We don't host free ads. (All advertisements in answers, questions, profile photos, in taglines, a.

By registering you become a member of the CBS Interactive family of sites and you have read and agree to the, and. You agree to receive updates, alerts and promotions from CBS and that CBS may share information about you with our marketing partners so that they may contact you by email or otherwise about their products or services. You will also receive a complimentary subscription to the ZDNet's Tech Update Today and ZDNet Announcement newsletters. You may unsubscribe from these newsletters at any time. ACCEPT & CLOSE.

Subreddit for the Netflix show The OA Rules Hover over the boxes to get more details. All detailed infos 1. Follow Rules of Reddit. • Including and 2. Absolutely NO Harassment or Bullying of Any Kind. • Since this show addresses some sensitive topics, there are bound to be disagreements. While we respect everyone's right to an opinion and encourage healthy discussion, we will NOT condone name-calling, insulting, belittling, or berating of other users or characters in comments or posts.

Report harassment or bullying to the moderators rather than replying to trolls. Respect Other Redditors. • Criticism of theories is encouraged, but should remain constructive, kind, and addressed to the idea, not the author.

Assume the good faith of other Redditors. • Requests for or links to streams/torrents/etc.

Will be removed. No spoilers in post title or thumbnails. • When in doubt about a thumbnail, submit a text post rather than a link. Browse at your own risk, or use the Episode Discussion Threads below to avoid spoilers. To use spoiler tags in comments, use this format: [spoiler](#s 'spoiler') which becomes Links to Episode Discussion Threads The OA Web Links. I believe the Netflix Original, 'The OA' is an allegory for the challenges faced by physicists in providing a sound 'theory of everything'. This is essentially the 'riddle' presented in the show.

The characters at times represent different facets of this challenge but all of their interactions seem to revolve in one way or another around this search, its many difficulties and its theoretical challenges. The multiverse is outright referenced many times in the show, so this post may seem obvious to many, but I'd like to point out a few of the ways the characters reveal things beyond their character level interactions in this multiverse themed plot. Also before I begin, please forgive me for not writing out a full scholarly essay. First, I'm not a scholar or a physicist. And second, I'm simultaneously trying to eat a meatball sub. I'll simply provide some 'proof points'. The characters in the show have collectively learned four 'movements'.

These movements are actually an allegory for what's known in physics as the four conventionally accepted fundamental interactions, gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear. The struggle to unite these four fundamental forces into a theory of everything is being led on many fronts by many theoretical physicists, but perhaps most famously by Stephen Hawking. One possible way Hawking could provide a theory of everything is through the discovery of a fifth fundamental force. One that would help explain dark matter and one that would prove Hawking's assertion that a photon could theoretically escape a black hole. When the fifth 'movement' is revealed to the characters in the show, it's important to note that the character who delivers the information is suffering from ALS, the same disease that Hawking has suffered with for the last 50 years. At other times in the show, when the plot focuses on the characters trapped in Happ's basement, a recent quote from Stephen Hawking on the subject of black holes comes to mind, “They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought, If you feel you are trapped in a black hole, don’t give up.

There is a way out.” Keeping this in mind, we can see the characters live out this theory in the show, one in which they act like entangled particles trying to escape their prison and see the light, particularly in the scene where Homer is having intercourse with Renata and Prairie is simultaneously mirroring their movements despite a vast separation of distance between themselves. We are intended to see them as entangled particles. Happ is the villain in the show but he's also allegorical for where current research in theoretical physics has led. He believes there are multiple dimensions.

The mentor that he comes to kill, believes in only one extra dimension, just as Einstein did. This leads us to string theory and how it's allegorized in the show. This one is pretty obvious; various characters play stringed instruments in the show. They play various instruments, as there are various string theories.

The one played by Prairie seems to resonate most well with Happ, her version of string theory is the one he seems to favor most as a researcher. The books that are found under Prairie's bed which seem to cast doubt on the truthfulness of her story are actually representative of the various threats to scientific advancement and scientific belief throughout time, whether it be from religion, mythology or Russia's defunding of research and the mass exodus of its scientists in the 90's. That one of the characters wants to keep the book of angels is a comical note on the current threat to scientific belief. There are many more pieces to this allegory but this should get the ball rolling. I'm fuzzy on everything in here, so please forgive me, I’m just a guy in a basement. I'll end by outright guessing on something in the show, maybe someone has a better idea, but that's on the subject of why Prairie wears a Wolf sweatshirt.

My only guess is that the first, or 'original' writer of fiction to truly examine quantum mechanics in a way that related to the self, was Virginia Woolf in her story 'The Waves' I'll end it there because nothing else is popping into my memory and I've got sub sauce all over my shirt. *One last thing.

I suppose that if anyone were actually able to solve the “riddle” in the show, they’d also be solving the biggest scientific riddle of the last 100 years. *Edit 1: some additional theorizing: First off, for those suggesting I'm being too vague I would re-read my first point and do even the most cursory research into what would be explained in physics should we discover a fifth fundamental force. *6 The Omega and the Alpha Prairie's NDE is used as a contrivance to give us an impossible glimpse at the multiverse that string theory postulates exists. Her dialogue with Khatun is deliberately vague as is Khatun's identity, she's a bit of a red herring and serves the primary purpose of making us see Prairie as the originator of something. She's the omega and the alpha. Alpha (Α) and omega (Ω) being the first and last letters, respectively, of the classical (Ionic) Greek alphabet.

That's why in newer versions of the bible, the phrase, 'I am the Alpha and Omega' is further clarified with the sentence, 'The beginning and the end.' Black holes are also thought to be Alpha and Omega in the sense that they bring death in one dimension but eject life in another as a big bang event. And lets not forget that Prairie goes out with quite a bang at the end of the series. Edit 2 conclusion After a day in this sub and after reading all of your comments I've decided to end this post with a question. Can a show loaded with so much religious iconography, such well developed characters and a fast moving plot really just be about physics? I believe the answer is yes but I'm open minded to any alternate theories as well. I think the show's creators ultimately got their wish in this sub, by devising a show about the search for a theory of everything, they encouraged their audience to do the very same thing: search for a unified theory that fully explains every aspect of the series including the author's original intent.

Did they succeed? A quick glance at the various posts in this subreddit suggests that they very much did. Similar to how Seinfeld was a fantastic show about nothing, The OA is a great series about, well, everything. There is no doubt the writers were using quantum theory as inspiration and a scientific basis for the show.

I have bext to no understanding of the subject but as a highschool science teacher i found i was picking up several of the references as tge story progressed. In fact, After the first episode i said to my wife 'this show is going to be about quantum theory'. Given my layman's understanding i think its safe to say the writers were intentional in wanting viewers to see the connection. There are a few nearly explicit references including the 'multiverse' discussion and the physics discussions on the podcast Happ is listening too.

I think the OP makes a good case that the writers are working in other references to physics discourse. But of course this isn't all the show us about. Nor will it hang neatly and completely as a metaphor for the science it references. I want to point out Biocentrism and Quantum Immortality as the theory that the universe of the show adheres to. I'd urge OP to see if they think it is the answer to the show's riddle. It's the 'will' as we hear on the show, the representation of the mind. A good article on the subject: 'Lanza also believes that multiple universes can exist simultaneously.

In one universe, the body can be dead. Medal Of Honor Pacific Assault Download Rip here. And in another it continues to exist, absorbing consciousness which migrated into this universe.

This means that a dead person while traveling through the same tunnel ends up not in hell or in heaven, but in a similar world he or she once inhabited, but this time alive. And so on, infinitely. No Limits Roller Coaster 2 Serial Key there.

It's almost like a cosmic Russian doll afterlife effect.' And here's take on how the observer is the unseen variable in the Theory Of Everything: 'Could the long-sought Theory of Everything be merely missing a component that was too close for us to have noticed?

Some of the thrill that came with the announcement that the human genome had been mapped or the idea that we are close to understanding the “Big Bang” rests in our innate human desire for completeness and totality. But most of these comprehensive theories fail to take into account one crucial factor: We are creating them.

It is the biological creature that fashions the stories, that makes the observations, and that gives names to things. And therein lies the great expanse of our oversight, that science has not confronted the one thing that is at once most familiar and most mysterious — consciousness. As Emerson wrote in “Experience,” an essay that confronted the facile positivism of his age: “We have learned that we do not see directly, but mediately, and that we have no means of correcting these colored and distorting lenses which we are, or of computing the amount of their errors. Perhaps these subject-lenses have a creative power; perhaps there are no objects.” Edit: added links and quote, and then fixed the link.

Added second quote • • • •.