That's exactly what I am thinking too. The calendar might have been to help the ship crew remember what day it is on the island, not the time frame they are living in.

It fits in to how Walt grows up 3 years off the island. Fits in exactly.

For the last time, Desmond's 1996 self traveled FORWARD in time to 2004, not the other way around. That's why he didn't recognize anyone. They made that pretty clear.

First of all, let me apologize for the length of this post. I didn't plan on it being so long; it's just that as I did more reading this thing got more and more complicated. BTW, I haven't read all 11 pages of this thread so forgive me if any of this has already been discussed.

Second of all, some background on moi: I have a B.Sc. in Physics and although I've never been a research/academic physicist (I ended up in software development) my interest in the field is as strong as ever and I read a lot of articles and books to keep current -- especially in cosmology.

Third of all, here are some names to be considered for the Lost universe (all physicists): Albert Einstein (General Relativity or GR), Roy Kerr (after whom the Kerr Vacuum is named), Stephen Hawking (black hole expert), Hendrik Casimir (who has been mentioned before on these Lost threads), Hermann Minkowski (creator of Minkowski spacetime), and most importantly Kip Thorne of Caltech. I say "most importantly" because Kip Thorne has done a lot of work on GR/black holes/wormholes, has also done extensive research on the possibility of time travel (he originally set out to prove that GR forbids time travel and much to his surprise found the opposite), and is also based in California (CalTech). I can't help but wonder if he isn't a buddy of/consultant to the producers and the mastermind behind all the physics of Lost.

I decided not to erase this episode from my PVR and to review it later because I think it holds a lot of information concerning what the hell is going on on this "island". Good thing I did. I stepped carefully through the images of Faraday's notebook and blackboard and found some interesting things. (BTW, "Faraday" is such a great name for this character -- in the pre-GR/QM world I think that Michael Faraday and James Maxwell are scientific GODS. These are the giants on whose shoulders all of the scientists of the early 1900s stood.) The most interesting was the phrase "Kerr Metric" (also known as the "Kerr Vacuum"). This is a solution of the Einstein Field Equations which are at the heart of his Theory of General Relativity (GR). The math and diagrams on Faraday's blackboard all seem to have something to do with GR and space-time.

Let's start with this Kerr Metric. For a detailed description, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerr_metric

To quote from this article (in discussing the Kerr metric for a rotating black hole):

Isn't that exactly what was happening to Desmond in this episode? A traveller returning to the same place/time after moving a finite time?

Another phrase I noticed on the blackboard: "Chronology protection conjecture". Have another read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronol...ion_conjecture

Quoting from this article:

Faraday's notes on the blackboard speculate that the Kerr Metric can be used to get around this time paradox "protection".

Moving on, anyone note the significance of the freighter's radio operator's name? George Minkowski? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Minkowski

Hermann Minkowski applied Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity to create the mathematics behind "Minkowski spacetime" which unites both space and time:

Faraday's notebook and blackboard has a diagram where one axis is space and the other time -- clearly a Minkowski spacetime triangle. See here:

http://www.quantonics.com/Einstein_M...e_Diagram.html

The producers obviously used this diagram for the show, although they removed a lot of detail. You should study this diagram carefully.

At this point I wanted to discuss Kip Thorne but this post is already way too long. I will instead refer you to a series of articles on time travel written by John Gribbin (in which Kip Thorne and all the usual suspects figure prominently):

http://www.lifesci.sussex.ac.uk/home...n/timetrav.htm

According to Wikipedia: "John R. Gribbin (b. 1946) is a British science writer and a visiting Fellow in astronomy at the University of Sussex. John Gribbin graduated with a degree in physics from the University of Sussex in 1966. He later completed an MSc in astronomy, also from Sussex (1967) and a PhD in astrophysics from the University of Cambridge (1971). As a science writer, he has worked for the science journal Nature, and the magazine New Scientist and has written for The Times, The Guardian and the Independent as well as their Sunday counterparts and BBC radio. He is best known for his book In Search of Schrödinger's Cat (1984), the definitive bluffer's guide to quantum physics."

This is a VERY interesting article and well worth the long read.

Anyway, I've come up with a basic theory which is probably just as wrong as all the others but I thought I'd share it with you anyway. This doesn't explain everything and is just a theory of the fundamental reality of the Lost universe. It goes something like this: I think the producers are "borrowing" from two classic scifi movies: Contact for the wormhole and Dark City for the island habitat. The permanent "storm" is both hiding and being caused by a wormhole. This wormhole has been created using exotic matter and is powered by Casimir energy. More specifically, this is a traversable wormhole (much like the wormholes in Contact) connecting two points in spacetime. One terminus of the wormhole is somewhere in the Pacific (near Fiji) on our Earth and the island obviously does not exist. The other terminus of the wormhole exits at an enclosed habitat much like the city in Dark City. This floating habitat has been built to completely recreate a Pacific island environment. It is completely enclosed (which is why Desmond sailed back to the island even though he was heading away from the island) and travelling through space. And I suspect that it is travelling through space at a very significant portion of the speed of light. This very neatly explains why time passes slower to an observer on the island than to observers on Earth. This is an effect predicted by General Relativity -- the closer an object gets to the speed of light, the slower time passes for an observer on said object. To an outside observer however (e.g. an observer on Earth) time passes normally. Also, this is necessary to establish the wormhole. In the articles I posted above it is clear that one end of the wormhole must be travelling at close to the speed of light for the wormhole to exist.

Pass through the storm (which you encounter while travelling on a heading of 305/325 from the island) and you traverse the wormhole thus jumping from the island to the Earth (exiting somewhere in the Pacific). The Black Rock, the drug plane, the French woman's ship (I forget her name), and Oceanic 815 inadvertently went through this storm and thus traversed the wormhole the other way. I believe this wormhole has been constructed by a very advanced civilization (a la Contact) for reasons we obviously don't know yet. And any civilization that has the technology to construct this wormhole clearly will have the technology to build the island habitat. One thing puzzles me: Does anyone remember the Losties commenting on the star patterns they see from the island?

I've got to hand it to these guys behind Lost -- after reading all this stuff it's clear that they've REALLY done their homework.

if the island is in a different universe than the rest of Earth, then how were people on Earth able to notice the electormagnetic pulse caused by the implosion of the Swan?

Did Oceanic Flight 815 have all of its engines on the island after the crash? I always worry that a plane going through a wormhole will end up losing an engine and it'll come crashing through my roof while I sleep.

Thanks for all that work, Flave. Definitely a very interesting read.

I believe that the island itself doesnt allow people to age. It sort of puts people in some state of suspension. Ben and some of the Others have aged because they have come and gone between the island and the real world. It is possible to believe that in reality the island is stuck in some period of time that never really goes forward. The outside world does continue on and therefore we are 90+ days from when the Losties first went missing. They are in reality in December of 2004 but once they arrived on the island their progression stopped. Upon leaving some of them will go about getting older and show signs of that. There is no telling how long Richard had been on the island but what we know of him tells us that he had aged very little despite having been alive for a long time. It seems kooky to me but I believe that this is part of the overall scheme of things.

If people don't age on the island, then Alex should be a baby.

If Alex should be a baby, when then should Aaron be?...

And Claire would have to be perpetually pregnant.

... and Ben would still be a kid.

Ditto.

Well, this is one of the reasons that they wanted Aaron. He was different than any other scenario they encountered with a child attempting to be or being born on the island. Why was he able to be born? First, it probably has to do with him being conceived and developed off the island. Now, as to why he was able to be born and grow over the few months is something The Others definitely wanted him for to find out what was going on. I understand some doubt in what I posted and I don't blame you but you do have to think that time really doesn't move the same on the island despite what the passengers conceive as a normal movement of time. You only need to think back to Richard, unless the writers hope we forget about him, to know that there is definitely something that ties aging and the island together.

His new show was cancelled so I believe we'll see Richard again.

At first I thought that Rousseu came on the Black Rock (I forgot she didn't) ..
and I thought that she's been on the island for 16 yrs, and the Black Rock crashed in 1845 which is 160 yrs from 2004/2005..

So maybe 1yr Island time = 10yrs real time?

But she didn't ...but that train of thought still stuck with me.

They've been on the island for 90+ days, which is approximately 3 yrs, hence 2007 in the "real world time"
Which means that when Desmond didn't call 8yrs later in Pennyland she decided to look for him.

And was it supposed to take about 3 mins for the payload to hit when it actually took 30 mins?


So maybe in another month they get rescued which will put them at around 2008 real time?
Is time 10 times slower on the island maybe?
I dunno.. I'm reaching here

people are making this more confusing than it should be. the time on the freighter and the real world are the same. desmond called penny on christmas eve 2004 because it is dec. 24, 2004 on lost outside the island. Dez left on his sailing adventure in 2001 and disappeared hence penny looked for him for 3 years. now add 3 to 2001 and you get 2004. hence why 1996 desmond told penny to wait for his call on christmas eve 2004 because that's the date he saw that it was on the freighter "aka real world".

This week on a very special Lost, Hurley helps Locke learn the true meaning of Christmas.

I know that if I dissected it all and took a close look it'd add up, but does anyone else have a hard time wrapping their head around the fact that everything we've seen since episode 1 has occurred in only a 3 month period? It feels like there has easily been at least a year's worth of story so far.
I'm not saying this to further anyone's theory, btw. I believe that island time and real-world time are the same, and that it's whatever kind of "bubble" there is surrounding the island that warps space-time somehow.

You're making a HUGE assumption here -- that the calendar is tracking ship time. What makes you think it isn't tracking island time? I think it's safe to say it's Christmas (via Penny's Christmas tree) but Christmas of which year?

I've been thinking a bit more about Faraday and I believe that the numbers 2.342 and 11 Hz are significant. (Great! More Lost numbers.) I think somewhere in these two numbers is buried the time factor between the two universes. I don't think we have enough info yet to decipher what this factor is because we don't know the true date in the "outside" world. I don't for a moment think it's really Dec. 24, 2004.

I agree 100%.

For one thing, people on the outside who have communicated with the island don't sound like Chipmunks, which they would have to if their time passed significantly quicker than on the island.

If there is anything we've learned with this show is not to make assumptions. It leads us to believe one thing then makes us realize we were looking at things wrong.

We may have been meant to be led to believe the island time is the same as off island time....but I wouldn't be too surprised if we find later on Penny's Christmas was not in 2004 at all, but 2007.

I am not sure if it's as cut and dry as any of us are proposing...after all, what about when Ben came to the island? It had a feel of being set in the early 70's...so did time start to go slow for Ben and Roger then? 10x's slow? And if it did, then how did a plane crash nearly 30 years later when it was supposedly 2004 in both real time and island time? Maybe both are in "real time" but somewhere around the island is this time warping storm that causes things to be off kilter? Just shooting some ideas from the hip as I type, really...I haven't thought that possibility out yet. But the storm around the island could be like the white ash...it somehow messes with people's perception of things and their place in time and space.

I think the slow aging/quick healing are properties derived from the island/the black rock, not due to the actual time on the island going slower. I think time on the island and in the main land are the same, they just are experienced differently.

The hole in your theory is Desmond. If he started on his race around the world in ~2001, and he'd been in the hatch for 3 years when 815 crashed on the island, the plane would have been from ~2031, not 2004.

About the mouse learning the maze paradox:

It’s a paradox no matter how you look at it. Regardless of whether Faraday had time to teach the mouse to run the maze, he couldn’t have. The paradox is that despite needing to teach the mouse the maze, he didn’t actually need to teach the mouse the maze, nor could he.

Look at it from your own perspective. Let’s say you need to take a test on medieval history but you haven’t studied. You plan on studying for it one hour after you take the test. You then zap yourself and bring your consciousness back from just after you study to just before the test.

With the knowledge fresh in your mind you take the test and pass it easily. As soon as the test is over you now are obligated to sit down and study for the test you just passed. As soon as you sit down to read you realize just how pointless it is. How do you learn something you already know? Even if you do decide to read the history book for continuities sake do you read the entire thing? Or do you only read the exact facts that the test specifically asked for? Since you already know the facts how much time do you devote to reading known facts to make sure you “know” them. As a test to see how easy it would be try memorizing your own phone number. Right now memorize your current phone number that you already have memorized.

Let’s just say that the minute Des phases out Faraday decides to teach the mouse the maze. How do you teach a mouse to run a maze it already knows? Do you just let it run the correct rout over and over? How many times is enough? How can you tell if it’s memorized something it’s already memorized?

Once you’ve passed the moment in time where you were supposed to have learned something (like medieval history or a maze) and you don’t actually study it do you lose the knowledge? If you lose that knowledge does that mean you never knew it? How did you pass the test? Wouldn’t that erase the passing grade from ever happening?

If that knowledge isn’t erased then wouldn’t that make Faraday’s machine an infinite knowledge device? I intend to learn French, I zap myself and now know French and never have to actually learn something I actually know. You could “intend” to learn anything (I guess as long as you would have reasonable access to that knowledge) and then you would instantly know it.

Sorry for the long post but I was just trying to get my mind around it.

Maybe it wasn't strong enough, since Sayid didn't seem to be affected. I wonder if Locke ever leaves the island, if he would have the same symptoms since he was near the hatch during the implosion. Although... he hasn't seen any flashes of the future like Desmond - maybe there is something special about Desmond?

Another thing I was wondering about - each time 1996 Desmond's consciousness came to 2004 and went back, he obviously remembered everything that happened to him (on the helicopter and on the freighter). At the end, after he spoke with Penny and broke the cycle, does the 1996 Desmond still remember everything that happened to him? It doesn't seem like he did - otherwise you'd think he might have said something the first time he met Sayid, or when he was getting in the helicopter.

I take it that the desmond from 1996 won't recall or have any memories of the future otherwise the future itself would've changed. therefore, he wouldn't let Locke not push the button. and regards to it being 2004 and not 2007 is that the conversation between jack and the pilot about the the sox finally winning the world series. the pilot could've easily said "multiple world series". because if it's really christmas eve 2007 that means the sox won it again. get it. so it has to be 2004.

Lost Is F**king Amazing