Talk:The Economist/Theories

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This page is turning into a discussion page. Needs a clean-up.--moss ryder 13:56, 21 February 2008 (PST)

• Perhaps I'm confused. What's a "talk" page for if not dialogue? --Bastion 08:02, 25 February 2008 (PST)

Section entitled "Sayid's New Name" should be removed. It isn't explained and doesn't make sense anyway. -- Sadiemonster

Contents 1 The helicopter passengers 2 move discussion from theory page 3 relativity discussion 3.1 World Line Theory in Minkowski Spacetime 4 Clocks or Stopwatches? 5 Theory on identity of the Economist

The helicopter passengers

Transplanted from the theory page

I doubt [Naomi will be alive again] because.... In the 7/31/06 podcast, Damon specifically states, "When a character dies on the show, they’re dead. The only time you’ll see them again is in someone else’s flashback." --PenguinCorrosive 08:47, 15 February 2008 (PST)

While that's a fair point, all it really does is change the question to how we as viewers get confirmation that a character *is* dead. --Bastion 09:36, 15 February 2008 (PST)

• Also, that was a year and a half ago, before they introduces flash-forwards as a way of telling the story. Naomi's body has been much too prominent in these last few episodes for me to belive we won't see her alive again.

move discussion from theory page

• This diagram posits they were clocks and not stopwatches. We do not have confirmation, and if they are stopwatches it changes things.
  • 1. I used the term "clock" to stay consistent w/ the language used in the main article. 2. I would argue a stopwatch is a clock. 3. I do not see how a "clock" vs. a stopwatch would have any bearing on my analysis. Any timepiece would be affected in the same way; it would continue to log time while between timelines. The only benefit of using a stopwatch would be to ensure that the starting time was synchronized. You may assume that two different clocks would be a few second or even minutes off from each other, but over thirty minutes is well outside the normal margin of error. 4. You'll also note I labeled the times w/ tildes to acknowledge the approximate time values, since we have no way of being sure of the exact time. For instance, how many seconds did it take for Daniel to remove the clock and compare it to the other one? That alone would probably remove 30 seconds or so from the difference.
    • The reason I bring this up is because your theory implies that time is running at the same time for both the island and the real world, and the reason for the time difference is due to the fact that the island is in a different space/time timeline than the rest of the world. If the timepieces are in fact stopwatches, while not disproving your theory, it might instead point toward other theories about time moving at different speeds on and off the island.
      • This theory over-complicates things. If they are stopwatches and both started at 0:00:00, then you need TWO theories. One that explains why it is so late, and another that explains why there is a time difference. When he receives the "clock", he first compares it to his watch. If he simply wanted to know how late it was, he would have checked his watch as soon as he heard/saw the rocket. This suggests that it is a clock, not a stopwatch. This requires only one explanation (just the time delay). That could be explained by some kind of wormhole, with one end near the ship and the other on the island, but 31 minutes into the future. This would also explain why the helicopter must fly back the exact same path - it must go through the same wormhole. The person on the ship may not have been actually tracking the rocket, but simply estimating how close it would be based on how fast it travels. However, radio communications should also be going through this wormhole, which would cause the rocket to arrive instantly, so there must be something else (perhaps something that only affects electromagnetic waves) causing the communications to take place in "real" time. --
        • Exactly. The problem isn't one of just time, but also space. I felt that my explanation was the simplest in explaining the results as we witnessed them. It requires the least assumptions on our part. Likewise, the explanation I would put forth to explain why the helicopter and rocket were affected, yet not telecommunications, is also rather simple: Mass. The helicopter and people and the rocket all have mass; radio waves don't. The wormhole or whatever is at the event horizon must accelerate or transport whatever is transversing it. The more mass involved, the bigger the delay. Telecommunications would be nearly real-time, as they are simply being conducted across the event horizon. And just like the helicopter and boat requiring a specific bearing, telecommunications would require they be tuned and aimed correctly to cross the event horizon.
          • How do we know the helicopter is affected? It had technical difficulties, but no time related issues, or space related issues. The technical difficulties could have been a result of the storm, or the magnetism, I did not see anything to suggest that the helicopter experience a time/spacial relation issue.
            • Like in the theory of relativity a traveler who goes near the speed of light the time will pass more slowly for him in is ship compare to the non moving world. It means 1000 years can pass in the outside world but to the perspective of the people in the ship maybe it's only 30 min. The ship will only use 30 min of fuel, people will age of 30 min etc. Similar time distortion here. In the perspective of the Rocket/Helicopter the trip took a normal amount of time. People inside the helicopter experienced a normal amount of time for the trip. But to people in the Ilsand or in the boat the time passed at a different speed.
• They simply cannot be stopwatches. A rocket of that size cannot maintain momentum for more than a minute. To suggest it was in flight for over 3 hours is simply ridiculous. All the producers were trying to show is either that the island is out of sync with the rest of the world, OR communications are out of sync. Relativistic effects are impossible since the required velocity/gravity would have crushed the rocket.
  • One of the "clues" on the Channel 7 website showed the turning of the failsafe key in the hatch for a few seconds. This suggests that a magnetic anomaly is the culprit, and this would only affect communications.
• The times on the clock are definitely times of day, and NOT stop watch time. Daniel said nothing about starting a stop watch. Daniel checks his wrist watch when the payload arrives, appears shocked and checks the other clock to confirm.
  • The watch on Daniels wrist shows 7.15 (pm I guess). That's quite a bit off the watch that he placed next to his equipment and suggests that they're stop watches cos otherwise these two watches should show the same time. Furthermore, Juliet leaves just before the launch and comes back just after the landing - and the walk is supposed to take "a couple of hours" which is pretty much 2-3 hrs
• Were the time shown in the clock the times of day, such as 3:16:22pm and 2:45:04 pm, or were they stopwatches, synchronized at the moment of launch? While either way they posit a 31 minute 18 second difference, there is a distinction to be made between these two things.
  • We do not know the passage of time between when Daniel conducted the experiment and when the payload landed. Considering Juliette said it would be a few hours to hike back to the beach, and the rocket lands right before Juliette and Desmond re-emerge, it supports the possibility that these are indeed stopwatches, and it took 2 hours and 45 minutes (on island) for Juliette to go and get Desmond and then return.
    • Juliette left before this experiment. This does not disprove the above, since she said it might take "a few hours" to go get Desmond. Her trip could have been 4 hours, for all we know.
  • If they are in fact stop watches, and not clocks, it also means the potential constant (if it exists) between island time and real time is greater. The rocket should have taken about 1 minute from launch to landing. If these are stopwatches, it in fact took 3 hours and 16 minutes to land. That means, the ratio, for Island time:real-world time would be approximately 1:196.
    • If this is true, then considering they have been on the island for 100 island days, that is the equivalent of 19600 real-world days, or 50+ years. This seems so radically unlikely that it disproves this theory. Unless my math is wrong...
      • There is a discrepancy here, with this math. Assuming they are stopwatches, what does that information tell us. 1>It should have taken about 1 minute from time of launch until landing. Instead it took 3 hours and 16 minutes. 2>During the 3+ hours the rocket was traveling, only 2 hours and 45 minutes passed on the island. The above equation only take <1> into account, but ignored <2>. It is the wrong math problem. I don't know the right one, but its not that.
• This proves the theory that time runs differently on the island.
  • It doesn't. Regina's equipment told her that the missile arrived, 31 minutes before it actually arrived. It suggests that the island is somehow at a point 31 minutes behind the real world in the time-line. The subjective experience of time on or off the island is a totally different thing.
    • Someone should look into the episode where Desmond looks through the system logs of the computer to determine that he caused the plane crash. Certainly the time displacement theory would have had an effect on the timing that surrounds those events.
      • How? The computer/printout only showed us the times that the numbers were successfully entered into the computer in the Swan. And the way Daniel was acting-it would seem that they already knew about the time displacement possibility. If the initial almost-explosion did create a "time bubble", Would that "time bubble" not be destroyed or further warped by the real explosion? Also, if this electromagnetic explosion had the possibility of creating a rip in time/space, thus distorting time, how will the computer's data correlate that distortion in time?
• The difference between the two clocks was 31 minutes (15 and 16)
  • A simple difference of 31 minutes could not be constant, for one the voice calls are in real time, and for two, time running at a different pace would result in a different period of lag at all times, instead of a constant 31 minutes.
    • The fact that the voice calls are in real time doesn't prove anything; Daniel could be making the call at 12:00 Island time and Regina could be receiving it at 12:30 freighter time; without asking each other what time it is they wouldn't know that the call "existed" at different times for them.
  • It could be that the ratio is constant (rather than 31 minutes), that time moves 84% as fast on the island as off.
    • There is a continuous slow down of time from the freighter to the island (though maybe not linear). Its not an abrupt change. However, the speed of light remains constant, therefore radio comms can still occur in real-time from the perspective of each participant in the conversation. Its like passing a stationary train platform while standing on a train that is moving at 50 miles per hour and yelling at the person on the platform the moment you pass them. They will hear you even though your velocity is faster than their velocity (implying a dilation of time between the two frames of reference--see Einstein relativity theories below).
    • A similar time device can be seen in C.S. Lewis's Narnia books - a few seconds in our world might equal days or weeks in Narnia. Coincidentally, we have just been introduced a character named C.S. Lewis (Charlotte).
      • This is a good point - and in the Narnia books, the time difference is not constant either, it's different every time one travels between Earth and Narnia.
  • At one moment (using pause) we can see booth clocks on the same image; the clock in the rocket marks 03:16:22 the one on the island marks 02:45:04 that's exactly 31 m 18 sec difference. That rocket could probably not fly for an extra 30 min so in the perspective of the rocket it left at 03:15:22 and arrived 1 minute later at 03:16:22 but according to the island clock it's 02:45:04. To have those results the rocket must have traveled 31 minutes 18 seconds into the past. Therefore when Faraday spoke in the radio he was talking to the future, that's why the rocket arrived late; It was only sent around 30 minutes later.
    • The rocket (and anything else sent along that bearing), is somehow suspended in time. This accounts for the rough/aborted landings, the need for Juliet to be drugged to make the trip and the rocket making a re-entrance like appearance when it is seen by the islanders.
    • Wouldn't Daniel actually have requested the rocket around 02:14 ? The rocket would have been sent at 03:15 and arrived at 03:16 for the 1 minute travel time, but went back in time to arrive relative to the island at 02:45 ?
      • If we assume that there are 2 timelines, island time (IT) and freighter time (FT), then all we know is this: at some unknown point in IT Daniel makes a call to the freighter where it is about 3:15 FT. The object arrives at 3:16 FT and 2:45 IT. We don't know how much time passed in IT between the phone call and the arrival so we also don't know which time it was in IT at the phone call.
      • The phone could be the key as it allows calls to the outside "future" in non-island time.
• The experiment demonstrates conclusively that time on the island moves slower than 'real time' (off the island.) While the difference is a constant ratio, the purpose of the Swan Station was to regulate this time shift and keep the island nearly synchronized with 'real-time'. Since the turning of the fail-safe key, the island's time has returned to its natural state; slower than 'real-time'. The ratio can be determined by relating the amount of time Daniel has been on the island to the time differential demonstrated by the two clocks. Assuming that Daniel has been on the island since midnight at the beginning of Day 94, we can estimate that he has been on the island for 15 hours by the time the rocket lands. If he's lost 31minutes 18 seconds over the course of only 15 hours, the ratio of 'apparent island time' to 'deviation from real time' is 1:28.66242. If we apply that ratio to the 27 days that have passed for the losties since the key was turned, day 94 (Dec. 24, 2004 in 'apparent island time') becomes February 5, 2007. That would be approximately 2 months before Jack reads the death notice in Through The Looking Glass. If Daniel arrived on the island sooner than midnight, Dec. 24 (Day 94) the ratio would be reduced and the 'real-time' date would be a bit prior to Feb. 5, 2007. I suspect this is likely but am unable to be any more precise given current data.
  • I think this idea is great, but I think the ratio has been miscalculated. If Daniel has been on the island for 15 hours, and in that time has fallen behind 1/2 hour than the ratio is is more like 14.5:15 not 1:28.
    • Actually, the ratio is "time on the island":"deviation from real-time" as the amount of the deviation is proportional to the time spent on the island.
      • Yes, the amount of deviation is proportional to the time spent on the island, but how you apply that ratio is critical. It is incorrect to say "Daniel has lost 30 minutes in 15 hours, thus every day on the island is 30 days in the real world." Every 15 hours, the island falls 30 minutes behind thus, 15 real world hours is = to 14.5 island hours. If you want to split hairs, you can look at it as Daniel has spent 15 hours on island and 15.5 hours have passed on the freighter. The difference is practically negligible.
        • It sounds like you are assuming that the difference is constant, 31 minutes 18 seconds behind; like having a watch that is set 15 minutes slow. But the gap continually increases. If we are in a footrace and I run slower, you are going to get further and further ahead. The ratio is not 'time elapsed on the island' to 'time elapsed in the real world'; it is 'time elapsed on the island' to 'time lost in the real world'.
          • That is not what I mean. If we use your foot race example, I run 100 yards in the first minute and you run 95. In the next minute I run 100 again, and you run 95 again, and so on. Every minute you fall 5 yards farther behind. Try applying the 28:1 ratio against the 15 hours Daniel has been on the boat. Then you get the boat at 420 hours, which doesn't make sense. Does anyone see what I am saying?
            • I agree. It doesn't matter what the ratio is: 1) Let's try "time elapsed on the island":"time elapsed off the island". It's 29:30. 27 days divided to this ratio is roughly 28 days (which gives you the time elapsed off the island according to the same ratio). 2) "time elapsed on the island":"time lost". It's 115:4. 27 days divided by this ratio is roughly 1 day (which gives you the time lost on the island according to the same ratio), and that says 27+1 days elapsed off the island.
              • Thank You! I feel like Hurley, when Rousseau tells him that she also believes the numbers are cursed.

The calculation was worked out using seconds. There some minor errors in the original so, here is the corrected math:

elapsed island time : time lost

15hrs = 54000s : 31m 18s = 1878s

54000s : 1878s

28.752994 : 1

If applied to the entire 94 days spent by the losties and the date falls sometime out in the next decade. Given that Jack seems to be back before April 2007, Through The Looking Glass, it may be postulated that the time shift has only been in full effect since the turning of the failsafe key on day 67. That leaves approx 27 days.

Factored into 27 days (2332800s)

2332800s / 28.752994 = 776.33083 days

That's 2 years, 46 days (and 4 hours or something. The remainder was dropped to simplify the calculation.)

Add that to the perceived date of Dec. 24 2004 and that puts the date at Feb 8, 2007. Tweak it a little more with the assumption that The Freighter folks landed prior to midnight and you may well end up with the 'real-time' date falling on Feb. 7; one year to the day prior to the airdate of Confirmed Dead.

Actually That would put it at Feb 7, 2007 which is the exact air date of "Not In Portland".

• First of all 2332800s / 28.752994 = 0.9 days, which is exactly my point above, it says that the difference is just one day. What you've done is multiplying it by 28.752994 or rather, dividing it to 1/28.752994 which makes no sense. The ratio "time elapsed on island":"time lost" says, "if 15 hours elapsed on the island, we have lost half an hour". The same ratio applies to the 27 days problem (which is "if 27 days elapsed, how much time have we lost?"). To find that, you assume that the unknown is x, right? The solution is 27*(1/2) = 15x => 13.5 / 15 = x => x = 0.9. This is the solution: We have lost 0.9 days.

Yet, if "the purpose of the Swan Station was to regulate this time shift and keep the island nearly synchronized with 'real-time'" (something I also hypothesized in The_Economist/Theories#The_Island_Jupiter) you have to take away the days on which Desmond pushed the button regularly, from your calculations.

This is why the date is calculated from the time the failsafe key was turned (27 days have passed.)

There something else to be accounted for, though: the clock on board the rocket goes through the same time dilation suffered by Daniel's clock, although for a shorter period of time.

That is to say, if another clock stayed on the boat, it would show a greater time difference.

Unfortunately there is no way to know at which distance from beacon the rocket entered the time dilation zone.

She calls every 5Km every 2.5seconds or so (1.668 between 5Km and impact and 3.629 between 10Km and 5Km are the maximum and minimum, yet you have to take into account Regina's lag and mine too), making the rocket speed about 2000m/s that is 7200Km/h.

The flight lasts for about 28 seconds; if they are spent entirely in the time dilated zone, outside this would equal to

28*28.752994 = 805.083832 seconds = 13 minutes and 25 seconds

this would increase the time dilation to 15 hours in 1878+805 and drop the rate to

54000s : 2683s

20,126724 : 1

Now we should repeat the passage above, using a time dilation of 20 to calculate the rocket's 28 seconds time dilation until we find a balance point in the two equations.

It seems to stop increasing at 21.7 or so

We don't exactly know how much time both Daniel and the rocket have spent on the island, the ratio is certainly between 1:28 and 1:21, but this "scissor" moves the day considerably.

This theory does not involve 'time dilation' or such influences during the passage to the island. It simply assigns all of the lost time to the effect of being on the island.

The rocket has been on the island for about 28 seconds before Daniel retrieves its internal clock, so you have to take that into account. Those 28 seconds run at 1:28 ratio as well as the 54000 seconds in which Daniel has been on the island. This IS a time dilation and the calculation above never assumes it is due to the passage to the island, rather it assumes the rocket has been under the influence of the time dilating "field" of the island for the whole flight, something we can't say for sure.

Regardless, the slight effect of the field on the short time of the rocket's flight is negligible, is it not?

Yes, it is negligible, but I found one major mistake in the calculation above that led to think that it wasn't negligible. It is stated that

elapsed island time : time lost

15hrs = 54000s : 31m 18s = 1878s

54000s : 1878s

28.752994 : 1

and later this ratio is assumed to be how many seconds are lost for each second sent on the island. This is a mistake, as the calculated ratio only means that every 28 seconds spent on the island 1 second is lost.

• Has it occurred to anyone that if the clock on Daniel's equipment AND the clock inside the rocket are stopwatches, then the right most position on the display is for 100th's of a second. After all, this is suppose to be scientific equipment. So Daniel's stopwatch is reading 2 minutes, 45 seconds and 3 hundred's of a second.
• First of all, time is not moving at different speeds on the island compared with the rest of the world. If it were, then communications between the freighter and the island would be thus: to people on the freighter, incoming communications from the island would be slowed down; to people on the island, incoming communications from the freighter would be sped up. This could be illustrated by the following: imagine that you are on the freighter and are looking at people on the beach of the island with high-powered binoculars. Since time is moving faster for you on the freighter than on the island, you would be seeing people move in slow motion. If you also happened to be talking to one of those people on the beach, you would see them talking in slow motion, and their words would come across on the satellite phone as slowed down. It would be live communication, but would be nothing like what we're seeing on the show. However, the time difference in Daniel's experiment must still be explained, and here is my theory (forgive the "cheesiness" of it): picture a huge slice of swiss cheese that is folded over the top of the island like a large dome. It can be thin or it can be thick, it doesn't really matter. The point is that just like a slice of swiss cheese it has holes in it. The cheese acts as a time displacement field, in which you can get stuck if you touch it. If you do, then for you time will continue, while for the rest of the world (including the island) it's either drastically slowed down or nearly stopped. So using the payload as an example, it got stuck in the swiss cheese for a half hour until it finally broke through and landed at its preprogrammed destination. The holes in the swiss cheese are very important, because if you want to leave from or arrive on the island without getting stuck in this time displacement field, then you must travel through one of the holes. When the four people from the freighter traveled to the island, they went through one of these holes. That's why Daniel told the helicopter pilot to return to the freighter on the exact route he used to come in. The helicopter has enough fuel to return to the freighter IF he doesn't get stuck in the swiss cheese. But if he does get stuck, he will waste the rest of the helicopter's fuel as time passes inside the swiss cheese until they finally make it through (just like the payload eventually made it through--a half hour later). As we will probably find out in the episode The Constant, everyone on the helicopter will freak out when the pilot tries to fly through a storm to get back to the freighter--which he has to in order to retrace his steps. They will probably force him to fly off that course and then get them stuck in the swiss cheese. These holes in the swiss cheese are most likely stationary and some (or all, if there's some sort of technology that can detect them) their locations are known by Ben and some of the Others. When Michael is allowed to leave with Walt, Ben tells him to leave on an exact trajectory. Desmond was unable to leave the island, most likely because he did not know where any of the holes were (or that they even existed). Daniel tells the helicopter pilot to return on the exact same course they came in on. So this theory can explain the time displacement of Daniel's payload but also explains why communication between the freighter and the island is still normal. It also explains why there is an emphasis on leaving the island only on certain routes.
  • In light of some of the evidence that points to the idea that time is moving slower on the island, I tried to come up with a reason for why communications between the island and the freighter sound normal (instead of slowed down on one end and sped up on the other). After some thought, I came up with a possible explanation. But first, I have to explain the assumptions behind this updated theory. It operates under the assumption that people on the freighter know all about the time difference but want to keep this fact hidden from the survivors on the island. Therefore, they have created a way to communicate with them that masks the effect of the change in speed. Here's how it works: when people on the island speak to people on the freighter, it comes through sounding very slow. Since the people on the freighter expect this, it's no problem for them. They have programmed the satellite phones on their end to speed up these communications from the island so that they are understandable. An analogy would be increasing the RPM settings of a record player in order to make the record play at normal speed. But here's the trick: when people on the freighter respond, their satellite phone is programmed to send what they're saying to the island, but slowed down enough to match the speed that time flows on the island. That way, when the message is received by the person on the island, it sounds like normal speed to them. If this is what's going on, the deception only works in one direction. If you were in a time bubble where time moved slower, you would not be able to deceive people in this manner who are moving faster than you. It only works the other way around, where people who are moving faster are able to deceive people who are moving slower. Keep in mind that so far we've only seen these communications from the point of view of people on the island. If we were to see the freighter's point of view, we might very well hear their communications coming in slowed down like I'm proposing.

relativity discussion

• (moved from theory page)
  • This assumes the time difference is linear.
    • If time dilation is due to a gravitational gradient then the amount would vary the closer the rocket got to the gravitational source (assuming it on the island).
  • The problem with that is that if the frames are moving relative to each other, they cannot remain the same distance from each other. I don't know how you get a Relativistic effect while the two frames maintain a constant distance between them.
    • Daniel emphasizes to Frank that he must follow the same bearing they used for entrance. Perhaps all matter/waves must enter the island through this single entrance. This would explain the time delay if the missile had to travel around a snowglobe/barrier and enter this specific gateway to reach the spot Daniel set up.
      • There could be a magnetic field surrounding the island preventing signals from getting in/out. If they formed a "sphere" around the island, the Brouwer "Hairy Ball" theorem would demand that there be at least one point where the field went to zero, allowing signals in through that one point. If the ship is anchored near that spot, signals would reach them directly.
        • That could also explain how it was possible to jam signals from the looking glass. If signals can only exit at one point, they can be jammed.
  • Similar dilations could occur for General Relativistic effects, which would require the island to have a tremendous amount of energy.
    • More likely it would be due to a large local gravitational field, such as a mini black hole or wormhole. This would also hint about why the exact courses off of the island are important, because of the necessity of following a path that didn’t interact with a singularity or exotic matter in a wormhole.
  • A relativistic effect would also effect the voice communication.
    • The voice communication would be through electromagnetic waves, which travel at the speed of light, and are unaffected by Special Relativistic effects.
      • True, but relativistic effects would require two frames of references moving at different rates thus getting further apart.
      • This would explain why Danielle's transmission has not been detected for 16 years.
        • It has already been proven in Through the Looking Glass that the reason Danielle's transmission was not heard by anyone was because The Others were using the looking glass to jam all signals to/from the island.
  • Perhaps it is M-theory. If the universe is 10 or 11 dimensional, as suggested by superstring theory, then maybe the island is moving close to the speed of light along a dimension that is not perceptible to human senses. This speed along an invisible dimension could alter time around the island in the same way relativity explains how time dilates when x, y or z increase close to the speed of light.
    • But the extra dimensions called for in M-theory aren't just "invisible." They're curled up to an incredibly small size; objects existing in 3-dimensional space can't move through them.
    • If the calculation above is correct and time flows at about 1/20 of the normal speed, this would mean that given 1/20 = sqrt{1- v^2/c^2) the island should be moving at about 99.75% of the speed of light (see also The Twin Paradox)
  • Something to also be noted here is that at the end of the conversation before they see the payload flying through the sky, Jack says "I can't believe its been 100 days since I've seen a game." At that point, either Frank didn't catch his statement to counter comment, or there was not a counter comment needed?
    • These four new characters are obviously hiding a lot and when Daniel completes his experiment, he does not tell Jack anything about it. He does not ask Jack any questions relating to time either. If Frank catches Jack's comment, it is unlikely that he would choose to point it out.
  • There "is" a reason this was mentioned right before Daniel's payload was delivered, but was it to make the above point or to throw us off?
  • If time moves at 1/30th the speed of the outside world, then it may actually be 2011 where the freighter is and 2004 where the island is. That means that Frank would be talking about a world series that happened 4 years ago rather than remembering off the top of his head that the Red Sox won in 2004 also during the year the plane crashed.
    • Btw, i figured 1/30th this way...if the projectile took 1 minute from the freighter's perspective to impact the island and 31 minutes from the island's perspective, then the ratio between the two time velocities is about 1:30.
      • The problem with this is that Daniel's clock would start experiencing the relativistic effect from the moment he entered the island's "temporal boundary." If he's been on the island for 12 - 16 hours, the 31 minute difference would equate to time on the island moving at about 95% the speed of real time.
        • The clocks are not acting as a stopwatch, it is supposed to be actual time of day. Therefore Daniel's clock (to him) has been his time since flying to the island and jumping out. If time changes on the island, it would have to change then. When they show both clocks, they should continue to remain the same difference apart because both clocks are now in the same time. If another clock were sent immediately after, it would be only slightly in the future, as stated above.
          • This was a serious, technologically advanced physics experiment. As such, a twenty-four hour clock should have been used if the intention was to record the actual time of day. Additionally, no clocks in the world tick at identical speeds - even atomic clocks are differentiated by a few nano-seconds - and subsequently to make the experiment more reliable, both clocks would be synchronized at the time of launch, and the purpose of the equipment used by Daniel might have been to achieve synchronization. Thus it was a stopwatch.
            • If it was a serious, technologically advanced physics experiment they would use UTC not the local time. Then it could be 03:16:22 UTC and 02:45:04 UTC on the clocks and still daylight on the island. Additionally there would be more error introduced from synchronization than would accumulate from the difference in tick times and tick times would affect both a stopwatch and clock.
    • This ratio may actually be higher. Frank definitely seems like he's been out of the airline business for a long time given that he appears to already be retired to the Bahamas in his own little cottage by the sea.
      • This creates a weird situation with the Black Rock. Assuming that the swan or other station didn't tamper with the island's temporal properties--the black rock was lost in 1881, which is 123 years before the Losties crashed. If the world's time has been moving at 30 times the speed as the islands time, that means that from the point of view of the island, the black rock has been on the island for only 4.1 years. It also implies that DHARMA had been conducting its business on the island within the past 12 months before the Losties arrived, but they seem to have been there much longer.
        • The electromagnetic "event" at the end of Season Two that alerted Penny to their presence may have altered the temporal qualities of the island from that point forward.
          • Or the island naturally moves forward in time faster than the rest of the world, but the swan was an experiment to equalize the time frames. When the swan was destroyed, the island reverted to its natural state.
  • They certainly can disregard natural law. A cloud of black smoke that can pick up a man and throw him? A child who can make things appear just by thinking about them? A man who was killed by a sonic fence, woke up, got killed by a spear to the heart, and woke up again? I expect the writers to disregard the laws of the observable universe.
    • No they can't. Whilst these things seem magical or impossible, they clearly make sense within the logic set up by the story. Telekinesis and accelerated healing are or will be explained according to the island's unique properties, and the writers have explicitly stated that they will adhere to natural law in so far as the Lostie's adventures will not turn out to be a dream or a spell in purgatory. If the storyline of Lost totally ignored the boundaries of reason, it would be Heroes.
  • Light can of course be affected by the island's relativistic properties. Even if it were to move at only 1% of its normal 186,000 miles per second, a trip between the island and a freighter only about 40 miles away would still seem instantaneous.
  • This is interesting because it could tie into the vile vortices theory where the distances tie into wave theory that describe interference minima and maximas (if the numbers represent frequencies or wavelengths). The maxs and mins somehow coincide with the locations on the earth of the vortices. My mathematics is a bit rusty when it comes to wave theory, but someone might want to chase this rabbit down the hole.
    • What about those who comprise the Oceanic Six? They don't seem to show any signs of dramatic aging in the flash forwards. Of course...the flash forwards could always be a sort of alternate future reality.
      • Because, you are the age you are at the time you come to the island or leave the island... and so on.
• It seems interesting that a rocket fired from a big boat somewhere in the ocean approaches the island like a meteorite might (i was thinking Daniel would burn his hands touching it) from the sky. Either this thing is launched like a projectile, or perhaps it was launched straight down (into the water) and the island is in a giant bubble (snowglobe) which is actually underwater. Can't explain how they get any light down there or clouds in the sky though with this idea.
• If they wanted to show that Island time and Real time are different, Daniel could call the freighter and say "Hey, what time have you got there?" The Experiment was to illustrate that there's a portal of some sort that must be traveled through to arrive on the island. Apparently, there's some time distortion experienced by the item or presumably person during the trip. A lag so to speak.
  • But Claire for example was still pregnant.
    • The producers said publicly that major revelations will explain many plot points, but that there would be plot points that will never have an explanation and must be just accepted as part of the story. One would expect that when an "answer" given to us by the writers seems to clear up multiple questions (but maybe not all), then it would be reasonable to accept that answer as new canon. I think we have been given an answer - that the island moves in a slower time reality than the rest of the world - and this solves many of the major plot arcs that we have seen.
      • OK, just so I understand your theory, it is that: (1) The date on the island is an earlier date than in the rest of the world, and (2) as soon as you arrive on the island, you revert to the state you were on that earlier date. Is that right? If so, then indeed Claire would have reverted to her un-pregnant state. Plus, everybody would suddenly be several years younger, their hairstyles would change, etc. Maybe this wouldn't be noticeable among the adults, but it would certainly be a big change for Walt. Plus, it seems likely that when we next see Walt, he will be much older than the last time we saw him; if your theory is correct, he would revert to the age he was when he left the island. It's one thing for a theory to leave some questions unanswered; it's another for it to directly contradict facts the show has established.
• Anyway, the experiment explains a lot of things, such as why Richard Alpert does not age, while Ben does. Since Ben has surely been traveling a lot, as seen from his passports, he aged off the island. It also explains why Walt seems older to Locke.
• Ben's man on the boat could have started the timer earlier, or could have programmed it to count faster, to confuse the Freighter people.
• It's 80 km, or about 40 miles.
  • 80k is more like 50mi
  • Regina counts down from 40km which is 25 miles
    • Also Regina was counting 5km every 3 seconds, which means the projectile was traveling at 1.66km/second which is 5976km/h, not 2.5km/h.
      • Regina calls 5Km of distance traveled every 2.5 seconds or so, making the rocket's speed about 2000m/s or 7200Km/h. Below you can see the different callings of distance from beacon with a timestamp I grabbed using VirtualDub's internal timer (bear in mind that Regina might have called the various distance with a short delay and that I surely introduced a further, yet constant, delay in stopping the timer at each calling)

19:12.068 launch

19:19.575 40Km

19:21.994 35Km

19:24.580 30Km

19:26.791 25Km

19:29.293 20Km

19:31.962 15Km

19:34.590 10Km

19:38.219 5Km

19:39.887 impact

• This could explain why Frank burned up so much fuel on the way in.
  • A helicopter of that size could not possibly travel that far under even the best circumstances.
    • The UH-1D has a range of 351mi/510km.
  • Rockets travel in ballistic trajectories. If the "spatial distortion" theory was true, then the rocket would have been aimed at a spot in the ocean, and splashed down there. It would not have been able to re-aim itself to fly several hundred more miles than it originally was aimed for.
• If the experiment showed only a spatial distortion, the clocks would have been in sync. There's a 31 minute difference...but only on the Island. Off the Island, the rocket traveled as far and as fast as Regina expected. There may well be a spatial distortion, but it's part of a Minkowski distortion -- three dimensions of space, one of time.
  • The experiment actually shows two separate effects. When the payload arrives, Faraday say, "It's finally here," indicating some significant amount of time has passed. So, for the sake of argument, let's say he expected it at 2:15. In a normal situation, the payload would arrive and its clock would say 2:15 as well. If it arrived right away, when expected, and said 2:46, that would be one effect. If it didn't arrive until 31 minutes later (i.e. was "somewhere" for 31 minutes even though the freighter's instruments indicated it was at the target), but said 2:46, this would be something else. But we see both effects: its arrival is delayed AND it's clock shows EXTRA elapsed time. This would imply that distortions of both space AND time occur in the vicinity of the island.
  • Again, just because Charlie can talk to Penny doesn't prove there is not distortion in time; the conversation could be taking place at 12:00 for Charlie and 12:30 for Penny; they wouldn't know she was in the future or vice versa.
    • It is important to differentiate between the rate of time and the absolute time. Time could be passing at the same rate on- and off-the island, but simply off-shifted by 31 minutes. Or, time could be flowing at a proportionally different rate on and off the island.
  • It does if the distortion warps time as well as space.
    • The rocket is following a linear path through curved spacetime. The nearest analogy is a ship sailing across the curved surface of the ocean.
  • The issue is not how fast it takes the radio waves to ARRIVE. The issue is what people on the freighter and the island sound like when they talk to each other. If time is moving slower on the island, then when they talk to someone on the freighter, from the perspective of the people on the freighter they will sound like they are talking very slowly. Conversely, if time is moving faster on the freighter, then when they talk to someone on the island, from the perspective of the people on the island they will sound like they are talking very quickly. As I mentioned in the "Daniel's Experiment" section, this can be remedied on the freighter's end if they program their satellite phones to send their communications to the island slowed down to the necessary speed so that by the time it is received by the island it sounds like normal speed to them. If people on the freighter did not want people on the island to know about the differing rates of time, this is how they could intentionally deceive them.

• Good point, assuming the rocket traveled at say 1000mph the extra half hour flight time would equate to traveling an extra 500miles. This would have negligible effect on radio comms

World Line Theory in Minkowski Spacetime

• (moved discussion from theory page)
  • The problem with time flowing like that is the fact that Daniel, and everybody else, was able to communicate with the boat in real time. In a point to point time flow like this, you wouldn't be able to do that, as the radio signal to and from the boat would follow like your examples, and almost never be in sync. You could argue that they used the radio at just the right times so that there was no relativistic distortion, but thats kind of a stretch.

Also, if you want to argue that time is distorting rather than moving in hops and skips, the distortive effect should've affected the radio signal. The boat communicator should've sounded like a bass singer, do to the slowing of the signal as it passed into the Islands time rate, and the people on the Island would've sounded like hyperactive chipmunks.

• Time isn't distorting, it is simply moving at different rates along different world lines. And it is possible that the radio waves are being affected. My explanation for this is that since radio waves travel at the speed of light, they either (a) are not affected since the speed of light is a constant (which gets into some funky physics that is beyond me) or (b) they are affected, but since they travel so quickly, delays in communication are not noticeable. Again, a key part of this theory is that the two world lines are very close to one another, so that although time moves differently along both it is possible travel between the two world lines and stay relatively close. Theoretically, if there is an algorithm that can measure the relative simultaneity at any given moment, you could move between the two world lines as if there were no changes at all. Perhaps this was part of the Dharma Initiative's experiments at the Orchid.

• Although radio waves travel at constant speed if time on the island progresses differently than time in the outside world, it should affect radio communications. Why? Because the clocks by which the information transmitted is processed are not at the same rate. In other words, the speed at which the information gets from point A to point B is not the problem (that's the speed of light and is constant). The problem is that the person speaking at point A is speaking according to a biological clock going at a given rate and the person hearing at point B is hearing according to a biological clock going at a different rate. If the rate is big enough to create the lapse that Daniel detected with the payload test, then that is big enough to create noticeable distortions in communications.

Experiment...An islander, Hurley, keeps a conversation going with someone on the boat, (Sayid), on an open comms link for one whole day... at which point Jack (who is standing next to Hurley) takes a second phone and calls Desmond (who is standing next to Sayid)

Clocks or Stopwatches?

• (moved discussion from theory page)
  • Unless, (like Doc Brown in Back To The Future,) he set the stop watches before he left the freighter, knowing he would be conducting this experiment. Daniel easily could have synchronized two stop watches and left one loaded in the "payload" rocket and brought the other along with him. They could be on shorter, 12-hour timers, causing them to both appear to be under an hour yet, meaning that they just recently passed 12 hours and started again from "00:00:00".
    • That would roughly match the 15 hrs that Daniel has been on the Island (mentioned somewhere above) for: 12hrs, then reset, then another 2:45hrs makes it 14:45hrs.
• If they're clocks, and the theory is that the island is behind time by some ratio, then the 31mins is the cumulative time. So, for the 6hours-ish between entering the lost "dome" and receiving the rocket, 31mins was the total time lag. Or the equipment Daniel set up controlled some aspect of the test and set both clocks to the same time. If they were clocks he previously set up, all he really needed to do was ask for a rocket at his gps and have Regina launch it; that equipment must have done something, as he seemed too methodical in its set up.
• Daniel's other watch (on the wrist) shows 7.15 (pm I guess) which doesn't match at all the time shown on the watch that he put next to the equipment, but they traveled together so they should show the same time. That suggests stop watches. Then again, why does he compare the rocket watch to the wrist watch? Wouldn't make sense.
  • 7:15 on the watch has to be off or set to a different time zone, there is no way that it could be either 7:15AM or PM given how bright it is out and all the events that follow and proceed it.
    • Assuming that the island is somewhere near Fiji, and using a Sunrise/Sunset calculator for December 24th, 2004, We see that Sunrise is at 5:34am, with Sunset at 6:46pm. I would say that 7:15 am, with 2 hours of daylight, would have enough light to match what is shown in the episode. In fact, given the events listed for December 24, Timeline:December_2004, I'd say that it's feasible that only 2 hours had passed by the time that Daniel performs his experiment.
  • Another thing to consider is that if his watch says 7:15, then we're talking about a timepiece that is right around fifteen minutes after the hour (regardless of what time zone it's supposedly attuned to). So using that as a guide, you would think that the clock that he's using would also show fifteen minutes after the hour. Instead, it's forty-five minutes after the hour. So which clock has the same amount of time after the hour as his watch? The clock from the freighter! What's up with that? I'm inclined to want to believe that the time on his watch was an unintended blooper (I don't recall how difficult it was to notice the time on his watch), but then again you'd think that for a scene like this that is intended to establish issues with time that they would be especially mindful of whatever time was showing on Daniel's watch.

Theory on identity of the Economist

The theory posits that it's Ben. However, this has two problems. First, it appears that part of Sayid's mission is to kill the economist. Why would Ben set that up if he were the economist? Sayid seems to know the identity of the economist, and certainly knows that he's not really an economist. Second, why would Ben pit Sayid against Elsa, certain that one of them would kill the other eventually? Unless Elsa were Ben's intended target in the first place, but we've no idea why that might be. Of course, we have scant clues about any of the targets.