The customary apologies if this has been handled in other threads, but I thought that it was about time that we started discussing some of the temporal anomalies that have cropped up in the show (especially in light of the the fact that TPTB have dropped hints that Season 3 will challenge our conceptions of time.)

I have no general theory about this yet, but just want to get the discussion rolling.

Here goes: There are several time paradoxes having to do with LOST.

For example, in the Sri Lanka video, we see "Alvar Hanso" in what is supposedly 1975. He looks to be about 40. We were told early on in the ARG that Alvar originally made his mark selling weapons to the Resistance in WW II. The Alvar that we see in the video would have been about 5 at the end of WW II. Pretty young for an international arms dealer.

Likewise, we have all assumed that the events depicted by The Lost Experience happened in present day real time (as demonstrated by Rachel's live appearance at ComicCon.) However, Flight 815 crashed in 2004 (we assume). Only 65 days have passed on the Island, which means that events depicted in seasons 1, 2 and presumably 3 occur in late 2004, two years BEFORE the events depicted in the ARG this summer.

There are other more esoteric time paradoxes: The tune that played on the radio after Sayid "fixed" Hurley's radio was "Moonlight Serenade" by Glenn Miller. Miller disappeared mysteriously in a plane crash over the North Atlantic during WW II. The weather was clear. The flight was supposed to be short. No trace of his plane was ever found. The last song he played on at the concert before the crash was "Moonlight Serenade." Could the song be a true blast from the past?

I think the most intriguing of the paradoxes so far is the one between the timeline on the Island and the events of the ARG. Mittlewerk says that the Dharma Initiative failed. We have assumed that Dharma failed some years ago, and that this is the explanation for the disrepair of the various stations. But there are some clues to the contrary: The food drops continue, and the "Others" seem be able to come up with things like ammo, poison darts, medical supplies and baby furniture when they need to. Sound like an on going operation to me.

What if the events of the TV show ARE the Dharma Initiative, and it is unfolding exactly as planned. Under this scenario, the others are furiously working on some scheme to change the core values of the Valenzetti Equation, the Losties are somehow part of that scheme (Walt and Aaron have special powers that will allow them to change the fate of the world, or some such thing).

But the scheme will untimately fail (possibly due to the actions of the Losties). The finale of the show will be that failure, which will force Mittlewerk to his "final solution" of wiping out 30% of the population.

Just a thought.

EdMuse brought up something related to your post here.

http://www.thefuselage.com/Threaded/showpost.php?p=1188615&postcount=20

Is LOST, perhaps, at its roots, the story of the failure of the DHARMA Initiative?

IMO......this is quite possible. Is it possible that Locke's actions in the hatch brought about the failure of the DI?

I would not put too much into the food drop scenario. Once by DHARMA, now by someone else... just to keep the caged happy.

As for Alvar and family. I think there is going to be a lot more uncovered. Why didn't Rachel know that he was her father? Who did she think her father was?

"Time" will be a character in play here.

For example, in the Sri Lanka video, we see "Alvar Hanso" in what is supposedly 1975. He looks to be about 40. We were told early on in the ARG that Alvar originally made his mark selling weapons to the Resistance in WW II. The Alvar that we see in the video would have been about 5 at the end of WW II. Pretty young for an international arms dealer.

Yes, and I'd like to submit several possibilities here
- Alvar Hanso benefitted from THF's life extension program
- Alvar Hanso is actually Alvar Hanso Jr
- The person we saw is not Alvar Hanso but an actor impersonating the real, long dead, AH, and in this scenario we may even speculate that he is a plant. Some comittee discovered THF's evil doings, and Hanso rises up from the dead to put the blame on Mittelwerk, sacrificing him as a scapegoat (heads need to roll)

But my own theory is the following
- Alvar Hanso never existed at all. Alvar Hanso is the codename for a secret organisation (governmental or not)
During WW2 it was easy to hide something because there was not that much media coverage. And it would have been easy to say that a person is very secret and therefore cannot be seen. It would have been easy to say that Alvar Hanso was a real person when in fact he never existed
Vietnam war marked a turn in the media coverage. It was the first time war was mediatised and since then there has been a rising enthuisiasm for public figures. It has grown so that today paparazzis will go to any length to get a photograph of a public figure
Vietnam war are THF's creation happened around the same time
So this secret organisation had to put a face on its name
An the person we know as Alvar Hanso was chosen to be the public face of THF, and he took the name of the codename for that organisation
TV-show reference : Remington Steele. A thief, crook, who impersonates the main character ( a P.I.) of a book written by a woman. He meets this author and eventually became Remington Steele when Remington Steele really didn't exist at all
So in the 70's they hired someone to impersonate Hanso, let's say a 30 years old man, which would make him 65 to 70 today, and that would be consistant with the images we saw of him
Bottomline here, Hanso never existed before THF was officially created, all his backstory was made up. He was credited with the actions of THF before this organisation went official



Likewise, we have all assumed that the events depicted by The Lost Experience happened in present day real time (as demonstrated by Rachel's live appearance at ComicCon.) However, Flight 815 crashed in 2004 (we assume). Only 65 days have passed on the Island, which means that events depicted in seasons 1, 2 and presumably 3 occur in late 2004, two years BEFORE the events depicted in the ARG this summer.

well, there needs to be a discrepancy between the show and the ARG
We live in realtime, characters from a tv-show only "live" episodically"
Having a spin-off such as TLE would be impossible if you didn't introduce this time discrepancy. And I think we need to consider that what happens on TLE happens in realtime with what happens on the island
For example the latest update of THF's webpage, with the release of Hanso and his fight against Mittlewerk is consistent with Desmond turning the failsafe key => the island was visible to the outside world, there was an enquiry, and this triggered a chain of events which leaded to what we are being shown now
You can't explain this by a "time passes more slowly on the island" theory (even if this was one theory I shared with many around here) You can't explain it that way because right now time is frozen on the island
So was it the case between season 1 and 2. S2 started right were S1 had stopped. Actually it went a little bit backwards in time (just before the explosion)
So if time is stopped on the island there will be a time discrepancy because time don't stop for us during summer breaks. Even JJ, Damon and Carlton with all their powers of imagination and influence cannot make time stop IRL to maintain a timeline consistant with the show (well I know that's a silly idea :) )
I think we may need to suspend our disbelief here, because this time discrepancy is required by the way a TV-show is broadcast and split into episodes, schedules, breaks and seasons. It's a contingency of the show


There are other more esoteric time paradoxes: The tune that played on the radio after Sayid "fixed" Hurley's radio was "Moonlight Serenade" by Glenn Miller. Miller disappeared mysteriously in a plane crash over the North Atlantic during WW II. The weather was clear. The flight was supposed to be short. No trace of his plane was ever found. The last song he played on at the concert before the crash was "Moonlight Serenade." Could the song be a true blast from the past?

I don't think it's a time paradox. It's a coincidence, ok, but no paradox
Radios actually still broadcast Glenn Miller; and any radio could have broadcast that song that night

But you may even add Amelia Earhart into the picture. She was lost with her plane too
And at the beginning of season 1 we even speculated that Adam and Eve in the caves were Earhart and her lover

But I like the idea of the song being broadcast from the past
It does not necessarily have to be a case of time travel
Radio waves travel far, Sayid made that point
The distance they travel depend if there is something to stop them, if there isn't then they continue their way
We are broadcasting messages towards space in the hope that some alien sentient liffeform may be able to pick them up
If a message is sent in 1970 and that you were able to go now, instantely, to a planet 30 light years away (if such planet exist and granted that the said radio transmission travels at the speed of light - which of course is open for discussion, but this is just a random example) So if you were able to be there when the radio signal hit that planet, then you could be listening at voices from the past
Same thing goes with images. When you look at the sun you actually see what the sun looked like 8 minutes and a half ago, because that's the time needed for the light to reach earth.
Some of the stars we look at at night may not even exist anymore. When you look at the sky you're actually looking at things that are hundreds and thousands of year olds. You're looking at the past

So maybe this transmission was emitted many years ago. The signal shoot out into space for example, and was bounced of something back towards Earth.
It all depends on the time needed for the signal to reach the receiver
You can perform this experiment yourself
If you have a sattelite receiver, and if you still have those aerials on the roof (that is if they still broadcast TV the way they used to in your area)
You can put 2 TVs next to each other, and tune in to the same network. One on sattelite, the other via airwaves. You'll notice that even if you're watching a live show, the 2 TVs will not be in sync. One TV set will be ahead of the other, because the signal does not travel at the same speed wether it's bounced off a sattelite or wether it is directly transmitted through the airwaves
You also can see such phenomenon if you look at NASA's video feeds of space missions.
When mission control talke to the space station, there is a slight delay before the crews receive the transmission, and this is due to distance

That would need sci-fi explanations from the show

----

and you may also want to consider the time discepancy throughout the show
for example the time of the crash
By the time the plane crashed it would have been night in that part of the world, still it was day in the pilot

Tarf: You definately have a fan (uh, me:hypocrit: ). I wish I had the time for putting together great scenarios as you do... but you do often make sense. We all too often come to simple conclusions, limited and sometimes confusing conclusions, to try and solve LOST problems. Quite simply, we are at the mercy of the writers and creators of LOST. We say they will turn LEFT, then they turn a little LEFT and then a little RIGHT. Just enough to ruin our predictions.

These video and films that have showed up on the program and the LE will most likely confuse the real timeline and characters that have made up the storyline. We can only pick-up the crumbs and make the best with what we are given... at the time.

For example the latest update of THF's webpage, with the release of Hanso and his fight against Mittlewerk is consistent with Desmond turning the failsafe key => the island was visible to the outside world, there was an enquiry, and this triggered a chain of events which leaded to what we are being shown now


When the failsafe key was turned, the arctic station picked-up the EM anomaly. Sure, they might know the location of the EM's detected....that doesn't mean they know there's an invisible island there. It's possible that the EM's were detected by other organizations....military, research....etc. If there was an inquiry, I'm not sure how they would link the EM's detection to Alvar Hanso which you mention might have lead to a chain of events. The letter states that his release was due to Rachels' efforts.

The destruction of the hatch in 2004 may very well be part of what Mittlewerk considers the failure of the DI mentioned in the 2006 Sri Lanka video.

When the failsafe key was turned, the arctic station picked-up the EM anomaly.
How do we know those events happened in that sequence? Are we to think that any time there's a cut from one scene to another without the flashback sound effect (which to me sounds like a sliding door), that the events are sequential?

Robert

How do we know those events happened in that sequence? Are we to think that any time there's a cut from one scene to another without the flashback sound effect (which to me sounds like a sliding door), that the events are sequential?

Robert

Ohh, good point! I hadn't given that much thought before, but it is something to keep in mind...since they can only show one thing at a time on the screen it's possible that both things happened at the same time, or even that they are showing what happens on the island and then what happens off the island, without regard for sequence. In which case the artic station could have picked up the EM anomaly caused when the countdown reached zero (there had to be some sort of magnetic field generated since everything metal was flying around the hatch) and when Desmond turned the key for the failsafe, it quelched the magnetic field -- thus causing the artic station to loose the anomaly, rather than causing them to find it.

How do we know those events happened in that sequence? Are we to think that any time there's a cut from one scene to another without the flashback sound effect (which to me sounds like a sliding door), that the events are sequential?

Robert

Good point. No, I don't know for sure that they're sequential. I do think the arctic/Penny scene was an occurrence that happened during Lost/island time 2004 during the system failure. But....... I've been wrong before.:)