constants and variables

[swamp waste]

so a time traveller acts as a variable, right? and then other people and possibly things can function as constants. like in a mathematical equation.

so if you've got only one variable, then... if the outcome of the equation is a fixed value, the variable must also assume a fixed value. if it's a range, the variable can assume a range of values. (things get more complicated with even powers of a variable, like squaring it for example, though i don't know how you can square a time traveller) what's the "value" of a time traveler? their actions, maybe? like if desmond is the only one time travelling through a certain period, he has to perform a certain action, or actions within a certain range, to fulfill the equation. he has to assume a "value" relative to the "constant" and the "outcome." if not, the equation is imbalanced. that sounds kind of familiar...

things get more interesting when you add more variables. now each variable has a range of values, potentially an infinite range, but each other variable is correspondingly effected and has to assume a certain value or range of values, depending on how the equation is set up. reread that with "person" instead of variable and "action" instead of value, and maybe dan's comments this past week start to make more sense.

incidentally, an equation with six variables would describe a 5-dimensional space under certain circumstances. the way you'd solve it would be to break it down into the least necessary number of non-variable information so you could see in a concrete way how the variables related to each other. so if have variables a,b,c,x,y,z, there's potentially for a really complicated math problem but let's say you could break this theoretical equation down into a simpler one where you could establish that for any value of a, b would have to be 2a, x is a^2, c is 5(a-1), y is z-(a+c) and z is 6(c-b), then here's how you would write out some possible answers to that equation:

2 4 9 4 19 30
3 6 10 9 11 24
4 8 15 16 23 42

[notsolost42]

Okay, please continue because you have my attention. I poked around the net to look at six variable equations and found some interesting things. I especially liked the Kemmer-Duffin equation in five dimensional Minkowski space and the hydrogen-like atom in five dimensional space and the Schrodinger equation for one electron atom in five dimensional space. What I liked the most was the Coulumb Green function, even though it was in four dimensional space because I have given a lot of thought in the past to the smoke monster being a coulumb plasma. Please continue. My mathematics is poor but my understanding the abstracts is fine.

By the way, I think the answer to how to square a variable such as a time traveler is by having a quantum entanglement with two of them. Haha! Jack squared! Love it!

Please, continue your thoughts and expand on them...also, welcome to the forum!

Edit: I just wanted to post this abstract that I found for you. I think you'll appreciate it as I think it relates to what you are saying. I found indications of the Dirac Equation, wave function, on a page in Dan's journal.

Abstract. A Dirac equation in a covariant form with respect to proper orthochronous rotations in (4 + 1)-dimensional pseudo-orthogonal space, i.e. Minkowski space extended by one real dimension is introduced. It contains a five-vector potential with a non-electromagnetic fifth component. The invariance of this equation under the CPT transformation is conditioned by the assumption that the real fifth coordinate changes its sign under charge conjugation, and that it simultaneously changes its sign either under time reversal or under space inversion. The energy levels of an electron under the simultaneous action of Coulomb and central gravitational fields are determined. To this end, (1) new eigenspinors of the total angular momentum operator are derived, with non-zero entries in the first and fourth or in the second and third row of the column matrix and (2) a scalar function is constructed from doubly-periodic Jacobian elliptic functions which, in the limit of the vanishing modulus of the elliptic functions, replaces the function exp(i t) in the stationary-state solutions. The iterated five-dimensional equation contains the ten components of the antisymmetric field tensor. It also contains a term determining the potential energy operator of electron spin density in a non-electromagnetic field. The Pauli equation is derived from the five-dimensional equation, with the transformational characteristics of the original equation. It contains a spin-orbit coupling term depending on the non-electromagnetic potential.

[notsolost42]

The post that Swamp Waste made is so important that I really wanted to bring this up for more people to read. It seems to be getting lost in theories. Please ignore the abstract I quoted for this poster to look at unless you are not bored or frazzeled by this stuff. I just thought that it sounded as though it was relative and don't quite get it myself and wanted their opinion. Math is not my thing but the concept of what it says sounded about right. What Swamp Waste said is great and if the only thing people get out of it is that the events or actions are the constants and the people, our losties, are the variables, that is cool. Time can change.

[Epy]

Oh man, finally someone who knows what their talking about with math!

I'm good enough at math that I can understand the concepts your laying out, but I would never be able to explain them the way you could. Great job, and welcome to the forum!

Fun little trivia nugget: The Columb is a unit used to measure electrical charge. The unit used before the Columb was invented was called the Faraday constant, named after the English chemist and physicist Micheal Faraday. The unit used to measure capacitance to this day is called the Farad, also named after Michael Faraday.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Faraday

[notsolost42]

Oh man, finally someone who knows what their talking about with math!

I'm good enough at math that I can understand the concepts your laying out, but I would never be able to explain them the way you could. Great job, and welcome to the forum!

Fun little trivia nugget: The Columb is a unit used to measure electrical charge. The unit used before the Columb was invented was called the Faraday constant, named after the English chemist and physicist Micheal Faraday. The unit used to measure capacitance to this day is called the Farad, also named after Michael Faraday.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Faraday

Isn't this poster real intelligent? I think they made such great sense! I have read what you posted about Coulomb units. I had thought, a long time ago, that smokie was a coulomb plasma. An astrophysicist that I was emailing to about the show told me that would blow up the universe or something. Maybe he was trying to throw me off tract! He is a fan of Lost and I think he is actually a consultant. He is the perfect DI scientist! Fred Alan Wolf. Check out his website!