Lost

This will be the clearing house for my ever-shifting theories about Lost. These are not spoilers (though I hope I’m right) as I have not looked for spoilers in order to come up with these notes. I promise not to put anything that is an actual spoiler on here, just my guesses.

Also, these posts may change based on what I see in each episode.

For further reading, including theories, see Lostpedia.

  • How/Why does Walt appear to Locke in the pit (and elsewhere)? Walt is projecting himself to the island from back in the world and is being directed by Jack, of all people, in an attempt to change the course of events.
  • Who is in the coffin? It’s Michael, of course. He’s from New York, would be survived by a teenage son (both in the death notice) and he is neither Friend nor Family of Jack.
  • 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’. One should not make the mistake of assuming that the difference is constant, 31 minutes 18 seconds behind; like having a watch that is set 15 minutes slow. The gap continually increases. If we are in a footrace and I run slower, you are going to get further and further ahead. Again, 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’.

    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, (see 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.