New
to Quantum Leap? Here's a brief introduction to the theory and characters
that made up Universal's television series which aired on NBC from 1994
through 1999.
Quantum
Leap: The Virtual Seasons website continues the story
from the last episode, Mirror Image.
Quantum
Leap
Theorizing that one could
time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett led an elite group
of scientists into the desert to develop a top secret project, known as
Quantum Leap. Pressured to prove his theories or lose funding,
Dr. Beckett prematurely stepped into the Project's Accelerator and vanished.
He awoke to find himself in
the past, suffering from partial amnesia, and facing a mirror image that
was not his own. Fortunately, contact with his own time was maintained
through brainwave transmissions with Al, the Project Observer, who appeared
in the form of a hologram that only Dr. Beckett can see and hear.
Trapped in the past, Dr. Beckett
finds himself leaping from life to life putting things right that once
went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home.
Quantum
Leap Project's Theory
Sam's String Theory of time
was developed with Professor Sebastian LoNigro of MIT in the summer of
1973, and forms the basis for the Quantum Leap Project. A Dick and Jane
explanation of the theory as given by Admiral Albert Calavicci: "One end
of this string represents your birth. The other end, your death.
You tie the ends together, and your life is a loop. Ball the
loop, and the days of your life touch each other out of sequence. Therefore,
Leaping from one point on the string to another would move you back and
forward within your own lifetime." After five years of Leaping, Sam discovered
that he could also Leap along his own DNA.
With funding from the government,
Project Quantum Leap was born deep in the mountains of New Mexico, in an
area called Stallion's Gate.
