Yeah, I'm a little concerned that the thing Ben said to Sayid will be tied into this episode. Sayid apparently acted with his heart and not his head once... hopefully rigging the phone doesn't end up being a bad thing. A girl I work with really thinks Desmond winds up dead because of Penny. And maybe not because she's bad, but perhaps her father causes stuff to happen to him.

Flave... thanks for that lengthy explanation. I was hoping for a physicist to post some insight into Faraday's journal. I couldn't read it all tonight, but will try to get through it at work tomorrow. Got to get to bed.... bleh.

Yeah, but the freighter crew are clearly trying to deceive the Losties. Witness what happened when Faraday tried to explain the time anomalies on the island. That other lady from the freighter (God, I'm not good with names) tried hard to stop him. So is it so hard to believe that the pilot would be instructed not to impart any information of events in the outside world after 2004? Sounds like this is exactly what the powers that be would do. I think you attach too much importance to that conversation.

Here's what I think FWIW: This time jumps are an anomaly/time paradox. Once Desmond contacted his "Constant" the time-lines separated again and everything went back to normal. Thus 1996 Desmond was permanently erased from modern Desmond and modern Desmond remembered his total experience up to that point. Once the time-lines reset, as far as 1996 Desmond was concerned none of this ever happened.

I also think that if they don't have a "Constant" they continue to jump back and forth faster and faster until some sort of positive feedback loop kills the jumper.

I loved this episode so much. I loved at the end when you can see Desmond regain his memories and call Sayid by name. I loved Farady finding the reference in the notebook.

The whole constant/anchor in time thing reminded me of my very favorite Star Trek episode ever: "The Visitor" on DS9 when Sisko periodically appears through time as his son son Jake ages and spends his lifetime trying to rescue him.

My laugh at loud moment was when Desmond asked Sayid if he could fix the badly mangled communication equipment and Sayid says "I need a minute." The line and the delivery was hilarious.

I believe that the pilot, jeff fahey's character is actually good and meant what he said to sayid about helping him. Fahey,against everyone's knowledge traded the phone for the gun when he could've just used the gun to get the phone back. plus he led sayid down to desmond and tried to let faraday help desmond with his problem. even when the other boat crew members were trying to take the phone away the pilot was still trying to help sayid and desmond. I also think the pilot isn't as informed as to what is going on than the other people on the boat are. about his conversation about the sox winning it to jack, he seemed dissapointed about it because he was a yanks fan. it felt genuine to me. I have no doubt it's 2004.

Desmond/Penny timeline:

Desmond time travels for new phone number 1996
Desmond sees Penny before race 1999/2000
Boat race starts in 2000
Desmond crashes sometime in 2001
Penny starts looking for Desmond in 2001
Desmond pushes button in hatch 2001-2004
Desmond turns failsafe key 11/27/2004 - fixed
Desmond calls Penny 12/24/2004

I would say as soon as Desmond didn't show up at the finish line of the race, she started looking for him. She found out about the island on 11/27/2004 - fixed when she got the phone call and the island became visible to the outside world. We thought these were Penny's people. If they aren't, where are they and who are these guys that showed up right around the same time?

I wonder if the guy who visited Hurley in the mental hospital and brought naomi's crew together is the main guy of his organization or does he work for Mr. Widmore?
that and I agree with the poster above about the island is like a wormhole. something encompasses the island that effects time somehow. or perhaps the island is outside of time. any news on when the other 8 episodes will wrap up? the abc commercial I saw during Lost previewed the spring lineup of shows and Lost was one of the shows featured. so perhaps we'll get more.

I think that sounds like a good explanation based on what we've seen so far. I'm sure they will go into this more in upcoming episodes, but do you think when the timelines separated everything reset back to the point before 1996 Desmond made his first jump? Or did the events in 1996 still take place and only Desmond's memories were reset? When Penny met Desmond at the stadium, I wonder if she still remembered him asking for the phone number. Faraday had a note in his journal about Desmond being his constant, so I think their meeting at Oxford still took place. I'm spending too much time thinking about this and now I have a bad headache.

The Freighter people are not near as scary as we were made to believe they would be. I know this seems like a random thought but I was just thinking back to the end of last season and the hype for this season. I remember the talk about how the new characters would be very forboding but I don't see that really. The only character on the island that doesn't seem to have it all together is Miles. And all he really wants to do is dance and get some cash. Hell, they're barely even a functional group. I am enjoying the new characters so don't get me wrong but I haven't seen them bring the pain either.

Desmond dying before reuniting with Penny = Show going to hell in a handbasket. They better not kill Desmond off before we see some resolution to what began during Season 2.

I think when the time-lines reset, all past events and memories went back to normal. Everything reset in the past but modern Desmond has full memory of everything that has transpired up to the current point (whatever date that may be).

As for Faraday, that's all about Faraday's time-loop not Desmond's. Faraday did not send Desmond to see himself at Oxford to help Desmond. He did this to help himself and establish his Constant. When Faraday resets his own time-loop at the end of the episode, this final alteration in Desmond's time-line is also erased. At least I think that's what's going on.

After further consideration, I think I have to revise my theory. [Edit: I've edited my original post to contain this new theory.] I had forgotten about how Desmond tried to escape the island; he sailed away in his boat only to return to the island. This obviously can't happen if the island just exists on an other-dimensional Earth. So, my new theory is 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 somewehre 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 earlier 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.

I have a question: Does anyone remember the Losties commenting on the star patterns they see from the island? Obviously if they're travelling on some big "spaceship" in a spacetime far, far away, the star patterns will be different than here on Earth. This is a shot of the night sky from the first episode of Lost:

http://images.lostpedia.com/images/1/15/Stars.jpg

My knowledge of the night sky isn't good enough to know if this is an accurate shot of our night sky (I guess from the Equator) but it's very interesting that they would show the night sky in the pilot episode, no?

[Edit] Actually, now that I think about it, if they're travelling anywhere near the speed of light, there would be no star patterns. The sky would be mostly black except for a cone of light in front and behind along the direction of travel. But I guess if someone could create this environment they could also create a false night sky.

Also, reading through Lostpedia, it seems there's a discrepancy in headings. In this episode, the pilot flies on a heading of 305 to escape the island but when Michael escaped the island in his boat, Ben told him to bear on a heading of 325. Hmmm, I wonder if the wormhole entrance moves around?

[Nuther Edit] BTW, if the concept of a floating city such as that depicted in Dark City intrigues you, a scifi author by the name of James Blish was the first person to come up with this concept (as far as I know) and he wrote an excellent book named Cities In Flight:

http://www.amazon.com/Cities-Flight-...20/ref=ed_oe_p

Highly recommended.

While interesting, I don't think the JJ Abrams and crew would go that far. It's too complex, and I think it's just too much of a stretch. They've already set the framework for a show that appears to be set in the Pacific. The audience accepts that something weird is going on on the island with regards to science. It involves electromagnetism. It involves time travel. To pull something like traveling through space ("they're not even on Earth!!!") is going to be unacceptable to the audience because it's TOO much of a stretch from the universe the writers have created. As would anything involving aliens. When you set up a fictional universe, you have to stay within the confines of the "rules" you have already set up. If you go too far outside those confines, the audience gets fed up. For example, The Sixth Sense was popular because even though most people didn't predict it, going back and watching it, you're like "OMG, there were clues RIGHT in front of me the entire time!". If they pull some sort of space travel / advanced alien civilization, it won't be well received, because then the audience will feel misled without having had ANY chance to figure it out. There's nothing that would point in that direction in ANY of the episodes so far.

I remember seeing a talk that JJ Abrams gave at Ted and he talked about how he and the other writers had only a couple of months to come up with the story concept. As smart as they are, I highly doubt they could've made such a convoluted complex storyline in that amount of time, and to make it believable to a large audience. While I do think the explanation will be complex, I think it will ultimately be understandable. I do think that parts of the story were made up as they went along, and that there will be many holes in the story that can't be explained at the end. They'll leave them as is because JJ Abrams is a big fan of *some* unexplained storylines.

It's not that convoluted -- we have a wormhole with Earth at one end and a spaceship travelling near the speed of light at the other. That's it.

And the producers wouldn't have to come up with anything. This scenario is right up Kip Thorne's alley and I'm sure he had it all fleshed out already. The producers did have to build a mythology around this basic premise of course and I would imagine that THAT would take some time.

What I mean is that the concept of spaceship travel is WAY outside the Lost universe that has been set up. It's TOO much of a twist that's not even foreseeable. If they do that, then the entire show up till now will seem like one giant red herring. People get annoyed by being misled without any chance of figuring it out. You have to at least drop hints along the way that they were traveling in a spaceship. Guaranteed if they go that route, there's going to be mass rioting on the internet by Lost fanatics.

You've created a theory that fits, but not because of any of the hints they've dropped. It simply fits. Well, I could then come up with a theory that this is actually a parallel universe where our rules of physics don't apply. IOW, we can throw everything we think we know out the window. Then you can manufacture ANY explanation you want for all the strange things that happen (Walt's ESP, Jack's hallucinations, Desmond's clairvoyance, John's healed paralysis). You can just wave your hand and say, well, that's what happens in this other universe!

An issue that I don't think has been addressed yet.

When Desmond first talks to Penny in the booth he gets a hold of her. Next we see him, he's at Oxford. Many have assumed that he this is the break he said he has - which is possible. However, when he finally goes to Penny's, he says he called her, but the phone was disconnected. Her response to her is that she moved. I think there was a significant jump in time relative to past Desmond's timeline between the phone booth and at least the auction/Penny.

Well, I guess that the obvious reply to this is that they HAVE dropped clues and it IS foreseeable because I've seen the clues and I've foreseen it. If I can do it, others can.

Ever notice how characters on the show have often commented that the tides on the island are all wrong and how the light is all wrong? These are big clues that we're dealing with an artificial environment.

This is incorrect -- read my previous (long) post. I didn't just pull this out of a hat. My scenario fits all the physics hints that the show has provided. Your scenario (parallel universe), which coincidently closely matches my initial scenario, doesn't. This is why I discarded my initial scenario.

As for the other anomalies on the island, I didn't for a moment expect to explain these away with my theory. I just wanted to deal with the basic reality of the island and these are additional mysteries.

Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree then. Two years from now when the show ends, if you're right, I will take my hat off to your deductive reasoning skills.

I do agree that the island is some sort of experimental research lab. I just don't think they're floating through outer space. And I don't think advanced civilization aliens are involved.

Actually, Penny found out about the island when Desmond turned the fail-safe key. I'm not sure what the date is but it's significantly later than 9/22/2004 since that's the start of Season 1 and the turning of the fail-safe key is the end of Season 2.

can you give us that one more time. especially the bold part.

According to Lostpedia, it was on 11/27/04.

All of season 3 and part of season 4 have all taken place in less than a month.

Is that a question towards me? Because I didn't come up with that date.

I looked through the timeline and it seems to fit. In Season 3, there are 4 episodes taking place in 1 day, sometimes.