HAWKING CONCEPTS

Stephen Hawking revealed a new theory at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. He claims to have potentially solved the Information Paradox. 

The paradox a conflict between the quantum mechanics and general relativity models that has vexed physicists for more than four decades. The Information Paradox arises from black holes - - -  specifically what happens to information about the physical state of objects that fall into one. 

The quantum mechanical model posits that the information remains intact while general relativity argues that it is indeed obliterated under the black holes immense gravitation. But Hawking has developed a third opinion: the information never actually makes it into the black hole. "I propose that the information is stored not in the interior of the black hole as one might expect, but on its boundary, the event horizon," he said.

Basically, Hawking argues that the information about particles sucked into the hole sit on the surface of the event horizon as holograms  (2D afterimages of a 3D object). 

"The idea is the super translations are a hologram of the ingoing particles," he told the crowd. "Thus they contain all the information that would otherwise be lost." What's more, that information can actually escape a black holes pull thanks to Hawking Radiation -- the concept that photons can sometimes be ejected from a black hole due to random quantum fluctuations.

Hawking further stated black holes are boundaries or gateways to another universe.

Humans could escape from black holes, rather than getting stuck in them, he stated.

Unfortunate space travelers won’t be able to return to their own universe, according to Hawking. But they will be able to escape somewhere else, Hawking said.

Black holes in fact aren’t as “black” as people thought and could be a way of getting through to an alternative universe.

“The existence of alternative histories with black holes suggests this might be possible,” Hawking said, according his report.  “The hole would need to be large and if it was rotating it might have a passage to another universe. But you couldn’t come back to our universe. So although I’m keen on space flight, I’m not going to try that.

Hawking’s proposal is an attempt to answer a problem that has tormented physicists about what happens to things when they go beyond the event horizon, where even light can’t get back. The information about the object has to be preserved, scientists believe, even if the thing itself is swallowed up — and that paradox has puzzled scientists for decades.

Now Hawking has proposed that the information is stored on the boundary, at the event horizon. That means that it never makes its way into the black hole, and so never needs to make its way out again either.


A paradox is a statement or proposition that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory.

It seems absurd or self-contradictory matter changes its status but not "information" when caught in the event horizon of a black hole. It would seem then there is a different cosmic physical state when at the edge of the gravitational pull. 

How would that work on organic objects. If the "information" is created to a holographic state of "being," then would the organic life forms still be "aware" of an existence? And if the "information" is stored on the event horizon, what actually transfers into the other universe?

We set this question out because of the paradox between the island time line and the sideways world (which was stated as a place of death.) But there was evidence in the Hatch that the countdown timer was a release mechanism to "escape" a place of death. It could be that the light source is the holographic projector of the human beings caught in the event horizon of a black hole. The "information" and matter of the human beings, in essence their personal life force, continues on trapped in a new reality which appears to be the island. 

How the trapped information which must wind and rewind like a video projector can interact or change is unclear. If the information on transformation is set in its final stage, then the LOST universe is merely a "replay" of past events. If the information on transformation is not set, and can change through the interaction with other newly trapped information holograms, then the LOST universe is a hybrid reality.

The Hawking concept could lend some support to the fan theorists believing that the island was part of black hole engulfing our solar system. The island could have been the "cork" or electromagnetic counter to the black hole's gravitational pull. But that does not explain the parallel time lines between the island and the sideways worlds.

In a multiple layered theory of Hawking's concepts, he may be actually trying to explain what spiritualists would call each individual's life force or soul making its journey to another level of existence.

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.)

EVENT HORIZONS

After composing the last post, and specifically the reference on how Dogen became trapped on the island through his "bargain" with Jacob, there may be another explanation on the concept of Time.

I recall detailed discussions with fellow posters during the series run about the question of time travel, time shifts and the unique electromagnetic properties. A few theorized that the FDW was a control mechanism for a tiny wormhole, which was the center of the island. The power of a wormhole to pull galaxies into its center is immense. To lose control over it would have been the literal end of the world.

Wormholes have strange physics. It is postulated that the edge of the wormhole there is an event horizon. Time and space act strangely in this area as the forces pull matter into the wormhole.

Since Dogen came to the island in a deal to save his son from certain death caused by his car accident, one could consider Dogen paying the penance of his bad act on the island, if the island was hell.  And if you start to look back at the big island players, everyone has something major to repent.

Instead of looking at Time as a linear concept, one should try to look at it as a whirlpool sucking people and their lives into its drain at the center.

Crazy Mom who stole Jacob from his mother was living her own personal hell on the island as the guardian. Her punishment for her sins must have been an eternity guarding the light source. It is a thankless job with no reward, not even death. Until she found her own loophole, finding a candidate, a sinner, to replace her. When Jacob killed his brother, he became that new sinner trapped in the island hell for eternity. That is why he continued to bring candidates to the island to succeed him. Alpert was a sinner most likely killed for his crimes (or died on a slave ship) who found his soul trapped in what he immediately thought was hell, and Jacob being the devil. Likewise, Dogen's story of giving up his life for his son's means that Dogen's soul had to go to a place of punishment, the island. Dogen served Jacob, but did not replace him. We then get the Dharma group, who may have done human experimentation and sinned against nature in the quest for new technologies. Horace found his demise and eventually became a ghost on the island. Then we have Flight 815 characters who each had their own sins to atone.

From this perspective, the island is like a toilet swirling the lives, memories and sins of various people toward their own personal end. As such, the various time line of personal events can interchange, cross connect and flow past each other in non-linear fashion. Each person's event horizon in the island hell is separate and distinct from the real world linear time line.

DIMENSIONAL THEORY

Another popular fan theory to explain LOST was that somehow Flight 815 went through a time-space portal during its flight from Sydney to LA.

Fan Theory: Flight 815 flew the vortex of a time-space portal which allowed it to crash land on an island in a different dimension.

Once the viewers were told that the island was capable of moving in both time and space, theorists speculated that the cause of the island's properties had to be beyond the confines of Earth physics. Some thought that the plane could have gone through a wormhole, and instantaneously traversed the galaxy to a parallel universe. In a similar vein, the portal or vortex moved the plane into an event horizon bubble near a wormhole that was fairly stable, but shifting within our known universe.

The idea that the castaways were released from the boundaries of nature was helpful to explain away the inconsistencies and paradoxes of the time travel arcs. It would have to have some bearing on the fact that the off-island world was a duplicate of the characters' prior lives. When the first glimpse of the sideways world came into existence, fans thought that was confirmation that the characters were somehow connected to different but parallel lives in two different universes.

That would also come into play with the mental instability of many characters. The longer one would have been connected to their "other self" in a different dimension, some of dementia could logically follow.

Scientists do not believe that wormholes are stable. It would tear a part any object, including space ships and people, just beyond the event horizon. Wormholes are capable of consuming entire galaxies.

Theoretical scientists and science fiction writers believe that there is nothing in our knowledge base to refute the possibility of multiple universes co-existing in the same space and time. For example, a digital television signal can contain several different channels broadcasting at the same time.

This theory is still discussed as a better explanation for the show's end game, if one tries to refute the clear statement that all the characters in the sideways church were dead. But what is "dead" in another universe? Are the rules the same or different? They must be different if the second universe's projection to our universe caused an island to disappear.

There were clues to the mechanics of a time-space portal in the series. In the frozen donkey wheel room, there were hieroglyphs which stated certain positions or "Earth gates." A gateway to another place or dimension, besides the teleportation to North Africa? It is possible. It follows ancient religions that stated that a person's soul must go on a journey to another world. It is possible that these different concepts were pooled together at some point to try to create a story line to try to end the show on some sci-fi bearing. But this line of thinking was never wrapped up into a coherent story.

A NEW SCIENCE THEORY

One of the things that kept us commentators up all night during the original series run was trying to find an explanation for the island time travel.

It still remains elusive.

The Alcubierre drive or Alcubierre metric  is a speculative idea based on a solution of Einstein's field equations in general relativity   as proposed by theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre, by which a spacecraft could achieve faster than light  travel if a configurable energy-density field lower than that of vacuum (example, negative mass) could be created. Rather than exceeding the speed of light within its local frame of reference,  a spacecraft would traverse distances by contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it, resulting in effective faster-than-light travel. This is the theory behind Star Trek warp drive.

Objects cannot accelerate to the speed of light within normal space time; instead, the Alcubierre drive shifts space around an object so that the object would arrive at its destination faster than light would in normal space.  Although the metric proposed by Alcubierre is mathematically valid in that it is consistent with the Einstein field equations, it may not be physically meaningful or indicate that such a drive could be constructed. The proposed mechanism of the Alcubierre drive implies a negative energy density  and therefore requires exotic matter,  so if exotic matter with the correct properties does not exist then it could not be constructed. However, at the close of his original paper.

Alcubierre based some of his ideas on  analyzing traversable wormholes  that the Casimir vacuum  between parallel plates could fulfill the negative-energy requirement for the Alcubierre drive. Another possible issue is that although the Alcubierre metric is consistent with general relativity, general relativity does not incorporate quantum mechanics, and some physicists have presented arguments to suggest that a theory of quantum gravity which merged the two theories would eliminate those solutions in general relativity which allow for backwards time travel of which the Alcubierre drive is one.

If one goes back to look at the numerous community posts on the subject, you would find references to the Casimir Effect, wormholes, warp drive spacecraft, as possible elements to the LOST time travel puzzle.

Dark energy appears to be the unknown substance that is a part of space itself; it is thought to explain why space is always expanding outward. To harness an energy like this is one of the theoretical basis for time travel since the expansion (or contraction) of space is the fundamental element of warp space drive.

The Fermi Lab has been colliding matter for years to create very small exotic matter through the burst of gamma rays. Gamma Rays are the greatest energy concentration force. However, capture, storage and application of gamma rays as an energy source is unproven. However, contact with other matter can generate electromagnetic fields. The faster than light speed could be accomplished when the dark energy or gamma rays come into contact with any other matter; the reaction between the two phases could generate more energy because it would come all the mass of the elements into pure energy.

Black holes have such intense gravity that, once inside their event horizons, not even light can escape. Outside of the event horizon,  the hole's intense gravity draws matter into a disk and raises it to very high energies. The disk emits lots of light on its own and sends out jets of high energy particles that emit even more as they interact with the surrounding interstellar material.

It was thought that the radiation emitted by the black hole starts driving off the surrounding matter, effectively cutting off its own food supply, called the Eddington limit. But now, researchers have found that the Eddington limit isn't an absolute cap on the amount of energy a black hole can emit out into its surroundings. Their observations suggest that this particular black hole sends out almost as much energy in the form of accelerated particles.

In theory, the use of pull of a wormhole or black hole with associated intense energy could create the warp bubble around a spacecraft. However, the math states that the encapsulated craft would need to be shielded from intense heat greater than that our the center of our sun.

If we start to piece together some of these elements, we can possibly see the light (literally and figuratively). The light cave may be in reality a gamma ray generator (natural or alien). The disruptive electromagnetic release (which destroyed the Hatch) is caused by the gamma rays to interact with other matter. The safeguard to keep the gamma ray generator and other matter from coming together could be the efficient placement of a tiny worm hole. A tiny wormhole in front of a spacecraft (or in this case, the island is the craft), could bend space time around these opposing fields to create time travel jumps.

I can guarantee that none of the LOST writers ever thought of this. The series did not dwell on scientific explanations. It relied on vague illusions. Their time skips were thrown out to create "separation" anxieties among the various surviving 815ers.