DREAM RESEARCH

One of the stronger theories of LOST addicts is that the entire premise of the show was one trapped in a dream.

Whose dream is an open question. As is why humans dream at all.

Scientists are still not sure why we dream.  But new research in mice suggests that the brain might be using periods of deep sleep to clear out residual memories to make room for fresh ones.

Published in the journal Science, researchers in Japan observed the mice's hypothalamus while the mice slept. During their deep REM sleep - - -which is associated with dreaming in humans - - - a type of neuron that produced a hormone called MCH had a sharp uptick in activity. The MCH neurons also appeared to be targeting neurons in the hippocampus, the brain region that consolidates memories.

In an experiment, researchers isolated MCH neurons in the mice's brains for observation. The mice were allowed to sniff and play with two toys, which were removed when the mice had become familiar with them. Later, the mice were given a familiar toy and a new toy. With their MCH neurons artificially activated, the mice sniffed them both—suggesting that their memory of them was worse. When the neurons were artificially deactivated, the mice were able to remember that they had already been exposed to the familiar plaything.

The ability of MCH neurons to go patrolling the hippocampus during REM sleep led the paper’s authors to suggest the brain might use this dream stage to do some neurological tidying up, getting rid of non-crucial information so fresh data can be processed.

Why would we want to forget things? An abundance of information can be overwhelming and inhibit the ability to make sense of new knowledge. But if something is truly important—a birthday, a PIN number, a vacation—the brain will hang on to it.

If you want a technology analogy, it is like de-fragmenting your hard drive. Bits and pieces of computer information (code) is randomly stored on your hard drive media. But over time, accessing bits of information get stored in different places on the drive. When you run a preventative maintenance program, it rejoins the associated information bits for better access.

One of the reoccurring oddities of the show was the frustrating part that the main characters "forgot" key information at important moments. As a viewer, "how stupid!" was a common reaction to a character falling into a known trap. This study could be an explanation that the characters' memories were being erased by new memories (or brain washing).

Also, if the story engine was in the mind of one character, such as Jack or Hurley, then certain stimulus or an overactive imagination could jumble up aspects of his fantasy world to create continuity errors.

Story continuity errors was a big gripe during the show's run. It was bad enough that certain questions were asked but never answered, but drastic errors made some people wonder if the writers were getting lazy or there was a deeper meaning. The consensus in the end was the former.

The dream theory also gets some credence because of the Sixth Season's forced "happy ending" in the church for the main characters. The story and show premise did a 180 DEGREE turn on the adamant "this is not set in hell or purgatory" show runner promise to an after life after show.

This current science study may be a small point in the larger picture of what we do not know about ourselves. Likewise, it also shows how much we still do not know about LOST, the series.

THE HUM

Scientists have been calling it "The Hum."

On the morning of November 11, 2018, a series of unusual seismic pulses rippled around the world almost undetected.

The waves rang for over 20 minutes, emanating about 15 miles off the shores of Mayotte - a tiny island in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and Africa. From there, the waves reverberated across Africa, setting off geological sensors in Zambia, Kenya, and Ethiopia.

They crossed the Atlantic, and were picked up in Chile, New Zealand, Canada, and even Hawaii nearly 11,000 miles away, as National Geographic reported the event.  t

Despite their huge range, the waves were apparently not felt by anybody. However, one person monitoring the earthquakes in the US said  live stream of seismogram displays did show the unusual waveform.

The waves were very low frequency, typical of the third phase of a normal earthquake event. However, there were no high frequency waves before this event to signal that an earthquake had occurred in that area.

One speculation is that somehow an island "had moved." How can an island dislodge itself from the depths of the Indian Ocean?

The story has a science-fiction, conspiracy theory aspect to it. In LOST, the island was an enigma. It had unique electromagnetic properties, odd light bending effects and the potential to move both time and space. But is it possible in the real world?

The earth does have a planetary electromagnetic grid. Scientists are aware that this field generation is based upon the physical elements of the planet and its core. Theorists have speculated that this magnetic field could be used to send electricity throughout the globe, or be used as a transmission device for advanced communications. 

But it is possible that the seismic waves were not from the ocean floor plates shifting but from something happening deeper inside the Earth's core. Scientists have made the analogy that the hum was like a bell ringing, and its sound waves circled the globe several times. Typically, a large bell has a striker inside its shell to send sound waves outward. A shift in the molten core could be a possible explanation of the wave activity, in conjunction with another planetary event that experts are watching closely: the probable inversion of the magnetic poles.

Then again, it may have been a signal before the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that hit Alaska.

FATE WORSE THAN HELL

One of the theories about LOST and its quirky sci-fi story line inconsistencies was that the characters were not "living" in a real world environment, but part of some grand experiment or alternative world (through technology like networking brains of coma victims).

Science may be catching up to some wild fiction.

The Daily Mail (UK) reports the scientists have kept alive pig brains outside of the body for the first time as part of a controversial new experiment. The radical experiments could pave the way for human brain transplants and may one day allow humans to become immortal.

The report suggests to ethics experts that any experiments to reanimate dead brains could lead to humans being locked in an eternal "living hell" and enduring a" fate worse than death."

That's according to Nottingham Trent ethics and philosophy lecturer Benjamin Curtis who made the comments in light of controversial experiments on pig brains.

"Even if your conscious brain were kept alive after your body had died, you would have to spend the foreseeable future as a disembodied brain in a bucket, locked away inside your own mind without access to the sense that allow us to experience and interact with the world,' Curtis said. "In the best case scenario you would be spending your life with only your own thoughts for company.

'Some have argued that even with a fully functional body, immortality would be tedious. With absolutely no contact to external reality it might just be a living hell. To end up a disembodied human brain may well be to suffer a fate worse than death."

Last month, Yale University announced it had successfully resurrected the brains of more than 100 slaughtered pigs and kept them alive for up to 36 hours.

Scientists said it could pave the way for brain transplants and may one day allow humans to become immortal by hooking up our minds to artificial systems after our natural bodies have perished. 

In LOST, viewers were conflicted about who, what, where and how the main characters were interacting with each other on an island that was not an island (where the laws of physics and smoke monsters roamed). Immortality was seen through Jacob, who shipwrecked as a baby on the island during Roman times. The Man in Black appears as an immortal smoke monster savagely imposing judgment on humans. Even the character of Michael appears to be trapped as a "whisper" on the island as a soul that cannot move on in the after life.

The idea that LOST could have been merely a network of reanimated brains now has a thread of truthful basis in current science. And the nightmare of being trapped on an island hell is what Mr. Curtis alludes to in his criticism of the experiment's potential outcome.

RELATIVE

Scientists have used Einstein's Theory of Relativity to calculate how time is measured in deep space flights. The conclusion is itself a paradox. For a deep space mission, the astronauts may age much more slowly traveling at the speed of light. For example, they may age 28 years on a light speed travel across the universe, but return to Earth 1,300 years later.

The fact that deep space travel can cause a return trip to take 1,300 years in "local" time explains why aliens have never returned to Earth.

Another factor in deep space travel is that human beings do not do well with forces over 1 g. We are basically water bags that can pop under pressure. Scientists think the best deep space travelers would be spiny, thin, small alien grays.

As private space firms have advertised in their speculative missions to colonize Mars, even solar system space travel is a one way street.  If you plan to go out into deep space, the chance of your returning home is near zero.

Which brings us to a hypothesis in LOST.

Some believe the island may have been some lost alien space craft. If true, then Jacob, the island guardian would have been the alien pilot and his brother his co-pilot. If these space aliens came from a distant solar system with advanced technology, they could have crash landed on Earth without the means of repairing their ship.

The clues of being space aliens comes in the form of their physical presence. Jacob and especially MIB appear to be shape-shifting smoke monsters. They can change their physical structure, morph into human beings or monsters. This would make sense for deep space travelers to avoid the pitfalls of human bodies. If these alien travelers were not humanoids but energy beings, they could survive deep space flight.

A further clue on the island aliens is that Jacob's narrative that people who come to the island are from "shipwrecks."  This mirrors his own situation. By bringing people to the island looking for a solution to his problem, Jacob cleverly puts the humans in the same position he is in: lost, looking for a way "home."

And the human beings brought to the island have been a clever bunch. Dharma and the military brought vast resources including nuclear technology and experimentation on electromagnetic properties including time travel. Perhaps these Earth technologies were being used to try to re-boot the space craft island so Jacob could indeed return "home" as MIB kept saying to the castaways. But MIB continues to get frustrated with the humans who want to take their advanced technology and use it to increase their own power on Earth. In order to control them, Jacob and MIB use human history of "gods" including borrowing ancient Egyptian rites, to control the humans on the island.

In essence, the series concludes not with the humans getting home, but the aliens finding a way to end their existence on a distant planet far away from their home. After centuries of failed attempts to get their ship technology working, Jacob and MIB apparently release themselves from their species protections (the immortality we saw during the show) in order to cease to exist. In that way, their alien technology does not corrupt the Earth society as they had found humans to be barbaric and crude in their emotional states.

BRAIN HACK

With so many unanswered questions about LOST, time have given latent fans more science information to construct new theories about the show.

A new study published in eLife journal states that scientists have developed a way to remotely control your brain. By controlling the brain, scientists can send messages to your muscles that the person does not authorize. 

The experiment was done on a small scale but it has big implications.  Scientists stated that they were even able to prompt their test subject to run, freeze in place, or even completely lose control over their limbs. 

The effort, led by physics professor Arnd Pralle, PhD, of the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences, focused on a technique called “magneto-thermal stimulation.” It’s not exactly a simple process — it requires the implantation of specially built DNA strands and nanoparticles which attach to specific neurons — but once the minimally invasive procedure is over, the brain can be remotely controlled via an alternating magnetic field. When those magnetic inputs are applied, the particles heat up, causing the neurons to fire.

The study included experiments where were performed on mice. Using the new technique, the researchers were able to control the movement of the animals, causing them to freeze, lock up their limbs, turn around, or even run.

Despite only being tested on mice, the research could have far-reaching implications in the realm of brain research. This research could very well be an important step towards that future for neurological treatments and re-stabilization of movement for paraplegics.

It is interesting to note that the methods used in this research mimic some of the plot points in LOST. Dharma used human experimentation as a means of control. Surgical implants and mind control rooms were shown to have been used by Ben to control the Others and the 815 survivors. The idea of electromagnetic research to alter brain activity was a theme in series.

By piecing these elements together, one could forge a theory about the island's role in the characters development. If one can control a person's movements through DNA infusions (remember the virus plot line with Clarie?) with EM transmissions (which was the Swan station control center), the next level of experimentation would be using this system to manipulate mental processes as well as physical actions.

For example, the mad Russian Mikal happened to throw himself in the path of bullets and explosions at the whim of Ben. Perhaps, it was involuntary. Ben could have been controlling him through EM/DNA. Over time, he had to submit his free will to serve his master. 

The theme of free will and character choices were strong in the show. But certain power brokers like Ben and Widmore used mental manipulation to control people. But a scientific way to control people would be more efficient. Hacking a person's brain to manipulate their will and values would have been a powerful tool that anyone seeking power would want to possess.

INCARNATE

Every major religion has a creation myth that has elements of gods creating human beings on Earth. Several religions also believe that once a person dies, their spirit will be reincarnated into another person (or form).

The ancient Egyptians had a complex view of reincarnation. Their belief system is founded on two gods coming to Earth to begat mankind. The subsequent Pharaohs were believed to be the reincarnated souls of those original gods. Since they were gods, Pharaohs ruled with impunity.

But the incarnate god was not reserved just for royalty. The Egyptians believed that when a person died, his "ba," the spirit associated with one's character and personality, leaves the body to find a new vessel in which to be reborn. The souls of the departed continue to return to new bodies for an infinite cycle.

There have been several research papers on the subject. Scientists interviewed various people from different parts of the globe who claimed to have remembered clear details of their past lives. Scientists then would take this information and try to independently verify the recalled facts. In several instances, researchers concluded that the interviewees remembered things that they could have not known (personal information, names of relatives, phone numbers, houses, etc) that were not accessible to them in the present time.

There has always been a puzzle when reproduction happens in people. When the egg and sperm fuse, historically it was said there is a "spark of life," some form of energy which gives rise to fertility to the newborn. Theorists think that spark of energy may be a soul that the fuels the rebirth of a spirit.

On the other extreme, in the realm of B-movie sci-fi, science knows of all the elements of a human body, its chemical composition and structure. In theory, what is missing from the base elements is a form of electrical current that makes the human organs (including brain) function. In Frankenstein, the mad scientist uses lightning bolts to jump start "life" in a corpse. This "re-animation" is different than reincarnation since the former tries to re-use the old vessel to bring back a person's life.

It is not as far fetched as one would assume since emergency room personnel routinely revive cardiac arrest patients with electric stimulation. But in the re-animation world, it is assumed that the brain functions as a storage device for all memories, personality, speech, etc like a turned off hard drive. Turning the brain back on would revive that person's personality.

But the Egyptian view would say no. The dead person's character and personality is not located in the brain but in the spirit (or soul) of the individual. And once the person dies, their soul leaves the body so re-animation will not work.

In the Egyptian dead scrolls, it is said that the deceased spirits have to journey through the underworld to be judged before being reborn. And since one spirit can be reborn more than once, the journey could be fraught with danger.

In LOST, the island could be a representative underworld where souls travel to begin their journey to the after life. This would explain why certain characters, Mikhail Bakunin, could apparently die over and over again on the island. It could also explain how Desmond survived the Swan station implosion to be found naked wandering around the jungle (symbolic "reborn.")

One of the story principles in the series was giving the characters "a second opportunity" in life. Reincarnation would be a means to give a person (especially a tortured soul like Locke) a new beginning, a new life.

BRAIN HACK

Gizmondo reports that rapid developments in brain-machine interfacing and neuroprosthetics are revolutionizing the way we treat paralyzed people, but the same technologies could eventually be put to more generalized use—a development that will turn many of us into veritable cyborgs. Before we get to that point, however, we’ll need to make sure these neural devices are safe, secure, and as hacker-proof as possible.

Researchers from the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering in Geneva Switzerland have published a new Policy Forum paper to raise awareness of this new breed of neurotechnologies, and the various ways they can be abused. Importantly, the researchers come up with some ways to mitigate potential problems before they arise.

No doubt, work in neurotech is proceeding apace. Researchers are developing brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) that are enabling quadriplegics to move prosthetic limbs by using their own thoughts to patients who cannot communicate normally to spell out messages from mental impulses. With each passing breakthrough, we’re learning a little bit more about the brain and how it works. Most importantly, these tools are giving agency and independence back to amputees and paralyzed individuals.

Ghost in the Shell is a anime that broke new science fiction ground by imagining a world where human beings routinely implanted cybernetic modules to enhance their physical limitations. An individual with a cyberbrain could connect to the world wide web easier than logging in your social media site.

Just as Star Trek spawned many 21st Century inventions (including the iPad and smart phone hand held communication devices), the concept of technology upgrades to human beings is driving medical research and development.

There were numerous theories about what LOST was about. A few believed that the entire program was a fantasy inside the head of an individual(s), whether it be a coma patient, a dying patient, a mentally ill person or a computer simulation (like Avatar immersion.)

If one can access the human brain (which still is the most complex organic "computer" known to man), then in theory it is possible to hack it. We hack the brain all the time. When we use simple aspirin, we are hacking the brain's pain receptors to shut down. When we use recreational drugs, we hack the brain's pleasure zones to produce highs.

So it is theoretically possible to hack a human brain to take over or control the human mind. And once that occurs, one could send messages, images, sensations to a person's conscious state that could include everything that we saw in LOST.

Would such a program have any therapeutic effect? Maybe. If you had an individual who was unable to move, communicate or in a vegetative state, some people (parents) may want to have them (their child) at least "experience" humanity even if it is not reality but an elaborate illusion. Even elaborate illusions can create strong memories. For example, people still fondly recall when they first saw the original Star Wars movie.

If LOST was merely a study in character development, then a computer simulation run through a normal or abnormal subject could lead to interesting results, like all the story lines in the show.

THE CURSE OF THE PHARAOHS

The curse of the pharaohs refers to an ancient alleged curse believed by some to be cast upon any person who disturbs the tomb of an Egyptian person, especially a pharaoh or king. This curse, which does not differentiate between thieves and archaeologists, allegedly can cause bad luck, illness or death. Since the mid-20th century, many authors and documentaries have argued that the curse is real in the sense of being caused by scientifically explicable causes such as bacteria or radiation.

When a tomb is opened after hundreds of years, it contains dust and bacteria that have not seen the light of day. Those bacteria or dust can contain pathogens that modern man has no immunity form.

The Book of the Dead contained passages to ward off people from disturbing the tombs. Religious beliefs stated that those possessions in the deceased chambers were needed in the afterlife. Grave robbers knew that the rich were buried with vast treasures of gold, silver and gems.

The curse legend grew in the 1920s and 1930s when Howard Carter's archeology team uncovered the best tomb of all time, King Tut's. After excavating the tomb, several members of the team died mysterious deaths, one from a mosquito bite and one from blood poisoning.

For those who still seek a unified theory to LOST's mythology, the curse theory may be the one.

The island was filled with Egyptian references, including columns of hieroglyphs in the Temple to Jacob's textiles. And if you review LOST's elements as an allegory to ancient Egyptian rituals and practices, you can weave a good theory.

In order to protect a pharaoah's afterlife, he would have gathered loyal subjects, his priests, to make continuous offerings and to protect his tomb from raiders. These priests were powerful men in society. Many were viewed to have magical properties and direct contact with the gods.

When people do not understand what they see, they call it magic or supernatural.  The magicians can use unknown science, illusion or slight of hand to deceive, manipulate or shock people. Some people know that one way to control people is to create chaos, fear or expectation of death.

We have Jacob as the island guardian. He is the high priest of the island. The island contains a temple - - - and temples were created for the specific purpose of burial of powerful people.

The smoke monster could be viewed as the deadly dust that is the manifestation of the curse for those foreigners who came to the island to disturb the temple rites.

Why did Jacob allow people to come to his island? Just as in ancient times, a pharaoh, dead or alive, needed subjects to protect him and his remains. The Flight 815 survivors could be unwittingly recruits for the pharaoh's subjects. They were placed in the way of raiders such as Widmore's men who wanted to take control (and plunder) the island.

One can see that the smoke monster's deaths were not indiscriminate. It killed people like Eko because he did not believe in the island's religion. He was wrapped up in his brother's religion out of guilt. As such, Eko had no role in protecting the temple or the island. Eko was then expendable.

Likewise, converts like Locke were used to try to recruit loyal subjects to return to the island. When he failed, he was killed because he had no value to the island high priest.

The one concept that stood the test of the series was that the island had to be protected (from the unknown). That was the reason and excuse for all the conflicting behaviors and story lines. 

Just as in Egyptian mythology, the smoke monster may have evolved to rival the high priest - - - to overthrow him to create his new cult. That is why Flocke did not kill Widmore's men in mass; he used the alleged conflict between the sides in order to oust Jacob from his position of power. Flocke's background was one of science (MIB was into Roman culture and technology as a young man) while Jacob was schooled in the metaphysics of religious beliefs tied to the island's mysterious past. The theme of science vs. religion was common in the series. It seems that it was tested at various stages in time, from the military coming to the island to challenge the inhabitants to Dharma's uneasy truce with the natives. There were two different views of the island. One was to keep the religious tenets in place (Jacob). The other was to abandon the old ways (MIB) and abandon the island.

In some ways, the latter prevailed just like it did in Egypt. Egyptian cult religion or worship its pharaohs died off to be replaced with modern religions in a secular government structure (with intermittent civil wars and political upheaval.)

Just as modern archeology triumphed over the safeguards of tomb construction, LOST's major change was the loss of the island's long standing structure and purpose.

When it was said that the characters had to "let go" in order to be free, it could mean that they had to let go their own past personal principle structures (which commonly is called religious beliefs) in order to embrace their own free will and their thoughts on morality and mortality.

DARK MATTER WAVES

Physics is speeding toward finding theoretical particles and answers to universal questions.

Black holes are the dense gravitational objects that capture to not let light out. Scientists have found the mysterious "god particle," and evidence of gravitational waves (disruptions of the space-time) near black holes. The missing piece is called dark matter, which theorists believe makes up most of the gravity element in the universe. How all three of these things interact with each other is still not understood.

When most people think of time, it is a linear concept. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years . . .  a progression moving forward in an aging process.

When some scientists think of time, they think of it as a coordinate in space which could theoretically manipulated like folding origami paper. The sci-fi community knows this concept as "warp drive."

In order to conquer the vastness of space, physical propulsion will not work because the human life span will not allow deep space exploration. Brilliant minds insist there has to be another wave.

Tapping into the largest "resource" in space would help solve a propulsion question. If the universe is made up of mostly gravity. And if gravitational waves can be equated with waves on our oceans, it is possible that there may be deep space gravitational "currents" which can accelerate ships at great speeds across the galaxies.

Alien seed theorists believe that advanced humanoid races seeded the universe with proto-humans to allow them to evolve into civilizations. One could assume that enlightened elders would give their offspring the tools to solve complex problems - - - by applying known concepts and experiences to hypothetical problems. Therefore, the concepts of ships navigating on ocean currents can be an analogy to solve space travel. You just need to find comparable elements.

For if gravitational waves can be harnessed, then the concept of space time can be changed to artificially elongate human life spans. A human with an average life expectancy of 75 years could go through space time travel hundreds or thousands of years to experience something not possible from his Earth bound existence. Many theorists think that forward space time travel would be possible; but most think it is a one-way journey to the future.

If we look to the symbols in LOST, we can find some off-beat similarities to modern physics theories. The series "dark matter," was the mysterious black cloud of shifting matter. The Swan station's purpose of holding back a large electromagnetic charge from purple flashing the island can be viewed as a "wave" generator which shifts time and space of island inhabitants. The frozen donkey wheel was one such early generator as it took both Ben and Locke back in time and across the globe. And the island itself is symbolic of a black hole, so unique that it could not be viewed with the naked eye. It took an observation station and precise coordinates to find it.

Taken together, the island could have been a massive space-time travel experiment which may have been abandoned because of its inherit inability to be controlled by man.

BETWEEN SLEEP AND AWAKE

The little clue about being "awake," from something, still haunts theorists.

The debate focus is on whether the sideways world was real, paranormal, heavenly or an illusion.

Scientists are researching the mental condition which occurs just before a person wakes up from sleep. There is a distinct period where things can happen to a person: experience a paralysis nightmare or sleepwalk. The sleep paralysis occurs when your mind wakes up prior to your body. The sleepwalking occurs when your body wakes up before your mind.

History is littered with references to "demonic" sleep attacks. No one knew why people acted strangely. Since it was not normal, the explanation had to be it was paranormal. The content of hallucinations can often be thematically linked to the feeling of paralysis –  manifesting as visions of an intruder in the bed who is physically holding the sleeper down. Records of incidents attributable to sleep paralysis can actually be found throughout history, in different cultures,  dating back as far as 400 BC. Some blamed witchcraft and curses.

Sleep paralysis is when your limbs are frozen but your mind is dreaming about a terrible thing, for example, a monster attacking you. Your mind races its instincts to flee or fight back, but your body does not respond. That increases the fear one feels in the moment.

Science states that a person could be awake and been dreaming at the same time. Sleep disturbances include types of parasomnia,  the inability to move, these periods of wakeful paralysis are often accompanied with vivid multisensory hallucinations. Effectively, imagery from your dreams can actually intrude into your waking reality.

The precise physiological mechanisms that result in sleep paralysis are still not entirely understood. What is known is that, typically, when we dream, our actions are confined to our imagination. We all have a built-in safety mechanism, which you can think of as something like a circuit breaker; it effectively blocks your brain’s motor planning signals from becoming motor action signals. This mechanism prevents us from physically acting out the actions that we dream of making. Thus, when you’re being chased by a monster in a dream, you don’t actually rise up and charge into the bedroom wall, or evolutionarily-speaking, tumble out of your tree. However, our brains are highly complex systems, and, as such, are prone to the occasional glitch.

One example is sleepwalking, which occurs when the paralysis eases too early, while you’re still asleep. On the flip side, sometimes the paralysis lingers – even after you’ve awoken. This typically happens just on the threshold of sleep – either just as you’re waking up or just as you’re drifting off. You can be conscious, with your eyes open, but be completely unable to move your body. Again, this is a fairly common occurrence, but the experience can be understandably alarming.

Such problems may be a consequence of more general sleep disruption. Researchers have shown that sleep paralysis experiences can be induced in lab settings when subjects are repeatedly woken from deep sleep. Researchers believe that 50 percent of people will experience at least one episode in their lifetimes.
Why would a person's mind act in such a strange fashion? One theory is that sleeping might serve to ‘consolidate’ memories from our waking life. The brain is de-fragment its information just like a computer software program corrects disjointed stored files. 

In 2000, a team of scientists at Harvard Medical School reported that participants who played the video game Tetris would continually report seeing game-like imagery, the iconic falling blocks, just before falling asleep. Similar results have been obtained using other types of video games.  This evidence has been used to support the idea that sleeping might serve to ‘consolidate’ memories from our waking life - consolidation is term that refers to the process of reinforcing and strengthening newly created memories. Experiments have demonstrated that people who are given memory-based tasks will perform better if they’re given the opportunity to sleep after learning. It seems as though after we’ve been engaged in a learning task, our minds might be using sleep as a sort of rehearsal space to practice problems.

But the sleep disturbances occur when the normal sleep process (and its mental sorting process) goes out of whack.

There is an old saying that you should never wake up a sleepwalker. It would be too traumatic for them to wake away from their resting place. People have had actual conversations with sleepwalkers. The idea that a person can be living in two "different states," awake and asleep is part of the issue with the LOST mythology paradoxes.

Were the main characters always awake? They were rarely shown sleeping - - - or was that purposeful to mimic the projection of a dream state. Why were clues such as "Illusion" on the name of a boat so clear at major story points? Why were Egyptian symbols of the dead used so often?

It begs the question of whether the characters were in some sort of "in-between" state of existence: partially awake (which accesses their personality traits) and partially asleep (which accesses their memories, fears, desires, emotions, etc.). Science research is beginning to think that there is such a place in daily human life.

COMPUTER FUSION

Several theories describe the possibility that LOST was merely a technological construct of digital ties in the brain or brains of the main characters. A neuro-network fused together to share dreams, memories, fears and nightmares. The island story was merely the expunged data of a wired community in a bizarre experiment.

These theories may not be that far fetched after all. Science is continuing to press computer technology to new limits. Currently, it is trying to be integrated more into every person's daily life. From powerful hand held smart phones to wearable technology (like fit bracelets), humans are being merged into data collectors.

Google's Director of Engineering, Ray Kurzweil, who has made 147 predictions since the 1990s and has a success rate of 86 per cent, stated recently in a Daily Mail (UK) article that within the next 12 years the human brain will be directly connected to computers.

Kurzweil says when we live in a cybernetic society we will have computers in our brains and machines will be smarter than human beings.  He claims this is already happening with technology - especially with our addiction to our phones - and says the next step is to wire this technology into our brains.

Technological singularity is when carbon and silicon-based intelligence will merge to form a single global consciousness. "By 2029, computers will have human-level intelligence," Kurzweil said in the  interview with SXSW.

He believes that implanting computers in our brains will improve us."We're going to get more neocortex, we're going to be funnier, we're going to be better at music. We're going to be sexier," he said. 

But once computers are integrated directly into a person's brain, people can be networked like machines. The fantasy world of Ghost in the Shell seems to be the premise of this scientific research.  People will have the option of swapping their internal organs with sophisticated machine parts. 

But this begs to ultimate question: would this end our humanity?

THE BASIS OF LOST

One of the grand mysteries to unify the LOST mythology is the scientific key to help explain everything and everyone.

If we turn to science and what could induce human behavior, we find one portion of the brain that many have deemed the gateway to the soul.

René Descartes once described the pineal gland as “the principal seat of the soul.” Though medical knowledge has vastly progressed since then, here are a few things you might not have known about this critical organ. It was recognized as an important organ since the time of the ancient Greeks (130-210 CE).

Descartes was fascinated with the pineal gland, considering it “the place in which all our thoughts are formed.” Scientists now credit that function to the neocortex.

Descartes thought that within the pineal gland, "tiny animal spirits" were like “a very fine wind, or rather a very lively and pure flame,” feeding life into the many small arteries that surround the gland. This was likely due to his abysmal understanding of anatomy and physiology.

The pineal gland was commonly dubbed the "third eye"  for many reasons, including its location deep in the center of the brain and its connection to light. Mystic and esoteric spiritual traditions suggest it serves as a metaphysical connection between the physical and spiritual worlds. 

It is a tiny gland, located very deep in the center of the brain. It gets its name from its pine cone-like shape, (French pinéal, or "like a pine cone"), itself from the Latin for pine cone (pinea). However, at about one-third of an inch long in adults, it's smaller than your average pine cone.

Though located in your brain, the pineal gland is actually a crucial part of your endocrine system   which regulates major bodily processes such as growth, metabolism, and sexual development through the release and control of hormones. The gland translates nerve signals from the sympathetic nervous system into hormone signals.

Because the pineal gland was the last of the endocrine structures to be discovered, scientists considered it a "mystery organ."  Today, we know that unlike much of the rest of the brain, the pineal gland is not isolated from the body by the blood-brain barrier system.

As scientists have learned more about the functions of the pineal gland, they’ve learned it synthesizes the hormone melatonin from the neurotransmitter serotonin. Melatonin production determines your sleep-wake cycles and is purely determined by the detection of light and dark. The retina sends these signals to a brain region known as the hypothalamus, which passes them on to the pineal gland. The more light your brain detects, the less melatonin it produces, and vice versa. Melatonin levels are highest at night to help us sleep.
 
Melatonin inhibits the release of pituitary reproductive hormones, known as gonadotropins, from the pituitary gland,  affecting male and female reproductive organs. In this way, melatonin—and therefore the pineal gland—regulates sexual development.

In the LOST mythology, many key plot points can be related back to the pineal gland: the gateway to the soul; the third eye (which connects to ancient Egyptian rituals); animal spirits (such as Hurley's bird or the smoke monster); and the hormonal relationship (sex) between male and female characters (including the fears, lack of growth or social development). There was also the cross-connection between the physical and metaphysical in regard to being in two places apparently at the same time (the island and the sideways world).  Since the pineal is a center for both growth and metabolism, it is a life and death organ. Any disruption of the gland function can cause serious health problems.

Depression, peptic ulcers, and sexual dysfunction may be exacerbated by a deficiency of melatonin. Stress and dietary habits may lead to deficiencies of both serotonin and melatonin. Melatonin inhibits the release of cortisol via the release of vasotocin. Abnormal circadian rhythms of cortisol may occur in states of decreased melatonin. A circannual rhythm of melatonin has troughs associated with peaks in the incidence of peptic ulcers and psychotic depression.

The pineal gland secretes a single hormone—melatonin (not to be confused with the pigment melanin). This simple hormone is special because its secretion is dictated by light. Researchers have determined that melatonin has two primary functions in humans—to help control your circadian (or biological) rhythm and regulate certain reproductive hormones.

A body's  circadian rhythm is a 24-hour biological cycle characterized by sleep-wake patterns. Daylight and darkness help dictate your circadian rhythm. Light exposure stops the release of melatonin, and in turn, this helps control your circadian rhythms.

 

Melatonin secretion is low during the daylight hours and high during dark periods, which has some influence over your reaction to photoperiod (the length of day versus night). Naturally, photo period affects sleep patterns, but melatonin’s degree of impact over sleep patterns is disputed.

 

But the theme of dark vs. light was apparent in the LOST world. The fact that a person cannot sleep can lead to fatigue, memory loss, confusion and mental problems. When one's sleep pattern is disrupted to the point that the person cannot tell between day time and night time, serious brain function can be inhibited including memory and reason.

 

Pineal tumors may manifest symptoms from the blockage of the flow of fluids to the gland which can cause some of the common presenting symptoms of these tumors, which including headaches, nausea, vomiting, seizures, memory disturbances and visual changes. These elements were present in LOST by the fact that many characters saw non-island visions (Jack's father, Kate's horse), headaches and bloody noses to seizures (the island effect that killed Charlotte) and the memory losses (or lack of learning the characters showed during the island time). 

 

In aging, the gland may begin to harden like calcium in the the development of teeth. Science studies indicate that this may cause memory loss or dementia.

If one was going to form a scientific theory to base the LOST premise, the pineal gland would be an good choice. The damage or disorder of the gland could explain many of the LOST elements. From that point, one could speculate that the main characters had pineal gland issues which caused memory disturbances and acute dementia. This could be the basis for any mental issue theory to explain the premise of LOST: the hidden mental states of group patients suffering from similar diseases, linked together by a trial study or protocol (the images of the Dharma institute probing them).

MAN OR MACHINE

In 1973, a movie called Westworld captured the sci-fi world with its realistic but imaginative look at an artificial intelligence based theme resort. The concept has rebooted itself in an HBO series.

In the original movie, guests could chose to live out their sexual pleasures in either a Wild West town (filled with brothels, prostitutes, drunks and gunslingers) or at a Roman orgy (with its own backstabbing senators, harlots and slaves).

The sci-fi foundation for the movie (adapted from Michael Crichton’s popular book) was that advanced robotics would come to recreate the human body to almost flawless perfection. The skin, eyes, pores, hair and features would look and feel real. The artificial brain would be almost as fast as a human brain. The last leap would be whether the androids would find a consciousness in their programs.

The drama unfolds when the robots malfunction. The gunslinger goes on a killing rampage when its "do not harm guests" governor malfunctions.

It is a classic trope of machines taking their program intelligence into conscious rage against their human creators.

This does go back to one theory of LOST. A few viewers believed that the island itself was a Westworld-type creation. It contained human robots interacting with "guests" in an adventure theme park setting. The theme was a cross between Survivor and Robinson Caruso. Two teams, the 815ers and the Others, battled to control the island. Each team was filled with robots to churn the game activity.

One example was Patchy, the Other who apparently died several times during the series. Yet, he continued to pop up to turn a story line gruesome. He was like the gunslinger in Westworld who continually got gunned down by a guest, only to return after repairs.

There is no clear distinction between who were the "guests" and who were the android game players. One could assume flight attendant Cindy was an android as an Other she mixed with both groups. One could think Jacob was also robotic. Even though his body was burned to cinders, he appeared again to the 815ers in human form to guide them on their island decisions. Even Desmond, who was jolted in the EM machine, and had program glitches (his visions) could be considered an android prop in the storylines. Even Locke would be considered a hapless robot since his form was found dead in the Ajira hold at the same time he was walking the island (with new character program of Flocke).

If you put LOST into the context of a Westworld sci-fi world, it does add some unique "what ifs" in the mythology of the series.

TIME TRAVEL THEORY

According to Stephen Hawking, there are plausible explanations for no paradox in time travel:

“A possible way to reconcile time travel, with the fact that we don't seem to have had any visitors from the future, would be to say that it can occur only in the future. In this view, one would say space-time in our past was fixed, because we have observed it, and seen that it is not warped enough, to allow travel into the past.”

Carl Sagan made a similar argument during a NOVA interview in the 1990s: “Maybe backward time travel is possible, but only up to the moment that time travel is invented. We haven't invented it yet, so they can't come to us. They can come to as far back as whatever it would be, say A.D. 2300, but not further back in time.”

So, time travel may indeed be possible, but you can’t go back any further than the point at which the time machine was first invented in the space-time line.

This line of reasoning would mean that there would be little chance of a time traveling paradox - - - i.e. going back in time to kill Hitler before World War II. But it also stops future paradoxes since the time traveler would not not what the future holds when he arrives in the future so he cannot change it. But perhaps, his mere presence in the future would cause changes that could alter the future - - - but then, is his arrival already part of that future time line?

The Hawking-Sagan reasoning was not applied in LOST. The characters quickly time skipped to the past (1970s) and to the future-present. There was no logical or systemic way the island took only a few characters along for the time ride, while leaving others in different time periods in the same place. In LOST's time travel loops, it is more likely that there were not truly time-space jumps but hallucinations, simulations, vivid dreams or laboratory rat experiments to challenge and change the main characters behaviors.

WE ARE ALONE, FOR NOW

The Washington Post recently had a story about a question that humans have pondered forever: where are the other intelligent beings in the universe?

Italian physicist Enrico Fermi once famously exclaimed "Where is everybody!" “Scientists have been trying to answer his question with this logic: we exist, so aliens should exist too.

According to one new solution, we have not seen or heard from any galactic neighbors because we are still waiting for them to be born. And it will, according to the calculations, be a long time before we can throw other solar systems a baby shower. If you grade earthlings on a cosmic curve, as recently hashed out by Harvard and Oxford University astrophysicists, we’re at the head of the class.

And this done make some common sense. In school, we learned the basics about our universe. And we were told about the Big Bang Theory, that the center of the known universe exploded outward to form all the mineral, chemical and cosmic properties (galaxies, stars, comets, etc.) Earth sits at the outer edge of the center of the universe. When science has been trying to find other life, they direct their telescopes and listening devices towards the center. But should not they be pointing them at the sides of the Earth's outer edge - - - to systems as old as our solar system?

A new study published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics calculated the probability that life as we know it should exist at any given point in the universe. Based on their assumptions, Earthly life is quite likely premature.

By the standards of the universe, humans are some of the earliest intelligent life around. You may have heard of ancient aliens on basic cable television. But, according to cosmic probability, the ancient aliens are us.

For life as we know it to arise, organisms require three things: carbon-based chemistry, liquid water and an energy source. The most crucial source of all three requirements is a star. Stars  fuse protons and electrons into carbon and other elements; stars heat up water in the so-called habitable zone and stars provide a steady sunny stream of radiation. Scientists scan the solar systems to find the right combination of star, planet distance and likelihood of water to see if it possible for organic life.

Stars play such an important role in our understanding of life that they dominate the researchers’ equation. The scientists’ timeline begins about 30 million years after the Big Bang happened, which as far as we can tell was 13.8 billion years ago. Their timeline ends far in the future due to the long-lasting red dwarf stars, which have lengthy wicks that burn for roughly 10 trillion years. (A yellow dwarf, by comparison, has a only 10 billion years of fuel.

Crucially, what red dwarf stars also have going for them is strength in numbers. The Milky Way is filled with red dwarfs. About three-quarters of all the stars in the galaxy are red dwarfs.

Our sun is not a red dwarf. It is a rarer thing, a yellow dwarf, a star 10 times more massive but one that will flare out much sooner. That we exist around a yellow dwarf, per the scientists’ equation, makes us the true space oddities.

So if Earth humans are the only intelligent life in the universe, why did our ancient ancestors almost universally say that the planet was seeded by alien beings? Why do most religions believe in a creation story of extraworldly gods and angels creating mankind? 

It could be the natural curiosity hard wired into the human brain - - - ancient humans looking up at the stars in the sky may have asked the same question as Fermi. We cannot be alone in the vastness of space.

Human beings also have a sense and need to belong to a bigger group, a family and a community. At a planetary level, that need stills exists. Ancient ancestors were wandering nomads scraping by a subsistence existence. They were one with nature and nature was bigger than them. And when small bands of people found other people in their journeys, it solidified the notion that they were not alone in this world. Communication and trade of ideas and beliefs would reinforce the global notion that there has to be life in the magical stars.

Scientists are still searching for confirmation of that magic in the stars.

CRITICAL SCIENCE

Some researchers now see popular ideas like string theory and the multiverse as highly suspect. These physicists feel our study of the cosmos has been taken too far from what data can constrain with the extra "hidden" dimensions of string theory and the unobservable other universes of the multiverse. Of course, there are many scientists who continue to see great promise in string theory and the multiverse. But, as researchers wrote in the New York Times last year, it all adds up to muddied waters and something some researchers see as a "crisis in physics."

Some scientists believe this crisis is real — and it's acute. They pull no punches in their sense that the lack of empirical data has led the field astray. As they put it:

"Science is corrupted when it abandons the discipline of empirical validation or dis-confirmation. It is also weakened when it mistakes its assumptions for facts and its ready-made philosophy for the way things are."

Fraud in academics is not new. One of the reasons that spawns concerns is that huge government education grants target specific research which may bias independent research.

For example, global warming studies have sent billions of research dollars into academia. However, critics view scientists creating their own "computer models" to study the Earth's temperature defy one of science's fundamental processes: observation, recordation, interpretation, and thesis. If you start with a pre-determined scientific thesis, you work backwards in order to create a result.

If the Earth is warming, the vast majority of funded scientists claim it is man made pollution or CO2 emissions (which have to contained, regulated and taxed by the same governments funding the studies). But these studies fail the third grade smell test. Who did not learn in elementary school that the climate of our planet is determine by the solar radiation of the sun, the orbit of the Earth and tilt of its axis? None of those factors are tested in current climate studies.

And the studies send alarm bells to the general public who are not told that the Earth has had cycles of warm periods and cold periods (including ice ages). The dinosaurs that lived in tropical climates that people visit at museums were dug up in currently chilly Montana.

Another example is the daily headline that some study has found something GOOD for your health or something is BAD for your health. You have to look to the fine print to find out who funded the study. If a manufacturing or product lobbying group funded the research with a "pro" conclusion, there may be serious bias built in the result. Or if a study claims "meat" is toxic death but it was funded by a vegan environmental group, you have to take the results with a grain of salt.

Science needs critical thinking in order to make real breakthroughs.

If big pharma companies continue to poor millions in R&D to help symptoms of disease (with numerous side effects), they are not looking for a cure for the underlying disease. There are still only a handful of actual vaccines for known diseases. It is odd that with the advancement in medical technology that more cures have not been found.

Some believe that genetic and DNA manipulation are the keys to finding breakthrough medical treatments. But none of the basic childhood vaccines needed genetic testing in order to be found and manufactured for the masses.

Many of the cures were found by scientists and physicians who were looking for a solution to solve a real life problem in their practices. They were not out to make money but to make a contribution to public health. It may be a sentimental folly to ask that today's researchers shed their green colored visors to look for the greater good when there is so much money to be made in modern medicine.

LIFE AFTER DEATH

Typically, when a person’s heart stops beating, they’re pronounced dead. But don’t tell that to their genes, some of which only come to life two days after they’ve kicked the bucket.

In fact, hundreds of genes suddenly started churning out messenger RNA, which sends a signal to various cellular machines to start making the stuff of life, such as proteins. Peter Noble and Alex Pozhitkov, both at the University of Washington, discovered this life-after-death scenario in mice and zebrafish. They released their results recently on the BioRxiv, a prepublication server.

Some of our genes don't peak in activity until after we die (though not in these people—they're taking part in a disaster response simulation).

 

Anna Williams, reporting for New Scientist:

Hundreds of genes with different functions “woke up” immediately after death. These included fetal development genes that usually turn off after birth, as well as genes that have previously been associated with cancer. Their activity peaked about 24 hours after death.

For most genes, overall mRNA levels should decrease over time after death. However, in 548 zebrafish genes and 515 mouse genes, mRNA levels peaked after death. This meant that the decaying bodies had enough excess energy for these genes to switch on and continue functioning long after the animal died.

The big question following these findings is why these specific genes turn on after the heart has stopped beating. One hypothesis, Noble and Pozhitkov said, is that the body using the last of its energy to heal itself, similar to what happens while someone is alive.

The second hypothesis researchers have for why this may be happening has to do with how DNA unravels following death.

It takes time for the DNA to be unraveled by proteins called histones, according to Noble. As it unravels, genes that were previously silent, such as those involved in embryological development, may become active again as the genes that are used to suppress them break down.

“You’d think that when something dies, that everything would be turned off and everything would be silent, but that’s not the case,” Noble told NOVA Next. “In complex organisms, when we suddenly die, it takes awhile for the [DNA] complexes to break down, and they reach many barriers.”

Though the study focused on mice and zebrafish, the two organisms are commonly used in genetic studies as models for humans.

These findings could change the way that organ transplants are handled.

For example, liver transplant patients tend to have much higher rates of cancer, and up until now this was thought to be an immune response.

“Our results suggest it may not be [an immune response],” Noble said. “It may be just the fact that cancer genes are turned on at death as a natural phenomenon.”

With this knowledge, scientists could test an organ for active cancer genes before transplant occurs, drastically reducing the chances of cancer in the new recipient.

DIFFERENTIAL TIME

Scientists are perplexed by the fact that our Milky Way galaxy is traveling significantly faster than the two adjacent galaxies.  Under the Big Bang Theory, all matter should be traveling away from the initial core at the same velocity. However, there is something at work that makes our galaxy behave differently. Some call the unknown mechanism "the Great Attractor," pulling us faster than our neighbors.

Some speculate that it may be a concentration of dark matter or dark energy that is the force that is moving galaxies around like ping pong balls in a steady breeze. Others think it may have to do with gravitational pulls from unknown objects or forces that create gravity itself.

If we know that our system is traveling faster in space, thence faster in space-time, than another galaxy, that would mean that travel in space (and the time to travel in space) is not universally linear.

It is one of those wordy math problems about two trains leaving the station at the same time, but traveling at different speeds but having different stops. Which trains arrives at the end station first?

But this has a place in LOST lore. Daniel's time-rocket experiments from the freighter to the island showed that the island was moving away from the ship. Which was a problem for a stationary island. If island time, and Daniel observed the light being "different," was moving at a different rate than the rest of Earth, we have the same problem as scientists have with the Milky Way issue.

The localized time difference led to theories about the island being an anomaly. It was either a space-time portal, or on event horizon of a stable micro-black hole. It was also thought as an interdimensional bridge between universes.

If there are parallel universes, what type of matter would be between its layers? Is this the area where dark matter resides?  Does the parallel universes masses have gravitational pulls through the separation zones into our own universe (thus explaining the speed differences between galaxies)?

If you look at Earth itself, its crust sits mostly stationary on the surface while tectonic plates are moved about through the pressure and movement of the hot magma at the planet's core.  If our universe sits on the crust of known space, the parallel universe's forces could be equated with the subsurface geologic properties which have a direct effect on the surface plates.

If the Milky Way is traveling at 2.2 million km/hour in space, why do we feel time is a slow 60 minutes in an hour? Our perception of time comes from the solar cycle of the sun around our planet. We do not feel or sense that we are moving at speeds 2,500 times faster than a jet airliner because everything around us is traveling at the same relative speed. We only become aware of the differences in relative speed when something is slower or faster than our current position. When one is jogging at 1 mile/10 minutes and a bird flies by and zooms off into the distance, we know that the bird is traveling faster than we are at that moment. But if we are traveling 55 mph in a car and we overtake a bird flying down the road, we know that we are traveling faster than that creature.

The same must hold true in space. The Milky Way is the car and the neighboring galaxies are the birds being left behind in our wake.

But this opens up a practical question. If our galaxy is moving away faster from adjoining galaxies, would it not take more force, effort and time to move against the forces that is driving us a part? It would be swimming against a strong current.

If Einstein was correct and the speed of light is the fastest anything can go in space, would someone traveling to our galaxy make it quicker to us then us trying to travel to them?

And when would arrive at a place that is traveling slower in space time, would we have aged slower or become younger? It is an odd tangent that space travel could be the real "Fountain of Youth." Aging is a measure of the passage of time. But what happens when one reverses the process of time in the aging process? Do you become immortal? Is it like Eloise Hawking - - - or Bill Murray in Groundhog Day - - - being alive long enough to know everything?

But as NASA scientists have said, any trips to Mars would essentially be one-way missions. The amount of fuel to propel a massive space craft with supplies to set up living quarters on Mars would be prohibitive of a return trip. But even against that death sentence, thousands of people signed up for a private colonization of Mars. Why? Because they must believe their time on Earth is finite and uneventful while a trip to Mars would be immortal history of space exploration.

Did the LOST characters stumble upon a remnant of ancient space exploration disguised as the island? Perhaps. Nothing is outside the realm of possibility when it came to the divergent streams of show plot and story lines.

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.

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.

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.

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 magnetosphere, an invisible magnetic field surrounding our planet, is a critical shield for life on Earth. It protects us from all sorts of high energy particles emitted by the sun on a daily basis. When a particularly large burst of solar energy hits the edge of the magnetosphere (called the magnetopause), it can trigger space weather. This includes geomagnetic storms that light up the northern and southern skies with auroras, occasionally knocking out our satellites and power grids.

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.