Relativity and Einstein-Minkowski Spacetime
I might have scared some away with the title, and its definitely physics centered. Ok… So….Hawking said that the island is always moving…in relativity, the island can be seen as having its own inertial reference frame independent of the rest of the world. We can be pretty sure that the island moves physically, and if it moves faster than the rest of the world, time inside the frame although seeming to move at normal speed to those inside the frame, would seem to be moving slower to those outside the frame…
this can easily explain the “payload” faraday tests when he first arrives on the island and the time difference shown, although it seemed to be flying at full speed. Using lorentz transformation, one could predict the speed the island is moving using the speed of the payload and time differences. So we know that daniel probably now knows this.
This may be a hint that faraday is the clever fellow who built the lampost, because he now knows how fast the island is moving… in space at least. I hope some people are still with me… because I might not be making the right conclusions because I wasn’t a physics major although I have always been supremely interested in it. Any other applications of this theory? I was originally going to include light cones in this discussion but my head exploded when I was researching them. Anyone else have a strong physics base that can help out?
Light cones?
As in: ‘The light doesn’t scatter just right’? (not an exact quote)
no… unfortunately not, light cones deal more with time and causality, also a big part of lost.
although gravity both affects time and light, it can bend and change both (crazy but true, atomic clocks on top of mountains vs. lowest point on earth show different times very slightly)
however I do not know how a difference in gravity wouldnt be felt unless its slight…
Are you saying that an atomic clock on the top of Olympus Mons (highest mountain in the solar system that I can think of) will run slower or faster than one at the bottom of the lowest trench on Mars?
If so THAT is amazing!
I really have to read more about quantum physics. Unfortunately I am not mathematically minded.
Do you understand what Physicist Daniel is going on about when he is talking about the quality of the light on the island?
I have been trying to figure out the relevance. Writers put that there for a reason (aside from the funny looks he gets from the other characters).
Looking foreward to finding out what the cones reference was about. Sounds interesting.
yes, that is exactly what I am saying. also people who go into space age slower (while in space) due to this fact. additionally, the faster you move, the slower time travels. supposedly light doesn’t “age”, i never got this exact point. but einstein was much smarter than I am.
try reading light cones on wiki, itll help a little. also… the light scattering can be due to gravity/ or the edge of the island acting like an atmosphere or lens. our own atmosphere bends and refracts light, which is why the sky is blue and sunsets have different colors. ALTHOUGH just thought of this the northern lights are caused by electromagnetic activity near the poles and we know there is electromagnetic activity on the island too. damnit there is just too much.
interesting thoughts
the earth itself is always moving in space, so if the island is moving faster than the earth within it’s own inertial reference frame, what keeps the Island and the Earth occupying the same space at a given point in time? isn’t this a problem with time travel in general, if you were to make a time machine and you were to travel back in time, there is no guarantee that you will end up on the earth at that time because the earth has moved in space. you would likely end up in space somewhere or at a different location.
wait a second… maybe that’s why they end up in Tunisia after turning the wheel.
there is actually more problems than that which is why im sure the writers will ignore it. the entire universe is expanding, galaxies are moving away from eachother as proved by the doppler effect. i believe the island and time travel must be connected to the earth, maybe due to the earths gravity, because if it wasnt, then you wouldnt just not be on earth, you wouldnt be in our galaxy most likely. the earth goes around the sun, but the sun moves around the galaxies center, which is moving as well.
your making my head spin ekolocation, but i do agree unless…
Well, we’ve seen people travel in time and it does appear that they are going to ignore certain problems. Like why, when they flashed, they didn’t end up out in space. Why did only certain people and flash to different times (what exactly was differentiating between what would go and what would stay)? What happened to all the stuff that had been occupying the space before they appeared (do they have grass embedded in their feet)?
yeah the what is with us goes never made sense to me…but im trying to use a couple things that happened in the show to get somewhere. faraday is still alive and hawking is too so i think our physics clues arent quite done yet…
there is a possibility that those that are traveling in time could be doing so on the subconscious level like the rat did in faraday’s test case study that he showed Desmond
Well we know they’re physically present in every time they visit… they physically interact with other people and with the environment… the rat and Desmond could only time travel to different points in their own lives… the Losties end up in the far distant past and who knows how far into the future? Plus they didn’t end up where they started which they would have when the flashes stopped.
i agree highbrow, just throwing the idea out there as a possibility. but i really believe their ability to travel in time without certain phenomena is directly linked to the Island and it’s special properties.
ekolocation, very nice post about Minkowski space time aka “flat time”.
This theory was used by the writers to help us understand, how ‘the island’ was constantly moving differently in time.
Because of Faraday’s experiments with Eloise, he was able to determine the time differential to ‘the freighter’ with the use of the ‘payload’.
It also helped to explain, that anyone who did not have a ‘constant’ established, would suffer the effects of ‘temporal displacement’, ala Minkowski on ‘the freighter’, and Desmond, prior to him establishing his ‘constant’ with Penny.
Nice work!
i also recommend reading time travel on wikipedia. there is some mindblowing stuff there, a lot of it is hard to understand, but there is a part about exotic matter(matter with negative energy) which is connected to the casimir effect and allows for wormholes. this is all theory based on mathematics of course, and the assumptions are incomplete (no grand unified theory of physics)
ekolocation, if you are interested in some further reading and themes which are used in Lost, check these out on Wikipedia:
Temporal Loop, Causal Loop, Causality, Retrocausality, and the String theory. There are more, but I can only think of these at the moment.
i personally know some of the already… i wanted to be a theoretical physicist but i found out in college that my math skills were not good enough.
It has been pretty much my assumption for about a month that relative to people off the Island, it would appear that the Island is moving slower in time (essentially the original post content).
The part that I have been unable to figure completely was how long this has been the case. If it has been this way for the entire existence, it would explain why Richard doesn’t appear to age, (to him, 50 years has only been a couple or so). Based on the episode where Desmond blacks out and the rocket experiment, doesn’t 15:1 sound roughly like a good ratio (15 seconds off island means 1 second on island)? Unfortunately that would mean that all the Dharma stuff was built extremely quickly in Island time. So maybe the speed differences has changed over the years.
But then another problem pops up that usually isn’t talked about. During the rocket experiment the woman on the freighter says the rocket lands well before they see it, suggesting that the Island is in the near past. But then several episodes later the doctor washes up to the island before he dies off the island, suggesting somehow the island is in the near future.
My guess has been that the Island was in the past after the turn key incident. From the viewpoint of the people on the island, everyone off the island would be moving quicker in time, so they would “catch up” with the off island present. But then continue forward … although they wouldn’t go into the future just experience the present at a different rate correct? Might have confused myself.
vtnerd, i agree with some of what you are saying and disagree with others. richards aging is independent of the time problem. ben ages pretty normally on island for most of his life. it seems other dharma people do too.
another part of the payload problem is, if missiles take longer to reach the location, then why do walkie talkie conversations and morse code seem to not be affected?
I agree, which means we either got it wrong, or its a “well we are the writers here at the rules scenario”. So sadly, I don’t think we can ever guess 100% correctly because of this.
But continuing your thoughts to really make people mad reading these comments, wouldn’t the conversation speed be altered between people on and off the island? So if we assume your post to be true, if I make a 20 second statement into a mic off the island, wouldn’t it appear to be a 1 second blurb on the island through their speaker (depending on the ratio)? Seeing as this didn’t happen, if your theory is still correct and as strange as this is to comprehend, when the island people hear the end of my 20 second speech, I’m already another 20 seconds past that point.
Fun stuff
I just lost power and lost my comment, so I will try it again.
vtnerd, ‘the freighter’ was situated 80 nautical miles off of ‘the island’. Regina fires the payload, with a clock attached to it. Daniel also has a digital clock he sets once the payload is fired.
When the payload arrives, it is 31 minutes later, when Dan compares the 2 clocks. We do not know the wind velocity, or speed it was travelling, but it is a pretty good reference.
Time was moving faster on the outside world, than on ‘the island’, after Desmond turned the fail-safe.
Hope that is helpful.
I have written a few theories saying that the force inside the island that allows timtravel is a black hole like object formulated from the unique properties the island posesses. This being said, there is question of a vaccum. Wouldnt they all be crushed instantly. Theoretically…Yes. In Lost…maybe. The definition of the casimir effect would also be another sign there is a “vaccum like force” present on the island as well. If my theory turns out to be true, and there is a well of energy strong enough to allow the island to move through time and space, which we have already seen, then maybe it is a “black hole like object”.
This would explain the differnt bending light due to frame dragging. Meaning everything is moving inside the “radius” with the island, and not the rest of the planet, or anything else around it for that matter. Or in black hole terms, everything inside the ergosphere moves with the singularity. Try my theory out, it makes sense.
That’s a perfect analogy, AES.
We are only assuming that the island physically moves because people keeps saying that the island moves. But we don’t know if they mean physically, through time, or both. It think it’s actually quite possible that not only does the island not physically move, but that is is constantly moving through time. People on the island are either in phase with that movement or out of phase with that movement. I think the Lamppost simply tracks the motion of the island in time, not space. If the island occupied a fixed space ON EARTH, as weighted by the geomagnetic “vortex” at that point, then it would never skip off of the planet.
No pjdkrunkt, we are not assuming! They are fact, unless you are re-writing Lost!
Regardless, it does not help nor hinder my idea. But due to the scratches on the pendulum board underneath the marker. It appears to indicate other oceanic locations the island was in. It is possible that they are just the other exits Mrs Hawking referred to, but that in my eyes takes away from the islands magic. I think the point of all the different races/religions/ethnicities of the losties, mixed with the “egyptian” statue, if in fact it turns out to be egyptian, would lead me to believe the island moves all around the globe.
Could be wrong though.
I certainly do think it moves in space, but the fact is, we do not really know that it does, nor do we have any real evidence to suggest that it does… beyond what, things that Ben says? It’s also quite likely that Daniel gets his gift of severe over-simplification to the point of lying from his mother and that her explanations of the Lamp-post could be just that. But I’m a doubter hehehe.
oh ive been against Hawkings ruse since the first scene with her. BUT I THINK dannyboy, created the pendelum, and that is how they are able to ‘oversimplify’.
And if by oversimplfify, you mean spend hours/days/years doing equations on a chalkboard and in notebooks and journals. Nothing they did was simple, only their quick explanations.
A.E.S. the exotic matter created by the casimir effect (and the electromagentic energy source beneath the island) allows a stable wormhole (not black hole) to be created. Black holes and wormholes are different in geometric design. A black hole will crush a person entering it into a one dimensional geometry. The wormhole doesnt.
The wormhole under the island was stable until Ben shifted the wheel to make the island ‘move’. The move instability shifts the islands spatial position with respect to time. Time is the effected variable as witnessed by our heroes. The Lorentz time dilation and constantcy of the the speed of light means an adjustment of spatial location is the result. The speed of light is the same in all moving (and non moving) frames of reference.
The Dharma Initiative must have found the island through the lampost and stabilised the wormhole. Otherwise it would have been impossible for the freighter to have found the island and moored off it. Locke restabilises the wormhole, but only after the island has planted replicas of itself throughout the earths history.
Also we saw Daniel at the point when the Dharma Initiative were drilling into the Casimir chamber / energy source. The x-ray showed the wheel in there already so therefore it would naturally follow that they experimented with what they found and turned it off. The wheel therefore could be from the past or the future.
Now to Daniels mum statement that the island was moving through time and thats why it was impossible to find flight 815. The wormhole must cause a time paradox. This must be true as events off the island protect the future that is already defined. Causality protection. Michael tries to kill himself but the gun jams. Also Widmore knows that a war is coming. He must have seen the future somehow by time travel.
Maybe the time machine is needed to stop the war? Maybe our heroes are needed to assist with the creation of the time machine? Maybe Jack and Jacob are the same person? Maybe the islands nuclear bomb has a part to play in all this? The island is dangerous for all humanity. The numbers are Hurleys and I believe we will find that some of the coincidences are programmed by the Oceanic 6 on their return. Hurley programs the wormhole stabilty machine desmond presses very 108 minutes.