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Time travel
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Physical Travel of both time and space
Any college level physicist will tell you that time and space have a connection that extend across many areas of physics and it is difficult to fundamentally discuss or analyze one without the other.
Confirmed Non-human Cases
In "There's No Place Like Home, Parts 2 & 3" Dr. Edgar Halliwax during the Orchid orientation film talks of a how the island's properties allow them 'to conduct unique experiments of both space and time'. He places a rabbit numbered 15 inside a device he calls the vault, constructed adjacent to 'negatively charged exotic particles'. He goes on to explain that the rabbit will travel 100ms ahead of four dimensional space - three consisting of space and one of time. Another example in the same episode is when Ben successfully moves the island after blowing a hole behind the Orchid by placing metallic objects inside it, something the orientation film warned against.
Un-confirmed Human Cases
Arguably in "The Shape of Things to Come" Ben finds himself in the Sahara Desert wearing the same coat he was wearing when he moved the island in "There's No Place Like Home, Parts 2 & 3", this coupled with his disorientation, the untreated injury he gained on the ladder and talk of being unable to return; one could conclude that he was transported there perhaps even in to the future.
Time Travel of the Human Consciousness
Confirmed Non-human Cases
In "The Constant", Faraday demonstrates to Desmond that he can transport a rat's consciousness forward in time using a machine that emits an unknown radiation at an unknown frequency. Once exposed the rat is able to move directly from one end of a maze to another, Faraday explains that he was not going teach the rat to run the maze for another hour. Later however the rat dies of what Faraday says is likely to be a brain aneurysm.
Confirmed Human Cases
Neither Desmond or Minkowski were in contact with the machine prior to moving through time, however it is implied that their proximity to the island caused their 'unfixing' to happen and that moving at a specified bearing when approaching it would avoid the phenomena.
Desmond's consciousness randomly travels through time, between December 24, 2004 and an unknown date in 1996. Faraday stresses that for a mind to survive the continued transition and for it to stop, it needs to find a "constant" or Anchor to focus on, something that means a great deal to the person and is present in both time periods. For this, Desmond chooses Penny.
In his journal, Daniel notes that if things go wrong he should use Desmond as his constant. Minkowski does not survive his time travel (presumably because he lacked a constant); he goes into convulsions and dies. Before he dies however and during his convulsions he states his inability to "get back". Faraday implies that this would happen, more precisely he tells Desmond that the travel would become increasingly chaotic and he'd be unable to tell which time was which, he'd also eventually find it increasingly difficult to "jump back" until it was impossible.("The Constant")
Similarities and Differences to Flashbacks and Flashforwards
Unlike flashbacks the person is conscious of their actions and surroundings. They suffer from disorientation and confusion due to being unable to confirm which time they belong to. The transition on screen is sharp and comes without warning as opposed to flashbacks which are smooth, have a signature sound and sometimes allow sound to leak in from the past. They both however are representations of a character's past and have exclusively taken place on or near the island. It has been neither confirmed nor denied that flashbacks are purely a literary device or not. Similarly, after using the fail safe key Desmond suffers from a series of flashes which were disordered when compared to their flashforward counter-parts.
Paradoxes and the Rules of Time Travel
One of the main problems with time travel are the paradoxes that arise from its practice, for example;
If I was to travel back in time and kill my own Grandfather before he fathered my father, would I ever come to exist? More importantly if I didn't exist, who went back and killed my Grandfather?
This and many other examples of any interference with the past have been attempted to be explained by the writers and rules for time travel in the show were explained in "Flashes Before Your Eyes" by Ms. Hawking who told Desmond that "the universe has a way of course correcting" or fate may intervene to any changes.
However, as addressed in "The Constant" both in the past and present, originally with no memory of a meeting, this would lead to a paradox where the individual would have conflicting memories, one with a meeting and one without. The individual in this case being Faraday and the meeting being with Desmond.
Time Travel and Memory
It has been suggested that Faraday's apparent memory loss could solve the paradox of a meeting and is part of the course correction Ms. Hawking spoke of. It was also suggested at Comic Con 2008 that Faraday's diary and its contents could be evidence that his consciousness is also travelling, much like Desmonds.
Comic-Con 2008 Video
At the Comic Con 2008 Lost panel a recruit, Dan Bronson taped and brought the DHARMA booth video showing Dr. Pierre Chang. In this video Dr. Chang told the viewer that roughly 30 years into the future he and many of his colleges would be dead killed in The Purge which he was "powerless to escape". He spoke of many things happening in the present such as George W. Bush being president and communication over the internet. He tells us that the source from which he has gathered this information is credible. In the conclusion of this recording Dr. Chang tells the viewer that if the transmission is successful the research he is undergoing is valid and the DHARMA Initiative must be reconstituted. The way from which the credible source gathered this information may be via the aid of time-travel whether through consciousness time travel or direct time travel.
See also
- Timeline
- "Debunked" theory - Time travel
- Time on the island (theory)
- Time dilation
- 4th Dimension Theory [1]
