a warp drive or a cloaking
device. Only a people capable of crossing vast cosmic distances could
have constructed Johansen’s bubble.”
Bubble. Spacetime. Time dilation from inside and outside the island. Exotic type of matter.
These are all elements in LOST.
Was the hidden foundation of the LOST mythology from Lovecraft?
As said in Hollywood, nothing is really new.
Is the smoke monster a version of Cthulhu, a dead and dreaming god?
It is a possible explanation. It has tangential elements of exotic powers, unexplained monster, and a time drift that defies conventional science.
The smoke monster is nothing we had ever seen. It takes the form of smoke, then transforms matter into various forms, including humans. It has the ability to read minds, reshape memories, and absorb personalities. It some ways it is parasitic. In other ways, it is intellectually aware.
Or the smoke monster could be the island god's leaking subconscious, a semi-dream state creating or interacting with castaways which shipwreck on its shores, and in turn, disturbs its eternal slumber.
If one part of the island is in actual dream state, the human beings on its surface are the new threads in the island's fantasy world. The castaways don't know that they are real elements in a non-human's dream. And with dreams, they can turn into nightmares. Also, dreams can often overcome the dreamer's normal moral compass and governors, and turn quite dark.
But this premise does not explain the ending to the series. If the smoke monster was part of the island god's dream state, how could it be "killed?" Why would even want to be killed? The only way to stop a dream is to wake up (another strong theme in the sideways world). So it is possible, that shipwrecked islanders came under a dream like spell while on the island, interacting with the unseen consciousness of the Lovecraftian god.
Two possible outcomes of killing or waking up a slumbering god: first, it is angry and kills everyone who is on the island, or second, it is benevolent and gives each person their own "dreams" in the alternative afterlife world. Except, not everyone was happy and content in the sideways world. And why keep the island events hidden, repressed and unknown in the sideways world? Was it a final test?
Or was it just another level of the dream?
But this premise does not explain the ending to the series. If the smoke monster was part of the island god's dream state, how could it be "killed?" Why would even want to be killed? The only way to stop a dream is to wake up (another strong theme in the sideways world). So it is possible, that shipwrecked islanders came under a dream like spell while on the island, interacting with the unseen consciousness of the Lovecraftian god.
Two possible outcomes of killing or waking up a slumbering god: first, it is angry and kills everyone who is on the island, or second, it is benevolent and gives each person their own "dreams" in the alternative afterlife world. Except, not everyone was happy and content in the sideways world. And why keep the island events hidden, repressed and unknown in the sideways world? Was it a final test?
Or was it just another level of the dream?
Thursday, October 2, 2014
THE PYRAMID OF LOST
Wikipedia summarizes the LOST seasons as follows:
The first season begins with the aftermath of a plane crash which leaves the surviving passengers of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 on what seems to be a deserted tropical island. Their survival is threatened by a number of mysterious entities, including polar bears, an unseen creature that roams the jungle (the "Smoke Monster"), and the island's malevolent inhabitants known as "The Others". They encounter a French woman named Danielle Rousseau who was shipwrecked on the island 16 years before the main story and is desperate for news of a daughter named Alex. They also find a mysterious metal hatch buried in the ground. While two survivors try to force the hatch open, four others attempt to leave on a raft that they have built. Meanwhile, flashbacks centered on individual survivors detail their lives prior to the plane crash.
The second season follows the growing conflict between the survivors and the Others, and continues the theme of the clash between faith and science, while resolving old mysteries and posing new ones. A power struggle between Jack and John over control of the guns and medicine located in the hatch develops, resolved in "The Long Con" by Sawyer when he gains control of them. New characters are introduced, including the tail-section survivors (the "Tailies") and other island inhabitants. The hatch is revealed to be a research station built by the Dharma Initiative, a scientific research project that involved conducting experiments on the island decades earlier. A man named Desmond Hume had been living in the hatch for three years, pushing a button every 108 minutes to prevent a catastrophic event from occurring. One of the crash survivors betrays the others and the cause of the plane crash is revealed, as the Others capture Jack and several castaways and take them hostage.
In the third season, the crash survivors learn more about the Others and their long history on the mysterious island and the fate of the Dharma Initiative. The leader of the Others, Benjamin Linus, is introduced as well as defections from both sides pave the wave for conflict between the two. Time travel elements also begin to appear in the series, as Desmond is revealed to be "unstuck" in time and seeks this ability to alert his longtime girlfriend Penny to rescue the survivors. The survivors make contact with a rescue team aboard the freighter Kahana. At the end of the season however, the show undergoes a format switch, with flashbacks being abandoned for "flash forwards."
Season four focuses on the survivors dealing with the arrival of people from the freighter, who have been sent to the island to reclaim it from Benjamin. The survivors form an alliance with several members of the freighter, who are revealed to have ties to the island and who realize the secrets of the island must remain hidden from those who seek to abuse them. They eventually convince Benjamin to help them, in "moving" the island backwards through time via a time travel mechanism hidden within the bowels of the island, while six castaways escape back to civilization. While seasons one through three focused on flashbacks alongside the main story, season four continues with the "flash forwards" established in the season three finale and slowly reveal the identity of those who escaped the Island (dubbed "The Oceanic Six" by the media) and their encounters with Benjamin Linus, who informs them of a death of a seventh character, which necessates them returning to the island.
The fifth season follows two timelines. The first takes place on the island where the survivors who were left behind erratically jump forward and backward through time until they are finally stranded with the Dharma Initiative in 1974, while Benajmin Linus and later, John Locke, to the present. The second continues the original timeline, which takes place on the mainland after the Oceanic Six escape, and follows their return to the island on Ajira Airways flight 316 in 2007 (three years after they escaped). Some passengers on the Ajira flight land in 1977 and some remain in 2007,. The ones who in 2007 and the surviving Others unite to a dangerous mission to assassinate Jacob, the island's protector. Those who land in 1977 reunite with the other survivors who have lived for three years with the Dharma Initiative, only to fail to attempt to change past events in order to prevent the Oceanic plane from crashing in the future.
In the sixth and final season, the main storyline follows the survivors, reunited in the present day, as the death of Jacob allows for his brother, the Man in Black, the human alter ego of the Smoke Monster, to take over the island. Having assumed the form of John Locke, the Smoke Monster seeks to escape the island and forces a final war between the forces of good and evil. The final season also features a "flash-sideways" narrative, that follows the lives of the main characters in a setting where Oceanic 815 never crashed though additional changes are revealed as other characters are shown living completely different lives than they did. In the final episodes, a flashback to the distant past shows the origins of the island's power and of the conflict between Jacob and the Man in Black, who are revealed to be twin brothers with Jacob desperate to keep his brother from leaving the island after he is transmogrified by the power of the island and becomes the smoke monster. The Man In Black is killed as one of the survivors becomes the new caretaker of the island, several of the survivors die in the conflict or stay on the island, and the remaining escape the island once and for all. The series finale reveals that the flash-sideways timeline is actually a form of limbo in the afterlife, where some of the survivors and other characters from the island are reunited after having died because their time on the island had been the most important part of their existence. In the end, the survivors are all reunited in a church where they "move on" together.
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
TIME
One of the gnawing questions that remain in the LOST mythology is the concept of Time.
It is hard to understand how the writers viewed the concept of Time other than a convenient Deux Machina plot twist.
We were almost in a real time mode for the first four seasons. We saw the daily struggles of the main characters on the island. Time was a linear constant. Events followed a cause and effect pattern. Time seemed to pass normally.
Then the unexplained time and space shifts. The island disappears and the O6 survivors make it back to the mainland in late 2004 or early 2005. However, only a selected few of the island characters are time skipped to 1974 to live with Dharma for three years, while the ones left behind, especially Claire, have to fend for themselves on the island during that time period. We know Claire goes crazy in her fight against the Others. We know Sawyer becomes the new sheriff in the barracks past, and meets a young Ben before he is corrupted.
The O6 live for three years off the island. Then in 2007, they return to the island when the Ajira plane goes through the same island net. Again, for some unexplained reason, several of the passengers get time warped to 1977 Dharma while the rest crash land on the Hydra Island in 2007. However, is another side time realm, the ghosts of the characters created the sideways world living their lives as if it was 2004. And once the 1977 crew reunites with the 2007 island time line after the Incident, we get back to about 14 consecutive days of island events to the conclusion.
Besides the criticism that the whole time shift to the 1970s was irrelevant to the characters survival story, the 7 days that are the 2004 sideways event time line is still different than the 14 days island time line after the time shifters reunion.
Since the sideways world was an after life place for the dead, if it was created in 2004 at or about the plane crash time, why did it only move along for a week when the characters were living at least three years (1,095 days)? And since the sideways world moved along on a daily basis (we saw the events unfold in a normal order), does that really mean that the sideways world was actually created in late 2007, one week after the 1977 folks returned to the island?
So what happened on Day 7 in 2007 on the island to create the sideways world?
The main episode was called "Sundown." In it, the following events occurred:
We also get a window into Jacob's capture of Dogen's soul. It seems that Dogen was placed on the island as punishment for nearly killing his son in an auto accident. It seems like Dogen made a parental bargain with the devil - - - his life for that of his son's. So this adds a clue and a question of whether the island time was actually real, or in a different dimension like the sideways world.
The various time events do not synch up in any logical fashion.
Time, it appears, was merely used as a plot device to throw new dangers at characters or to misdirect or confuse the viewers who were seeking answers to the big questions.
It is hard to understand how the writers viewed the concept of Time other than a convenient Deux Machina plot twist.
Then the unexplained time and space shifts. The island disappears and the O6 survivors make it back to the mainland in late 2004 or early 2005. However, only a selected few of the island characters are time skipped to 1974 to live with Dharma for three years, while the ones left behind, especially Claire, have to fend for themselves on the island during that time period. We know Claire goes crazy in her fight against the Others. We know Sawyer becomes the new sheriff in the barracks past, and meets a young Ben before he is corrupted.
The O6 live for three years off the island. Then in 2007, they return to the island when the Ajira plane goes through the same island net. Again, for some unexplained reason, several of the passengers get time warped to 1977 Dharma while the rest crash land on the Hydra Island in 2007. However, is another side time realm, the ghosts of the characters created the sideways world living their lives as if it was 2004. And once the 1977 crew reunites with the 2007 island time line after the Incident, we get back to about 14 consecutive days of island events to the conclusion.
Besides the criticism that the whole time shift to the 1970s was irrelevant to the characters survival story, the 7 days that are the 2004 sideways event time line is still different than the 14 days island time line after the time shifters reunion.
Since the sideways world was an after life place for the dead, if it was created in 2004 at or about the plane crash time, why did it only move along for a week when the characters were living at least three years (1,095 days)? And since the sideways world moved along on a daily basis (we saw the events unfold in a normal order), does that really mean that the sideways world was actually created in late 2007, one week after the 1977 folks returned to the island?
So what happened on Day 7 in 2007 on the island to create the sideways world?
The main episode was called "Sundown." In it, the following events occurred:
- Sayid barges into Dogen's chamber, demanding answers. Dogen tells him that he believes him to be evil, and the discussion escalates into a fight, after which Dogen tells Sayid to leave the Temple and never come back.
- As Sayid is preparing to leave, Claire enters the Temple at the behest of the Man in Black, and tells Dogen to come out and speak with him. Dogen refuses, and sends Sayid instead, giving him and dagger and telling him to kill the Man in Black.
- Sayid leaves the Temple to meet the Man in Black, and on his way encounters Kate, who intending to return to the Temple and proceeds to do so. Upon encountering the Man in Black, Sayid stabs him with the knife given to him by Dogen to no effect. After this the two talk, and the Man in Black tells him that he can resurrect Nadia and to return to the Temple and tell everyone inside that if they do not leave by sundown, they will be killed.
- Upon returning to the Temple, Kate learns from Miles that Claire is there, and finds her, having been captured by the Others, in a hole inside the Temple. She tells him about Aaron and the fact that she raised him, and says she is here to save her. Claire responds that she is "not the one who needs saving."
- Sayid returns to the Temple and delivers this message, resulting in many Others leaving the Temple, including Cindy and the children. He then goes to the spring inside the Temple, where he meets Dogen. Dogen reveals to him that in his past life off the island, he was driving drunk with his son in the car and crashed. While he was in the hospital, Jacob came to him and said he would save his son's life if he came to the island. After he tells Sayid this, Sayid throws him into the spring and holds him under, drowning him. Lennon then walks in and is killed by Sayid with the knife given to him by Dogen.
- Immediately after Dogen's death, the Monster enters the Temple and begins killing everyone in sight. Just as he arrives, Ilana, Ben, Sun and Frank arrive at the Temple as well. The group sans Ben, who has went to find Sayid, meets up with Miles and escapes the Temple through a hidden passageway.
- Ben finds Sayid sitting over the bodies of Dogen and Lennon, and Sayid refuses to come with him. Meanwhile, Kate finds Claire, and together the two of them, along with Sayid, exit the temple to meet the Man in Black, along with the Others who left the Temple before Sundown. Then, led by the Main in Black, the group leaves the Temple.
- Escaping the Temple, Ben encounters Ilana, Frank, Sun and Miles some distance outside. Miles communicates with Jacob's spirit via his ashes, which Ilana took from the statue, and learns that Ben killed Jacob. After this they leave, heading for the beach camp.
We also get a window into Jacob's capture of Dogen's soul. It seems that Dogen was placed on the island as punishment for nearly killing his son in an auto accident. It seems like Dogen made a parental bargain with the devil - - - his life for that of his son's. So this adds a clue and a question of whether the island time was actually real, or in a different dimension like the sideways world.
The various time events do not synch up in any logical fashion.
Time, it appears, was merely used as a plot device to throw new dangers at characters or to misdirect or confuse the viewers who were seeking answers to the big questions.
Friday, August 1, 2014
THE BOMB
It is hard to put context on the transition from Season 5 to Season 6. Season 5 had led up to the climax of the "need to escape" theme of the show. Season 6 made a drastic lurch into a sideways world purgatory.
What really happened with Juliet and the Bomb is major problem of the LOST mythology. Many fans assumed (based on the opening to the Season 6 premiere, "LA X") that the bomb that the Losties detonated in the 1970s (the Season 5 cliffhanger) resulted in the Island sinking and an alternate timeline being created, in which Oceanic 815 never crashed, and things were slightly different in the lives of the passengers.
This was based upon the flash and Juliet's cries that "it worked." But what worked?
Later, the “alternate timeline” was shown as a purgatory where the Losties all met up when they were dead, and the whole “alternate timeline” bit was a red herring. So what, exactly, did the bomb do?
One commentator tried to answer the question:
The obvious answer is that the bomb propelled the Losties back through time to the present day, where the the Swan station (a.k.a. “The Hatch”) was now a slightly different version of its former imploded self.
Like most time travel narratives, the situation with the hatch raises a ton of logistical questions, such as: Would Desmond still be on the island if the hatch had been destroyed in the past? Wouldn’t that alteration to the time stream have a ripple effect that disrupted everything else regarding the Oceanic 815 crashing? And so on...
Instead what we got was a time travel scenario where that one location, the 70s Swan station, seemed to “overlap” on its present-day self, while leaving the rest of the time stream unaffected (or something like that). It’s confusing and very problematic – yet another reason why time travel is something you probably want to stay away from as a storyteller...
In the end though, the outcome is the same: Whatever conduit to the Island’s energy source that the Dharma Initiative tapped when they made the Swan station was ultimately exhausted. Whether it was exhausted by the bomb Juliet set off, or the the moment in season 3 when Locke lost his faith and refused to push the button (“Live Together, Die Alone“) the energy was released, and The Swan was destroyed. The Losties made it back to the present, and there was never two timelines, apparently.
Try not to think too hard about it, I guess... But it certainly is a major thread left dangling.
Considering that this was the most talked about cliffhanger in the series, the resolution was hardly great art. Fans were still left dangling questions about the cliffhanger.
From the obvious conclusion that a person cannot detonate a bomb by banging it on a rock (a-bombs do not operate that way), the scientific explanation was that the bomb did not go off. This is further buttressed by the fact that Juliet "survived" the incident in the implosion wreckage (until such time that she got her death reel for her resume). The final clue is that the implosion crater is similar to the one shown earlier in the series when Desmond used the fail safe key.
So the bomb did not go off. What happened to it? As a metal casing, it was ripped down into the ground along with the scaffolding by the intense electromagnetic energy of the island. It is likely that the bomb was disassembled and made inoperable by the energy field. (Perhaps, if the island was its own intelligence, it used the incident to take out something that could have harmed it, a nuclear device.)
The crater must have sealed the light source incident just as it had done with Desmond's incident.
So what happened to the people? This is worse than a dangling plot explanation, because if the "incident" that imploded the Hatch site teleported the characters "back" to the present (even though several of the main characters never made the leap but were on the same island), then the whole time travel theme makes no sense. It has been totally inconsistent in its application. Ben's FDW stumble created the problem of time shifts on the island. Locke corrected that problem by turning the wheel again. But with the 1970s implosion, no one knows how it re-set the island perfectly back in linear time. Because if the Hatch had already imploded 33 years before Desmond, there would have been no Hatch when the island returned to the present (thereby erasing Desmond's story arc). If Desmond's story arc, which predates the Flight 815 characters, is erased then the series has has a major flaw of "remembering" things that never would have occurred in real time.
One could argue that Dharma would have built the Hatch after the implosion and after the Losties left, but that would mean that there would have been multiple time dimensions occurring on the island. But that would be in conflict with Daniel's time explanation, Eloise's island location device and prior representation of single cause and effect of the light source to the island space-time location.
At that is the problem with incomplete thinking when throwing out a "time travel" story line. Writers need to answer the how and why of time travel in some logical and consistent way or it creates more problems.
If the bomb was neutralized by the implosion, then the Dharma group would have had little reason to continue working on the site. If the bomb was still feared, Dharma could have sealed it like any nuclear disaster in a concrete coffin. But in the Hatch with Desmond and Locke, the concrete bunker was not really sealing a bomb, but somehow controlling the intensity of the electromagnetic energy that could cause another implosion (and purple sky time flash).
The bomb was not the catalyst to the last season. It seems like a red herring, increase the tension device, to instill a level of fear. The Incident, i.e. the implosion caused by massive electromagnetic pull, was the real danger. A pull so great that it could take the island in and out of time itself. Something that human technology could not control.
Another theory about the Season 5 cliffhanger was that when Juliet said "it worked," it meant that the implosion created the sideways universe. Since the implosion was known to change time, one thought was that the sideways world was the real world and that Flight 815 did not crash in the Pacific. The main characters were then living out their normal lives, not "remembering" the island side trip since human beings cannot have two sets of different "time memories." If this was actually the case, more fans would come to accept Season 6 as a character reboot to their past lives with the ticking mental time bomb of the island experience lurking in their future. A time bomb that when activated would lead to each character going into some sort of personal madness, depression and despair. Again, that could have been a final wrap up to a series that was "character driven."
But we were led on a different path. There was no character re-boot. The sideways world was created as a purgatory holding room for the lost souls of Flight 815. Now, why in the sideways world where there is no past, present or future, just the now, would each character have an extremely complex and real existence? This alternative world had characters in different relationships, different careers, and different adventures - - - which makes no sense if the island time was "most important." If the sideways was truly a holding area, the lost souls could just be in suspended animation or a coma only to be awakened when everyone died on Earth. Instead, why give these "lost" souls a meaningful alternative lives?
Isn't that just like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown just before he attempts to kick it?
Is the true LOST mythology just a cruel joke on us?
Saturday, July 26, 2014
INTERLOPERS
The cable TV ads have been hyping a new sci-fi series, The Intruders, in which the premise seems to be that undead spirits come back to take over bodies of real people in order to do no good.
Why spirits would need to take over human bodies to do their evil deeds is unknown. The classic ghost story has transparent forms causing havoc in people's minds. It is like when the smoke monster, MIB, took the form of dead John Locke. He really did not have to so it. At the time, some speculated that it needed to have a dead body in order to reincarnate in its form. However, MIB/Smokey did it without a body with island Christian.
The premise could be an explanation of the two different worlds LOST created in Season 6.
In the sideways world, all the characters were dead. Dead for a long and short time. If this is the true point of beginning, that the characters were dead before the series began and dead before getting on Flight 815, then perspectives change.
If everyone was dead already, and living in a purgatory setting as boring and mundane as their past lives on Earth (which they have repressed including their own fates), how do dead souls dream?
One would expect that being spirits, their dreams may not be confined to a human brain in REM sleep but could be projected without physical limitations because spirits are closer to energy beings than humanoids.
Perhaps this collective spiritual dream state created the island story. (This is the exact opposite position that most viewers perceive the series based on how events unfolded over the years).
The island could be a fantasy island for the dead. Think about it: the main characters did irrational, stupid, crazy things without thinking about the consequences. It was an adventure vacation for some. It was an intense emotional soul search for others.
Now could the spirits rematerialize as human beings in the real world? Perhaps.
Or would it have been easier to commandeer human beings and steal those bodies for their vacation fun?
The physical imagines of the characters are the same in the sideways and real world, but that is a matter of convenience. Sideways Jack spirit was someone else's ghost who just wound up in real world Jack's body. And the interloper theory helps explain why some characters had dramatic life shifts after boarding Flight 815. This would include the experienced pilots, who lost control of their plane. It also includes Jack, whose human body and mind would not have become the "leader" that spirit Jack wanted to be in the sideways world.
The main characters were kidnapped by sideways world spirits who needed to re-live some part of their lives in order to break the bonds of their purgatory.
Why spirits would need to take over human bodies to do their evil deeds is unknown. The classic ghost story has transparent forms causing havoc in people's minds. It is like when the smoke monster, MIB, took the form of dead John Locke. He really did not have to so it. At the time, some speculated that it needed to have a dead body in order to reincarnate in its form. However, MIB/Smokey did it without a body with island Christian.
The premise could be an explanation of the two different worlds LOST created in Season 6.
In the sideways world, all the characters were dead. Dead for a long and short time. If this is the true point of beginning, that the characters were dead before the series began and dead before getting on Flight 815, then perspectives change.
If everyone was dead already, and living in a purgatory setting as boring and mundane as their past lives on Earth (which they have repressed including their own fates), how do dead souls dream?
One would expect that being spirits, their dreams may not be confined to a human brain in REM sleep but could be projected without physical limitations because spirits are closer to energy beings than humanoids.
Perhaps this collective spiritual dream state created the island story. (This is the exact opposite position that most viewers perceive the series based on how events unfolded over the years).
The island could be a fantasy island for the dead. Think about it: the main characters did irrational, stupid, crazy things without thinking about the consequences. It was an adventure vacation for some. It was an intense emotional soul search for others.
Now could the spirits rematerialize as human beings in the real world? Perhaps.
Or would it have been easier to commandeer human beings and steal those bodies for their vacation fun?
The physical imagines of the characters are the same in the sideways and real world, but that is a matter of convenience. Sideways Jack spirit was someone else's ghost who just wound up in real world Jack's body. And the interloper theory helps explain why some characters had dramatic life shifts after boarding Flight 815. This would include the experienced pilots, who lost control of their plane. It also includes Jack, whose human body and mind would not have become the "leader" that spirit Jack wanted to be in the sideways world.
The main characters were kidnapped by sideways world spirits who needed to re-live some part of their lives in order to break the bonds of their purgatory.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
PREGNANCIES
One of the early serious plot lines revolved around the danger of pregnant women on the island. They all died before giving birth. This was a serious story line, repeated twice in the show: first with Claire and her abduction, and second with Sun's "miracle" conception. (There is major flaw in the sideways arc that both women who gave birth in the island time-sphere gave birth to their daughters in the sideways after life.)
The reason why pregnant women died on the Island before they could successfully give birth was vaguely couched as an "infection." People, especially pregnant women, had to have shots in order to save themselves and their babies. But the cause was never explained. Ben kidnapped Juliet to have her investigate the island birth problem because she successfully got her infertile sister pregnant. Juliet was supposed to solve the problem, but did not. There was some aspect of the pregnancies that may have been tied to fetus "time skipping," but that was actually before the FDW was introduced as a deux machina device.
In Season 1 when Claire was pregnant with Aaron and got kidnapped and experimented on by Ethan, was a member of The Others who had a focus on children. They would later kidnap the tail section children. Ethan was likely working with Juliet to help Claire – he gave her injections, but those cause strange pyschotropic events in Claire's mind. Claire was rescued Aaron was born on the island (something that was not supposed to happen). One explanation is that it was likely Aaron born on the Island without incident because Claire was already far enough along in her pregnancy before coming to the Island (just like Jacob and the Man In Black’s mother).
However, the pregnancy issue popped up again in Season 3 when Sun learned that she was pregnant (“The Glass Ballerina” & “D.O.C.” ) and was a the prominent focus of Juliet’s flashback arch (“One of Us“). If Sun conceived on the island, she was in mortal danger just like the dead Other women who could not come to term. One hard explanation was that Sun was pregnant before she arrived on the island, and that the baby was not Jin's. However, the baby problems occurred in island women in their third trimester, so both Claire and Sun would have been in danger. Another factor for Sun was that her daughter was born off the island which somehow saved the mother and child from the island's deadly "infection?"
One simple observation is that the motherhood drama was a story arc that fizzled out after Claire gave birth and Juliet was killed off. It was filler drama because who is more at risk on a dangerous island than a pregnant woman?
However, in Desmond's island back story, we were told that everyone on the island was at risk. That Desmond had to take injections and not go outside because of the infection. We later learned that Kelvin was lying to Desmond. So it is possible that there was no island"infection," and that the pregnant women never came to term because of some other factor, such as poor prenatal care or individual risk factors (because at some point, there was a thriving community with Dharma, with children and a school).
One other explanation I had during the original series run was that pregnant women could not come to term on the island because the island was hell. In hell, sinners were not allowed to bring new life into a realm of punishment. A newborn has no sin to be punished so it would not be allowed to be born. And Ben, as a minion for Satan, was trying to get around that rule by finding a way to regenerate a new army for the devil himself (who could be the evil incarnate - - - smoke monster).
Likewise, there is a story problem with pregnant women in the sideways after life. If the sideways was purgatory or even a slice of heaven, why would dead women give birth to their already born children? That does not make any logical sense.
It would seem the infection of the island, whatever realm state it was, could have been a misstatement of some kind of dream-hallucination state that women with issues believed that they were pregnant and going to have a child. In the sideways world, in a similar vain, the reward for certain women was to give them what they dreamed about but did not achieve in the real human life: having a baby.
The fact that we never found out why pregnant women were dying on the Island still bugs a great deal of LOST fans. It is one of those sub-plots that was conveniently dropped but then later contradicted by other events.
The reason why pregnant women died on the Island before they could successfully give birth was vaguely couched as an "infection." People, especially pregnant women, had to have shots in order to save themselves and their babies. But the cause was never explained. Ben kidnapped Juliet to have her investigate the island birth problem because she successfully got her infertile sister pregnant. Juliet was supposed to solve the problem, but did not. There was some aspect of the pregnancies that may have been tied to fetus "time skipping," but that was actually before the FDW was introduced as a deux machina device.
In Season 1 when Claire was pregnant with Aaron and got kidnapped and experimented on by Ethan, was a member of The Others who had a focus on children. They would later kidnap the tail section children. Ethan was likely working with Juliet to help Claire – he gave her injections, but those cause strange pyschotropic events in Claire's mind. Claire was rescued Aaron was born on the island (something that was not supposed to happen). One explanation is that it was likely Aaron born on the Island without incident because Claire was already far enough along in her pregnancy before coming to the Island (just like Jacob and the Man In Black’s mother).
However, the pregnancy issue popped up again in Season 3 when Sun learned that she was pregnant (“The Glass Ballerina” & “D.O.C.” ) and was a the prominent focus of Juliet’s flashback arch (“One of Us“). If Sun conceived on the island, she was in mortal danger just like the dead Other women who could not come to term. One hard explanation was that Sun was pregnant before she arrived on the island, and that the baby was not Jin's. However, the baby problems occurred in island women in their third trimester, so both Claire and Sun would have been in danger. Another factor for Sun was that her daughter was born off the island which somehow saved the mother and child from the island's deadly "infection?"
One simple observation is that the motherhood drama was a story arc that fizzled out after Claire gave birth and Juliet was killed off. It was filler drama because who is more at risk on a dangerous island than a pregnant woman?
However, in Desmond's island back story, we were told that everyone on the island was at risk. That Desmond had to take injections and not go outside because of the infection. We later learned that Kelvin was lying to Desmond. So it is possible that there was no island"infection," and that the pregnant women never came to term because of some other factor, such as poor prenatal care or individual risk factors (because at some point, there was a thriving community with Dharma, with children and a school).
One other explanation I had during the original series run was that pregnant women could not come to term on the island because the island was hell. In hell, sinners were not allowed to bring new life into a realm of punishment. A newborn has no sin to be punished so it would not be allowed to be born. And Ben, as a minion for Satan, was trying to get around that rule by finding a way to regenerate a new army for the devil himself (who could be the evil incarnate - - - smoke monster).
Likewise, there is a story problem with pregnant women in the sideways after life. If the sideways was purgatory or even a slice of heaven, why would dead women give birth to their already born children? That does not make any logical sense.
It would seem the infection of the island, whatever realm state it was, could have been a misstatement of some kind of dream-hallucination state that women with issues believed that they were pregnant and going to have a child. In the sideways world, in a similar vain, the reward for certain women was to give them what they dreamed about but did not achieve in the real human life: having a baby.
The fact that we never found out why pregnant women were dying on the Island still bugs a great deal of LOST fans. It is one of those sub-plots that was conveniently dropped but then later contradicted by other events.
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
THE RULES
The island "rules" were a fast and loose term used by the writers to NOT explain critical points in their story.
The show runners played things fast and loose, hoping that the momentum of the characters’ story arcs and the whole “good vs. evil” showdown would be enough to appease most fans. But the promise of an intellectual drama was what most fans wanted to see.
One explanation of the island mythology has to be centered in "Across the Sea," the Jacob origin story in Season 6. The semi-explaination what the island was – a sort of container for a very important energy that seemingly links this world with worlds beyond... or something else. There is a view that the unique "energy" is actually a form of light and water, and if that light goes out and the water stops flowing, so the world is basically end.
Everything magical or fantastic about the Island stems from this energy, and many of the technological oddities found on the Island (the Swan Station from Season 2) are a result of the Dharma Initiative trying to harness and control that energy (i.e., man trying to bend magic and mysticism to the will of modern science).
However, there are some things that were definitely left unexplained: Why did the Man In Black become a smoke monster when he was exposed to the light (was it a manifestation of his corrupted soul?); What is the nature of the “rules” that governed certain aspects of the Island – who could come and go, who could kill who, who was healed from injury (Locke, Rose), who lived forever (Richard). How were these rules established and maintained?
We were vaguely told that the island guardian made up his own rules, but what we came away with were a lot of vague pseudo- explanations. But if Jacob's rules controlled the island, he would never die because that was against the rules. And the randomness of who lived and died on the island, who was saved and punished by the smoke monster, also did not fit into any established rules. So why was MIB was obsessed with “finding a loophole” in order to kill Jacob? And since MIB was NOT Jacob's brother, who Crazy Mother said he could not kill, then Jacob could have destroyed the smoke monster long ago. If Jacob would not allow or could not kill the smoke monster/MIB, then how could Jack and Kate do it? Some say that since Smokey was connected to the energy source, and when Jack had Desmond “turned off” that energy by re-setting the cork, Smokey "lost" his powers and was merely flesh and blood again. Except that does not make any sense. The cork was in the bottle and MIB still had all his powers. When the cork was removed, MIB still had his powers. Since we don't know how MIB was created in the light cave, nothing is canon.
If Jacob's final rule was "if I die, you can die," then that is not a dramatic loophole for the smoke monster. The smoke monster's statement that he wanted "to leave" the island mirrored Jacob's brother's, but since MIB was not human, where could it actually go if it was tied to the light source?
Without rules, one cannot have order. And with LOST's non-rules, the story is tangled in messy inconsistencies and legitimate questions.
The show runners played things fast and loose, hoping that the momentum of the characters’ story arcs and the whole “good vs. evil” showdown would be enough to appease most fans. But the promise of an intellectual drama was what most fans wanted to see.
One explanation of the island mythology has to be centered in "Across the Sea," the Jacob origin story in Season 6. The semi-explaination what the island was – a sort of container for a very important energy that seemingly links this world with worlds beyond... or something else. There is a view that the unique "energy" is actually a form of light and water, and if that light goes out and the water stops flowing, so the world is basically end.
Everything magical or fantastic about the Island stems from this energy, and many of the technological oddities found on the Island (the Swan Station from Season 2) are a result of the Dharma Initiative trying to harness and control that energy (i.e., man trying to bend magic and mysticism to the will of modern science).
However, there are some things that were definitely left unexplained: Why did the Man In Black become a smoke monster when he was exposed to the light (was it a manifestation of his corrupted soul?); What is the nature of the “rules” that governed certain aspects of the Island – who could come and go, who could kill who, who was healed from injury (Locke, Rose), who lived forever (Richard). How were these rules established and maintained?
We were vaguely told that the island guardian made up his own rules, but what we came away with were a lot of vague pseudo- explanations. But if Jacob's rules controlled the island, he would never die because that was against the rules. And the randomness of who lived and died on the island, who was saved and punished by the smoke monster, also did not fit into any established rules. So why was MIB was obsessed with “finding a loophole” in order to kill Jacob? And since MIB was NOT Jacob's brother, who Crazy Mother said he could not kill, then Jacob could have destroyed the smoke monster long ago. If Jacob would not allow or could not kill the smoke monster/MIB, then how could Jack and Kate do it? Some say that since Smokey was connected to the energy source, and when Jack had Desmond “turned off” that energy by re-setting the cork, Smokey "lost" his powers and was merely flesh and blood again. Except that does not make any sense. The cork was in the bottle and MIB still had all his powers. When the cork was removed, MIB still had his powers. Since we don't know how MIB was created in the light cave, nothing is canon.
If Jacob's final rule was "if I die, you can die," then that is not a dramatic loophole for the smoke monster. The smoke monster's statement that he wanted "to leave" the island mirrored Jacob's brother's, but since MIB was not human, where could it actually go if it was tied to the light source?
Without rules, one cannot have order. And with LOST's non-rules, the story is tangled in messy inconsistencies and legitimate questions.
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