"The Last Three Minutes" and Marvin Candle
tdciago
came across a book by Paul Davies called "The Last Three Minutes:
Conjectures About the Ultimate Fate of the Universe." The title caught
my eye because an upcoming episode of "Lost" is titled "Three Minutes."
When I took the book off the shelf, I saw that the cover featured a
melted candle. This made me think of Dr. Marvin Candle, who is also
referred to as Waxman on a call sheet for one of the future episodes of
"Lost."
Has anyone here read the book? It's not long, so I'll give it a try to
see if there are connections to the show. Since I think the stars are
going to play a big role on "Lost," this book has definite
possibilities. The book description on Amazon reads: "Ragnarok.
Armageddon. Doomsday. Since the dawn of time, man has wondered how the
world would end..." The "dawn of time" phrase reminded me of Alvar
Hanso's quote about curiosity.
Then I suddenly had a realization about Dr. Candle and mythology. I
was Googling for "wax man" and saw Daedalus come up in one of the
results. A quick overview of Daedalus on Wikipedia states that he
built the labyrinth that housed the Minotaur for King Minos, and that
he built a dance floor for Minos' daughter, Ariadne. Both of these
creations are mentioned on my web site, in connection with Sayid
(Theseus) and Shannon (Ariadne).
But the most famous story about Daedalus is how he built wings of wax
and feathers so that he and his son Icarus could escape a tower where
Minos had imprisoned them to keep the secret of the labyrinth from
getting out. Deadalus warned Icarus not to fly too close to the sun or
the heat would melt the wax, nor too close to the ocean waves because
they would get the wings wet and they wouldn't work. Of course, Icarus
*did* fly too high, the wax melted, and he fell into the ocean and
drowned. Daedalus called the island near the spot where his son fell
Icaria in memory of Icarus.
So I looked up the name Marvin, and it means "lover of the sea." I
think I've found the show's Daedalus. Wikipedia has some very
interesting "Cultural Derivatives" about Daedalus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daedalus ("Deus Ex" and "Space
Cowboys." Hmmmm.)
atomic....@mac.com
Weinberg entitled The First Three Minutes.
Dan Owen
> Weinberg entitled The First Three Minutes.
Weinberg was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in physics for combining
electromagnetism and the weak force into the electroweak force.
And, as we know, if there's been one constant throughout Lost it's the heavy
overtones of electromagnetism (the compass, the hatch, black rock, etc)
Dan
dunebuggy
and its only 3.95. I did buy two other books by the author though.
One is About Time: Einstein's unfinished Revolution. The other is The
Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World. Both look
like they could be very good. I also bought two of the Lost Novels.
They are short and are also cheap. If anything good comes up i'll post
something.
tdciago
tdciago wrote:
> I was browsing the astronomy/physics section of the library today, and
> came across a book by Paul Davies called "The Last Three Minutes:
> Conjectures About the Ultimate Fate of the Universe." The title caught
> my eye because an upcoming episode of "Lost" is titled "Three Minutes."
I found some cool stuff about black holes on pages 63-65. The
following excerpt is long, but very intriguing in terms of "Lost."
Davies says no one knows for sure what happens to an object that falls
into a black hole, but there have been theoretical deductions (ALL CAPS
were added by me.):
"The surface of the hole is really only a mathematical construct -
there is no actual membrane there, only empty space. The infalling
astronaut would notice nothing especially different as she or he
crosses into the hole. However, the surface does have a certain - and
rather dramatic - physical significance. Inside the hole, gravity is
so strong that it traps light, pulling outgoing photons back from the
outside. This means that light cannot escape from the hole, which is
why it appears black from the outside. Because no physical object or
information can travel faster than light, nothing can escape from the
black hole once this border has been crossed. Events that occur within
the hole are forever hidden from external observers. For this reason,
the surface of the hole is an 'event horizon' - because it separates
events on the outside, which can be witnessed from afar, from those on
the inside, which cannot. The effect, however, is only one-way. THE
ASTRONAUT WITHIN THE EVENT HORIZON CAN STILL SEE THE UNIVERSE OUTSIDE,
EVEN THOUGH NOBODY OUT THERE CAN SEE THE ASTRONAUT.
As the astronaut plunges deeper into the hole, the gravitational field
rises. One effect is distortion of the body....This stretching and
squeezing process is sometimes referred to as SPAGHETTIFICATION.
Theory suggests that at the center of the black hole, gravity rises
without limit. Because the gravitational field manifests itself as a
curvature, or warping, of spacetime, the escalating gravity is
accompanied by a spacetime warp that also rises without known limit.
Mathematicians refer to this feature as a spacetime singularity. It
represents a boundary, or edge, of space and time through which the
normal concept of spacetime cannot be continued. Many physicists
believe that the singularity inside a black hole genuinely represents
the end of space and time, and that any matter that encounters it will
be completely obliterated. If this is the case, then even the atoms of
the astronaut's body will vanish into the singularity, in a nanosecond
of ultraspaghettification.
If the black hole has a mass of ten million suns - similar to the hole
that may lie at the center of the Milky Way - and is nonrotating, then
the duration experienced by the astronaut in falling from the event
horizon to the annihilating singularity will be about THREE MINUTES.
Those last three minutes will be very uncomfortable; in practice,
spaghettification will kill the hapless individual long before the
singularity is reached. During this final phase, the astronaut will in
any case be unable to see the fatal singularity, because light cannot
escape from it. If the black hole in question is of just one solar
mass, its radius is about three kilometers, and the journey from event
horizon to singularity will occupy just a few microseconds.
Although the elapsed time to destruction is very swift as experienced
in the falling astronaut's frame of reference, the hole's time warp is
such that, viewed from afar, the astronaut's last journey appears to be
in slow motion. As the astronaut approaches the event horizon, the pace
of events in the vicinity seem to the distant observer to get slower
and slower. In fact, it seems that it must take an infinite length of
time for the astronaut to reach the horizon. So what amounts to
eternity in the faraway regions of the universe is experienced all in a
rush by the astronaut. In this respect, a black hole is a sort of
GATEWAY to the end of the universe, a cosmic blind alley representing
an exit to nowhere. A black hole is a little region of space that
contains the end of time. By jumping into one, those who may be
curious about the end of the universe can experience it directly for
themselves."
What if the Losties are right at the entrance (the event horizon) to a
black hole? We are seeing what they're experiencing in slow motion. A
bunch of references from the show come to mind:
- Henry says no one can see them, not even God. Indeed, it appears
that the island may be invisible to people on Earth. Yet the Losties
can see the sun and the stars.
- In the pilot episode, Jack talks about a horrific surgical
experience, saying, "And so it ripped open and the nerves just spilled
out of her like angel hair pasta."
- Jin worked as doorman at the Seoul (soul) Gateway Hotel.
- The stunt with Engine-Sucked-Guy was very important to the producers
of the show, and they talk about it on the first season DVD, telling
how they insisted that it be in the pilot episode. Could that event be
a clue about getting sucked into a black hole?
- "Cerberus" tried to pull Locke down a hole.
- There have been loads of star references on the show, some more
obvious than others.
Davies goes on to talk briefly about theories that "the exact number of
particles in the universe is determined in terms of some numerological
formula" and he says there are "virtual particles that appear near the
event horizon of a black hole" that are "usually created in pairs
moving in opposite directions." Could Hurley's "numbers" and the theme
of twin-ness be related to these theories?
HomeLess
>A black hole is a little region of space that
>contains the end of time. By jumping into one, those who may be
>curious about the end of the universe can experience it directly for
>themselves."
it's much eaiser than that to experience the end of the universe.
Just die.
HomeLess
>
>- Henry says no one can see them, not even God. Indeed, it appears
>that the island may be invisible to people on Earth. Yet the Losties
>can see the sun and the stars.
>
If they were on or near an event horizon light coming in from the
outside would be stretched towards the extreme end of the spectrum
just like far distance objects in the universe are. Hubble red shift
would apply.
>- In the pilot episode, Jack talks about a horrific surgical
>experience, saying, "And so it ripped open and the nerves just spilled
>out of her like angel hair pasta."
>
>- Jin worked as doorman at the Seoul (soul) Gateway Hotel.
>
>- The stunt with Engine-Sucked-Guy was very important to the producers
>of the show, and they talk about it on the first season DVD, telling
>how they insisted that it be in the pilot episode. Could that event be
>a clue about getting sucked into a black hole?
>
>- "Cerberus" tried to pull Locke down a hole.
Cerberus is the dog that guards the underworld soooo...
Don't know that he goes out to actively get people ..