Lost Finale

Over the last couple years we keep debating about dumping our satellite and cutting out TV, but the truth of it is that we don’t watch a lot of television and the shows we do watch I find rewarding. I really enjoy the TV time Heather and I have together. We get the kids tucked in, do a few chores, collapse on the bed and then spend a little time laughing together. Most of the shows we watch are comedy, but I also make Heather watch Lost.

I can understand why someone would find Lost cheesy because it plays the scifi card in a current setting on primetime without characters with forehead ridges or laser guns. For me what I enjoy is the great characters, dialogue , and plot lines I find intriguing.

Here’s an article I came across that backs me up a little. Richard Muller, a professor of physics, explains how some of Lost’s strange occurrences are possible within quantum mechanics and Einstein’s theory of relativity.

To make physics sense of the movement of the island in Lost, I assume that the island is actually connected to the South Pacific by a wormhole-like warp in space-time. (It doesn’t have to be a simple worm hole; it could be a warren of parallel and intersecting tubes.) Then, to move the island, all you have to do is move the wormhole connection, not the island itself. That’s what I think Ben did. He changed the nature of the space-time connection between the island and the rest of the world.

So the island didn’t disappear. It didn’t even move. Imagine that you are visiting a small town that you used to visit when you were young. You drive for miles, and never come to it. But it turns out the town has not moved. Rather, the highway now goes around it. That’s what Ben did—he changed the highway.

Link

There’s a lot of crappy TV out there, but if something I watch gets me thinking about physics it must be good. Plus I love laughing at Sawyer’s one liners.