An Explanation of Faradays Experiment Using Imaginary Time
+16 20 Votes
Rate it:
By morbius
- An Explanation of Faradays Experiment Using Imaginary Time
- Created: Apr 6, 2008
- Last updated: Aug 14, 2008
- After episode: 4.8: Meet Kevin Johnson
- Status: Current
- Flag this theory:
Hi guys, I think I’ve come up with a way to explain the results of Faraday’s experiment with the payload, by using a property of black holes called imaginary time. Imaginary time has been brought up on this site before, but for those who don’t know it’s a scientific theory popularised by Stephen Hawking in A Brief History Of Time. It can be thought of (I think) as a 5th dimension (a second time dimension) running at right angles to the real time dimension.
I don’t believe the island is in a black hole, which is caused by an object with very high mass, but it could be in a singularity caused by the magnetic field warping space-time to behave as a black hole would.
The first time I watched the episode with the experiment, I thought the payload was launched, 30 seconds later the freighter registered it arriving and 31 minutes later it reached the island. After re-watching the scene I realised this is not the case. Looking at the clocks the one on the payload had a time 31 minutes later than the one on the island, which means the islanders have been waiting 31 minutes LESS than the payload took, suggesting that from the perspective of the payload it had taken 31 minutes longer to reach the island than from the perspective of the islanders. This led me to think the clocks were actually stopwatches and had been started at zero, which would mean: From the perspective of the freighter the journey took 30 seconds. From the perspective of the islanders the journey took 2 hours 45 minutes. From the perspective of the payload the journey took 3 hours 16 minutes.
A possible explanation for this would be to use imaginary time, as I’ve tried to show in the below diagram:
I’ve adjusted the times of both clocks by 30 seconds to allow for some time for the payload to reach the event horizon of the singularity, and to allow for the time taken by Faraday to check the clocks after the payload had arrived.
This shows that the payload reaches the beacon in 4-dimensional space-time after 30 seconds, but still has to travel through imaginary time before being observed by the islanders. This would assume the “sophisticated” communication devices and the signal given off by the beacon were able to work over 4-dimensional space-time, without having to travel through imaginary time as well.
The islanders are stationary in imaginary time, and only moving through real time, the payload is moving through imaginary time and real time simultaneously. So no time is lost, everyone is at the same point in real time, and the time difference is explained purely by the amount of time taken to travel through imaginary time.
Pythagoros theorem would put the islanders at 106.24 minutes away in imaginary time. I definitely believe there is no difference at all between the island and the freighter in real time. When they talk to each other on the phones it’s the same time for both parties.
If the above is true, then it led me to speculate that the 106.24 is pretty close to 108, and perhaps the time would have been 108 at the time the fail-safe key was turned, but has been slowly slipping ever since, perhaps through the singularity shrinking. At the current rate this would mean the singularity would shrink to zero after 1657 days, which would make it June 2009, possibly the end of the next season. This could be a catastrophic event which the O6 need to prevent, or just an event which makes the island visible to the outside world and will provide a means for them to get back to the island.
I also believe the Dharma stations were set up to carry out quantum experiments on a macroscopic (large) scale, to see if classical science breaks down in a singularity as is predicted. I think the answer to this is that classical science does break down and quantum effects take over.
I hope you understood all that, and thank you for taking the time to read it. Please let me know whether you think there’s anything in it, its total rubbish, or maybe I was dropped on my head when I was a baby. :-)
Key characters
| Short Name | Full Name | Episodes | Theories |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daniel | Daniel Faraday | 4.2 | 105 |
Key episodes
| # | Title | Aired | Central character | Theories |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4.3 | The Economist | 2-14-2008 | Sayid | 48 |
Key locations
| Theme | Relevant Episodes | Theories |
|---|---|---|
| Freighter | 3.19, 4.5, 4.7, 4.8 | 98 |
| The Swan station | 2.20, 2.23, 2.14, 2.17, 2.1, 2.2, 1.11, 3.3, 3.8 | 469 |
i am going to +1 u for that but it just went over my head lol very intresting and a good read tho
Excellent logic on the diagram. +1
I’m not sure if I understand all of your conclusions, though.
yeah, most of it went over my head too! lol. but from what i did understand, it sounds good. very interesting. +1 for a well thought out, well backed up theory.
wow great effort but considering the audience of this show, i think that might be too complicated for a television series. However, I think you are on to something along the right lines, just i believe it wont be as complicated.
Interesting
Thanks for the positive comments, sorry if it was a bit confusing, I was struggling to find the right words.
I agree it might be a bit compilcated for a TV show, but I doubt they will ever talk us through the differences in the clocks specifically, but will explain some of the science behind it and leave it to us to relate the two. And I think the writers will make full use of having a character who is a physist, getting him to explain things to us, a bit at a time, by having him explain them to other characters.
I didn’t get the diagram, but I understood your explanation after it. This is very possible. People are underestimating the writer’s prowess. This idea could be expressed in less than one episode by dumbing down some terms and Faraday drawing some lines on a paper followed by Jack asking, “So wait, let me get this strait…because of the hatch implosion,everyone left on the island is going to die on this date? We have to go back.”
Very cool. +1 for having a large brain. Haha
Great work Morbius & I agree Faraday is going to be the voice of the writers.
yeh i really like the idea that faraday will be the voice of the writers
good suggestion Morbius. so to recap, did it take 31 minutes for the projectile to reach the island, or did it take the projectile 31 more minutes than it was supposed to take?
+1. Do you work for NASA? I’ve never felt more stupid in my life.
Very nicely done. +1
either i’m really dumb or you’re really smart…probably both
Hi lockeko, I believe the payload took 2 hours 45 minutes in regular time, but due to travelling along a diagonal line in 2-dimensional time it would have felt like 3 hours 16 minutes to anyone on board the payload.
If it helps you could think of the equivalent problem in 2-dimensional space. e.g. 3 people all need to walk 1 mile east. Person 1 walks the 1 mile east and has travelled a mile, person 2 (a little further south) walks 1 mile east and has also travelled a total of 1 mile. Person 3 however walks diagonally north at the same time as east (north-east) until he is a mile further east than he started. By the time he has finished, he is still a mile east, but has travelled more than a mile to get there.
Nice theory. Just to be pedantic - the payload takes somewhere between 27 & 28s to reach the island if you actually time it! That really is splitting hairs though!! +1
You had me at “Hi guys”
But seriously, I guess I sorta understand what you’re saying.
I’d be interested if this might apply to the difference in the perceived time of the island and the calendar time on the freighter? Desmond makes a call to Penny on Christmas Eve, December 24th, 2004, yet the calendar is only marked through December 23rd.
http://lostpedia.com/wiki/Calendar
Anyhow, +1 for “blinding me with science”
Cheers Billy, I believe the time on the freighter, the island and anywhere else in the world is exactly the same.
The Lostpedia timeline isn’t provided by the creators of Lost, but is worked out by someone going through every episode and trying to piece together when each day starts and ends. I think they’ve got it a little wrong, but think they did a damn good job to get it as close as they did.
morbius,
I’m not sure what timeline you mean. Do you mean the numbers posted on that page? Those are dates in non-US format - dd/mm - and refer to the colors used on those days. I’m not concerned about the colors either, as their meaning is unclear and possibly unimportant.
I’m simply refering to the day being incorrect. According to the calendar it is December 23rd, but according to Desmond and Penny’s phone call it was December 24th. Of course the simple explanation is that Minkowski just wasn’t around to mark off the day since he was busy riding a ferris wheel in the future. :)
Either way, I’m not convinced that the island is in the past or future, only that those on it experience time in a different way, though it’s unclear how yet. Your theory does not contradict that.
I think the calendar actually said it was Dec 24th. It’s just that calendars aren’t usually marked off until the day has past, so the last day that would have been crossed off is the 23rd.
Also, when they looked at the calendar they said it was 24th, thats why Des told Penny he’d phone on christmas eve.
But your right, either way it doesn’t have to contradict my theory, but it would make my calculations a little out… although they probably are anyway :-)
moribus, I like the theory and the explanation but I’m not seeing how this relates to the chopper time vs. the island time. According to your theory the longest time “experience” occurred for the payload because it had to travel along the hypotenuse of the triangle which is obviously the longest path. However wouldn’t that same concept be true for the chopper? According to Sayid it was only a matter of hours between them leaving the island and arriving at the ship. But for Jack and the rest of the island dwellers, two days had passed. Why would the people on the island experience “more” time than the chopper passengers? And how do we explain Sayid’s comment about taking off at dusk and landing on the freighter at mid-day?
This inconsistency has bothered me since they aired the episode. The only explanation I have been able to come up with is that the effect is somehow related to the speed of the object traveling to or from the island. Since the helicopter is traveling at a much slower rate than the missile was, it had a different experience. According to Regina, she fired the missile and saw it impact on the island roughly 30 seconds later. Faraday didn’t see the missile for quite a while . The timer on the missile was 31 minutes faster than Faraday’s timer on the island. This implies that traveling TO the island takes longer for the object traveling than the time experienced on the island and even more so compared with time experienced on the freighter. Yet when Sayid leaves the island on a journey that he perceives as taking several hours, the islanders perceive it as a two day event. This is the exact opposite effect as traveling TO the island.
This would make sense if the island was actually hidden in the past - sort of a time bubble that is 108 minutes behind the rest of the world. This would allow it to remain perfectly hidden since it doesn’t exist in present time. (Of course then Regina and Daniel and Jack and Sayid wouldn’t have been able to communicate with each other either but that’s another can of worms best left unopened!) So if the island is in a bubble in the past then time would need to pass for the missile before the island “caught up” and appeared. Going the other way the missile would seem to travel ahead in time as it moves towards the freighter. Sayid said the sun went from dusk to mid-day, but who’s to say it was the mid-day of the same day? If they “skipped” the night it would make sense. Sort of like traveling on an international flight headed East. I take off from NY at 3 PM and land in Rome at 6AM. Of course I would still have experienced the night sky just at the wrong times. In the case of Sayid the annomy actually “skips” the night altogether.
Sorry for the typos in that post. Along with the misspelled words, I meant to say the the timer on the missile was 31 minutes BEHIND the timer Faraday had.
Jukin - I LOVE the theory you presented in your comment!! That the island is hidden 108 minutes in the past and that is why it doesnt exist to the outside world! I am not sure if that has ever been said before but I havent read that. You should write a theory on that. Serious.
Morbius - I like your theory here. I think it is just a little above my peon brain to grasp it fully, but it all came together when you posted your comment and compared it to people walking a mile east. I am not sure I bite off on this theory but it is probably only because I dont really understand it. And I am the “general public.” I also love the idea that Faraday could be (if something complicated like this really is the case) the writers’ way of explaining to us, in layman’s terms, what the heck is going on. And I like the idea of Jack or somebody asking for clarification so we could learn it better.
This theory is well thought out, researched, backed-up and presented well. +1
Morbius, I think I get it. Basic geometry. That could be an excellent way of explaining the time difference. Thanks for replying to my question.
This theory will never be used in the rest of the show and we all know it.
Scientifically, it’s just full of crap. That’s my Ph.D. in physics talking.
Forget all “scientific” theories and explanations, and concentrate on prediction what writers will show us as answers.
Morbius, I think you did a brilliant job of explaining the time differential. I couldn’t quite grasp the meaning of it, but have a better idea now. +1
Jukin, sounds like you at least understood what I was trying to get across. Thank you for that.
Your right that there would be an inconsistency with the helicopter leaving the island, and I dont have any answer to explain the timing there at the moment. However there is a difference between the two. The payload probably travelled to the beacon on the island in a straight line from the freighter directly through the electromagnetic barrier. The helicopter had to leave on a specific bearing and IMO managed to avoid the electromagnetism otherwise they would have all experienced the “side-effects” that Des had due to already having been exposed to high levels of EM. If they had left on the wrong bearing then maybe they would have had the same effect as the payload, and would have also experienced mind-jumping.
I think the island being 108 minutes behind would cause more problems than it solved. Such as the communication that you mentioned yourself, why the timer would then only have a 31 minute difference instead of 108, and why does the helicopter take over a day instead of just the 108 minutes. That said I’m not stupid enough to discount it, and agree with Appolobar that it’s worth putting in a theory of your own.
RealSayid, you may be content with the small questions, but I like to think about the wider picture as well. And sooner or later the writers WILL show us some scientific answers. Maybe it will turn out to be crap, but at least its something new, better than endless posts about that damn coffin.
CAN YOU POST YOUR equations?????????
Morbius, that is a good point about the 108 minute time difference being “off” from the 31 minute difference with the payload and the helicopter difference being over a day. I would just LOVE to see the theory that someone could put out on that. Somebody like Jukin. (you hearing this, Jukin? hehe) I also love to get into the scientific theories, though I dont understand some of them. So, you may have RealSayyid who wont read them (or will, but then just make comments about them) but there are some of us who really enjoy it. And I have a feeling that the real answers lie in theories like this. Keep posting that stuff and I will continue to strain my brain to understand it. Haha!
Thanks Appolobar, I appreciate that. There’s so many conflicting theories on this site they can’t all be right, but its fun reading and writing them, so it must be worth our while… and who knows, there’s a chance some of us may get some things right. Cheers.
No problem RT, I left them out of the theory to try and keep it as clear as possible.
Pythagoras theorem says: a sqr + b sqr = c sqr where c is the length of the hypotenuse of a right angled triangle and a and b are the two shorter sides (sorry, can’t figure out how to do a square sign).
We know a and c from the times on the clocks minus 30 seconds, so in minutes this is: b = √(195.8667 sqr - 164.55 sqr)
…which equals 106.24 minutes.
This is 1.76 minutes (105.6 seconds) less than our well known 108.
For the (even) more speculative part of my theory:
According to the lostpedia timeline (not necessarily 100% accurate but pretty good), the time between the fail safe key being turned and Faraday carrying out this experiment is 27 days. This means that if the island is slipping closer to the zero axis of imaginary time, then it is doing so at an average of 3.90995 seconds per day, at this rate the total time to get to zero is 1657 days (4 years 197 days) from the fail safe key being turned (27th Nov 2004), which puts it around May/June 2009. There’s not much point trying to calculate it exactly because there are a few unknowns, such as, was subtracting 30 seconds off the clocks the right amount? Or the fail safe day to experiment day was unlikely to be exactly 27 days, probably a little over or under, depending on the time of day each event occurred.
Hope this is enough information and let me know if my maths is out.
Thanks.
dropped on noggin
Give the guy a break RS. This is a pretty creative ,out-of-the-box idea. I think the public can handle a show that’s not your usual night time soap opera. I’d prefer a show that has science at its bones, character struggle for muscle, and speaks to me with lots of earthly passion. I give him a +1 for reaching for the BIG ideas!!!
This is a good theory +1.
When it comes to explaining it Daniel will draw the triangle say “If this line is normal time, and the hypotenuse represents the payload travelling time… gosh… that would mean that the Island is running 108 minutes behind in imaginary time. It worse than we thought!!”. “Are you saying the island is 108 minutes in the past, Dan?”. “Well, yes, sort of, and that explains why the island is so hard to find”.
That will be good enough for most people, including me (and I’ve got A levels in physics and applied maths).
Thanks for the input on the island being in a time bubble theory. I’ll try to work something up and post a full blown theory on it. I want to try to work out some of the problems I see with the theory before I post it so it reads better. Right now it’s just an idea kicking around in my head. My guess is that there is no single “unifying” theory that explains everything we’ve seen on this show. I guess we’ll find out in a few years! Then what will we do with our days? Actually work? Yeah right!! LOL!
Yay, Jukin! I cant wait to read that.
Jackseyes - that would be good enough of an explanation for even ME and I dont have any experience in physics and applied maths. I am definitely one of the representatives of the “general audience” and if I can picture that (especially when it is drawn out like that) most anyone can. I think it HAS to be Daniel that explains it and it HAS to be Jack (and maybe Kate/Juliet) that he explains it to that can ask the clarifying questions. I could actually totally picture that scene. Good comment.