Relativity and the Rocket Clock

I've been puzzling over the Daniel-rocket experiment on last week's Lost episode, "The Economist," and found myself again staring at the ceiling mumbling, "What could it mean? What could it all mean?"

The facts are these: Daniel apparently travels with a rocket that has a clock in it. Regina, his colleague on the boat, is familiar with this rocket and with the experiment he wants to conduct, as Daniel does not have to explain much to get her to fire it. When fired, she commences a countdown without prompting, as if she's done this before. Daniel and Regina refer to this rocket clock as "the payload."

With that to go on, I did some searching on rocket clock experiments, and quickly found details of an experiment called the Vessot Rocket Clock Experiment, conducted in 1976 by Robert Vessot and Martin Levine. As described in the book, "Was Einsteen Right?" Vessot created a clock that could be loaded into a rocket and launched into the atmosphere. He did this from Wallops Island, while his colleague waited on Merritt Island with the ground clock for the "payload," as they referred to it.

It gets better. At 8 minutes 31 seconds into the experiment (Daniel observed a 31-minute difference between the island clock and rocket clock), a cancellation between gravitational blue shift and time dilation occurred. It took the scientists two years to process the data gathered in this one experiment, and when they where finished, humanity's understanding of curved space-time had made a significant leap.

Building on this experiment, physicists later developed the Principal of Maximal Aging, which answers the "Twin Paradox." I was also interested not only to see a mention of twins, which is a major theme in Lost, but a mention of Minkowski, specifically "Minkowski space."

I also found it interesting when researching curved space-time that one of the leading minds is Lewis Carroll Epstein. His book "Relativity Visualized" contains illustrations showing how the "curvature of time" causes objects to fall downward near the surface of the earth and causes time to run slower in the basement than on the top floor of the building -- illustrating the findings of the Vessot Rocket Clock Experiment. Could the Lost show title, "Through the Looking Glass" be a reference to Epstein?

Back to Daniel and the rocket. When he calls Regina and says, "Fire the payload," Frank says, "He does this kind of stuff on the boat all the time." The question is: Why would someone need to regularly run experiments testing the curvature of space-time? Because -- drum roll please -- the island is in a black hole. A black hole would create a gravity well and a strong distortion of space-time (to the tune of 31 minutes?). Of course, they could also be in a neutron star.

That kind of reminds me of the movie "Contact," in which Jodie Foster talked to her dead father on an island in a neutron star, much like Jack talked to his dad on an island (in a neutron star?). But I digress.

One final note on this experiment. The ratio of difference between Daniel's clock and the rocket's clock is 1:31. Genesis 1:31, "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day." Oceanic Six, anyone?