One of the coolest things that can happen to you as a SF geek is when someone with career bona fides, like one of the world’s most famous physicists, endorses your weird TV show. Popular Science has been doing a series of running articles on the science behind Lost, even that cool sat phone that has played a key role this season.

The latest features Michio Kaku, a professor at Princeton University and a leading expert on multiple dimension theories (yes, serious people at very good universities actually take this stuff seriously) talking about the theoretical science behind Lost.

Given this is a show that has managed to dangle plot lines involving ghosts, time travel and alternative realities, it’s interesting to think that there may be a scientific underpinning to it.
From the Popular Science article:

“But the creators did let slip that the rest of this season will revolve around some very real—and very big—physics: the Large Hadron Collider, the much delayed European particle accelerator that could reveal information about the Higgs boson and dark energy. Some physicists believe the LHC will produce mini black holes, which might actually be able to open a one-way portal to another universe—a gateway that can only be kept open by a force of energy as strong as Jupiter ... or an electromagnet inside a desert island.

Michio Kaku, author of Physics of the Impossible, thinks the Lost creators are using cutting-edge science to lay the groundwork for a transversible wormhole to another point in space and time—a trip foreshadowed in an off-season video about the so-called Orchid station, which Lindelhof and Cuse promised would be a key to the next few episodes. "They're amping up the energy to the point where space and time begin to tear, and the fabric begins to rip," Kaku tells PM. "When the fabric of space and time begin to rip, things that we consider impossible become possible again."

This week promises a peek into the ghostly Jacob’s cabin, the mysterious force that may or may not control the island. One of the more interesting theories that I’ve seen bandied about after last week’s show is that Claire is dead and doesn’t know. (Nor does anyone around her.)

What gives this legitimacy in my mind is something that Kate said to Jack last week: "I'm so glad that you changed your mind." About what? It just seemed a little eerie to me given that Hurley seems to think they're all dead already.

What if the occupants of Ocean Flight 815 are dead, in the sense that someone their reality split into two realities: that of their survival on the island, and their deaths at the bottom of the sea? And somehow, the in that shadowy “thin place” between Life and Death?

And that’s just today’s theory! Here’s some sneak peaks from this Thursday’s episode. We’re heading into our final month of Lost, followed by is likely to be an 8-month drought:

And:

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