Lost!

[bewitched]

Originally Posted by Cadaverous Pallor

Where do you see evidence of that idea?

Originally Posted by Whitney

I don't remember them ever insinuating or showing that they were just leaving out 2 9/10 years on the island. Jack stated that Locke came to him and Kate a couple of months ago (In There's no Place Like Home), not a couple of years ago.

I'm also still standing by my feeling that I think they are skipping through time based on a parallel universe or multiverse theory, both of which postulate that all times exist concurrently and moving through time would not be skipping forward or backward linearly but moving from one already existing world (not constrained by time) to another. The most reasonable mode of travel between universes on the show, IMO (based on what I've seen) would be through wormholes (which, while not general referred to in most multiverse theories, does provide a means of travel which is not rejected in the theory). In this scenario, one would in effect, exist in two places at one time since the person entering the wormhole would only "appear" to be gone for an infinitesimally small fraction of a second to the people observing (ala the movie Contact). This would also explain why "windows are only open for a finite period of time" (as Eloise stated) since one end of a traversable wormhole in physics is generally regarded as being "accelerated" or to have a higher gravitational field than the other end, i.e. are not stationary. This allows for time at the exit to have moved at a slower pace than time at the entrance (although time within the wormhole would seem to move at a consistent pace).

I once heard someone describe parallel universes as "we are all living and all dying at all times"; in other words, we are, in effect, immortal. One of the guys that writes the show said in an interview that their concept of time travel was rooted in a scientifically accepted theory.