"The Constant" - Top Ten TV Episodes from TIME

1. Lost, "The Constant"

At its best, Lost rips your heart out while it ties your brain in a knot. This season 4 episode did both expertly. Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) has been experiencing premonitions of the future since becoming "unstuck in time" (a la Slaughterhouse Five) earlier in the series. It turns out that he's been time-traveling, or rather, his mind has: his consciousness is journeying between present, future and past. (It makes sense when you watch, trust me.) The unfortunate side effects of this condition are madness and death, avoidable only by focusing on a "constant": a person or thing present in each time one's consciousness visits. Desmond's constant, he learns, is Penny (Sonya Walger), the girlfriend he left behind when he was stranded on Lost's mysterious island. His journey into his own past to find her in the present is tear-jerking and mind-blowing.
(ABC)

1. Lost, "The Constant" - The Top 10 Everything of 2008 - TIME

LOST's New Time-Travel Physics - Popular Mechanics

Are Lost's New Time-Travel Physics Junk Science? Maybe Not, Expert Says: Hollywood Sci-Fi vs. Reality - Popular Mechanics

Flying from the island toward a mysterious freighter, pilot Frank Lapidus can’t keep his helicopter on the bearing that physicist Daniel Faraday says will get Desmond and Sayid to the freighter safely—presumably through a wormhole. They encounter some turbulence, and Desmond begins, yes, traveling through time, with increasingly rapid lapses between 1996 and the present (which, on the show, is still 2004). With new particle physics research recently taking time travel from Doc Brown fantasy to down-the-line possibility, we spoke with Dr. Michio Kaku, whose new book, “Physics of the Impossible,” makes Lost’s flip-flop between past and present look, well, not impossible. More

The Constant

The Constant
Thursday, February 28, 2008
9/8c

Sayid and Desmond hit a bit of turbulence on the way to the freighter, which causes Desmond to experience some unexpected side effects.