The unofficial thread dedicated to time travel

[Jeremy]

Just wanted one thread to put all my thoughts on time travel in the show to go into. Guess I'll anylise the differences between mental(Desmond, Minkowski, probably Theresa) and physical(rest of the Losties on the island) time travel.

Of course, there are the obvious differences:

Physical:
-Your body travels along with your mind. That would mean there is either a past or future version of yourself running around on something I'll call 'auto-pilot' during the same time. This would mean you're also the same age as you were before.
-Things you've had in immediate contact with you(clothes, raft, knives, compass, Vincent's leash, etc.) go along with you.

Mental:
-Only your mind travels, and it travels to another "you" in whatever different time, rather than in the exact place you traveled from.
-No objects will travel with you.
-You'll experience aging, or differences between yourself in one time and in another.

But we've learned that Desmond is special in that the apparent rules of time travel do not apply to him. Could that be because he turned the failsafe key and was exposed to the most massive amount of electromagnetic energy? Or that he is chosen by the island for some reason?

I think it may be just that he can experience mental rather than physical time travel.

For example, if Locke had shot Widmore during 1954, he may have possibly stopped the events of which would lead him up to that point in the first place. Hell, it might even stop Richard from going to visit Locke when he was a kid, and then he may never end up on the island at all. That would certainly cause problems.

With mental time travel, however, it seems the only way Desmond could mess things up and stop him from ever doing it would be to stop himself from going to the island, which Mrs. Hawking warned him about. Other than that, it seems it can happen randomly, or at least as long as he doesn't have a constant. Desmond couldn't trigger any other way of stopping his mind from going into a past or future version of himself. He may change something in the past, and the only consequence might be ending up in a different area when he travels back to the "present."

What do you guys think?

[littleredman]

It's interesting. But Locke could not have shot Widmore in 1954, because that event never actually happened.

In the world of Lost chronological time seems to be a straightforward, unchangable thing. Therefore, anything the Losties do in the past already actually happened in the past.

The exception is Demond, who can apparently break this rule.

[Every 108 Minutes]

i think that there is only one being and conciousness for those who are time traveling, not other auto-pilot replica losties running around the island throughout time. when locke was shot by ethan after yemi's plane crashed, he traveled to a different time right after that and still had the wound with the bullet in his leg. this must mean that his entire being traveled through time and he was still the same exact locke who was just shot.

[Jeremy]

i think that there is only one being and conciousness for those who are time traveling, not other auto-pilot replica losties running around the island throughout time. when locke was shot by ethan after yemi's plane crashed, he traveled to a different time right after that and still had the wound with the bullet in his leg. this must mean that his entire being traveled through time and he was still the same exact locke who was just shot.

Of course Locke still had the gunshot and everything. The thing is, this is the "present" Locke, or at least the particular one we've been following since the beggining. However, if he went into the past--let's say, just for example, during Deus Ex Machina--that would mean that there would still need to be a "past" Locke around, too, in order to make sure what was supposed to happen(like Boone making Yemi's plane fall), happen.

Think of it this way:

Imagine the Pearl station could be used to observe different time periods rather than different stations. Those who time travel physically would be the ones observing, sitting in the chairs and writing in their notebooks, while those who do it mentally become those who are watched.