I think Everyone know, Lost is a show about science and faith. and it's fact that this Show Lost, science is taking center stage.One thing's for certain: Lost is the first mainstream TV show since Mr. Wizard to make science cool again. Across thousands of Web sites devoted to Lost, obsessive viewers analyze screen captures, debate theories of living in purgatory and play online games in trying to answer the ultimate science question: What is this damn island?
As the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 try to unravel the island's mysteries in an effort to get off of it, they are thwarted again and again by temporal distortion, electromagnetic energy and time travel of the mind—not to mention a really cranky smoke monster that may or may not have a basis in science.
Perhaps the most ambiguous faith-or-science mystery on Lost is that murderous smoke monster (rumor has it Smokey will be back in tonight's episode). Because the travelling black cloud often materializes with a roller coaster-style clanking sound, one popular theory suggests that it comprises thousands of nanobots working in tandem. Lindelof, however, says that's definitely not the case, and that the monster's true identity won't be revealed until the show's final stretch in 2010.
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.
"It kind of boggles our minds, actually," Cuse says. "We never imagined that people would get wrapped up in the intricacies of it to the degree that they have. We really just set out to make a show that we thought was kind of cool and entertaining."
