Monday, April 6, 2009

"Thoughts On Miles And Timeloops"

Miles' lecture to Hurley about time travel and memories made things a little clearer in my mind, but also a little muddier. I like what he was saying, but it jolted me off of the Kerr time shell theory track a bit. Although I can equate it to Faraday's record skipping illustration, i.e., if you skip from your original track to an adjacent track and then back again, you will have jumped from your original song, then sung another song, and moved back to your original song again having existed in two separate songs.

Another way that I was thinking of it is to put the different songs on a linear passage of time as we understand it. Each time you jump to another song or timeloop, you veer off of the timeline at a certain "line/loop" contact point (the Losties in 2007), you travel around the loop to live out the alternate timeloop past (1977 to present), and then eventually return via time passing to your original departure point once again (2007). In this way you could at the same time have a known past from your original timeline, and then veer into your "secondary past" (the one that Miles says hasn't happened to you yet which is why you don't remember it), and eventually "meet yourself" back in the future. What you will remember from there on is something that I haven't examined yet. For instance, would you have two pasts to remember now? Why not?!

Well, I'm not hanging my hopes on this theory at all, it's just something that I'm playing with until I understand what Miles said a little better, in respect to the theories that TPTB have thrown out at us thus far. Feel free to pick up your BB guns and shoot holes in it where necessary. :-)

Update: Wiki says this about Time Loops: "A time loop or temporal loop is a common plot device in science fiction (especially in universes where time travel is commonplace) in which time runs normally for a set period (usually a day or a few hours) but then skips back like a broken record. When the time loop "resets", the memories of most characters are reset (i.e. they forget all that happened)." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_loop

Another very interesting source for theories is here: http://www.time-loops.net/nostradamus/Theories.htm

14 comments:

Ellen said...

I like the diagram! Makes it easier to visualize...
Good job!
xxoo

Tess315 said...

I like your time loop theory it's very interesting.


Here's how I see it, going by Miles' comments. I see it as more of a jog. Since time isn't on a straight line. I'm not sure you would have 2 pasts from 1977 future.

You remember the past and the future you've had before you jumped to 1974. Then 1974 becomes you present. (Instead of 2004) I know this sounds crazy but the future that you experienced before the time jumps landed you permanently in 1974 is now your past.

Then you live from this jog in time on. I don't think you'd meet yourself because the old future is now your past.

Have I made your brain bleed yet? ;)

Capcom said...

Hi Ladies!

What I'm thinking is much like what you said Sayidsgirl. Also, I don't think you'd see yourself either. Altho, if you only had one overall past memory, where would your first ones start to fade as the second ones took over I wonder? And if Juliet now has another 1977 past and loses her previous 1977 past (she's old enough to have one), does Rachel not have a sister Juliet anymore in the present? Gosh, why does trying to figure it out just make it worse?! :-o

maven said...

Great diagrams and visual aids! That's why I come to this blog.

Tess315 said...

I know it is hard to figure out.
I'm going to guess that anything in her old past prior to 1974 is still her past. Plus the future she already has lived up to 2004 when they started time jumping is now the past.

Her future from 1974 is on a different line/jog/loop.
The 2004 future she has already experienced will not be repeated since it has already happened.

It seems they might be creating a new future from this point but I'm not exactly sure that's correct.

I beleive her sister and her nephew are still there.

I need to think about it more to come to a conclusion on what I think the "future" is.

Greg Tramel said...

love it! but i can't get all of the songs about time out of my head now

Capcom said...

Hi Maven, tx! I'm not hanging my hopes on this image, but it helps me gloss over that problem enough so that it doesn't obscure my attention to the fun stuff.

For sure Sayidsgirl! Well, maybe we shouldn't try too hard to figure it out completely, cuz TPTB are gonna make something up that's probably unique to this show, so then we'd have to comprehend it all over again! :-o But I have to admit, I do like how they are kind of mixing theories into something of their own sort of...so far...

LOL Greg! How many songs can we think of??? We need a blog for that. :-B

memphish said...

This is not my favorite topic, but I see it more as there are two separate type of timelines, there is the universe's timeline which runs from Year 1 forward and is currently in AD 2009. Then there is your own personal timeline which runs from birth to death. So to take Sawyer for example, he's born in say 1970 and he lives years 0-34 in 1970-2004, then he lives years 35-37 in 1974-77 where there is also a 4-7 year old Sawyer alive.

I may be full of it, but in terms of how the timeline appears to those living it, that's how I see it, and it's not really a loop because it's not connected, but more of a series of folds a la tesseracts that connects your personal timeline to the universe's timeline.

And Desmond is completely different, so don't even go there, and so is Richard because his personal timeline from birth to age 40 has apparently been frozen.

Capcom said...

That's very interesting Memphish!

:-)

synchrobrarian said...

maybe for the losties (both the oceanic 6 & flashers) there is ONLY the present since they aren't really going "back" in "their" timeline wherein on something like life on mars he did go back in time and interacted with himself as a boy

memphish said...

Only we know they can flash to a timeline they exist in as evidenced by the Hatch and Aaron's birth.

Capcom said...

Dangitt, just when you think you've got an angle on it, something else trips it up. TPTB better have a solid mythology figured out for this time traveling business of theirs. I would be disappointed if they don't have a baseline scenario created to tell us, and they leave us to think wahtever we want to about it after it's over. :-p

lost2010 said...

I wonder if there are people who experience it like Memphish describes. (Sawyer, Miles, Juliet, Jack, Kate)

And then people that experience more like your loops (Desmond, maybe Ben, maybe Locke). . .

Wonder if that's the difference in being special. . .

Capcom said...

Wow, good point!