PS - update to my previous post
I am adding this "PS" to the top of the post because I have something to add from my very long post below about "The Constant" and I think it deserves it's own post. If you haven't read the post from last night yet, go ahead and read that first, but make sure to come back and read this post afterwards, because I just had a HUGE revelation!!! (and this deserves it's very own post, instead of me just going in and adding to the end of the last one)
Remember when we first met Danielle Rousseau... She kept telling the survivors about this "sickness" and that all of her people died. Also remember the first Dharma film that we saw in the hatch, and Dr. Marvin Candle explains in the video that a long time ago there was "an incident."
Here is my theory - This incident was some explosion causing electomagnetism/radiation to permeate throughout the island, killing everyone off due to these "side effects" that we saw also eventually happened with Minkowsky and his crew member. Also remember Desmond, when we first met him, was paranoid about not being able to leave the hatch - that everyone would die if they went outside. He also was taking those injections every day (similar to the doctor on the freighter giving Minkowsky the injections). Also, in a previous Desmond-flashback, we saw that his former partner in the hatch (Kelvin) died after he left the hatch (without his protective gear). This also explains why we saw that the hatches were "quarantines." Actually I remember the first time that the survivors made it into the hatch, when they were walking through the tunnels underground, there were paintings/murals all over the walls, and I specifically remember that one of them was a picture of an eye, then the letter M, then the word sick - spelling out "I am sick" - but very interesting use of the "eye" in place of the word "I." Just an observation.
Perhaps long ago, after this "incident" with Dharma, they created quarantines to help protect the people living on the island from getting "sick." They took these injections, they wore gas masks, etc., so that they would not be exposed. But anyone that was not safe from the electromagnetic fields, suffered from these side effects that Faraday explained last night, and the result of which is the SICKNESS. As Faraday explained, their brains could not process what was the present and what was the past, causing them to go crazy.
Maybe Ben and the Others ARE actually doing something good on the island, by preventing these radioactive/electromagnetic waves from permeating. Maybe Ben has been so adament about turning OFF the radio signals from the underground hatch. Maybe that's why the Others are there, to try and protect the island's "special" powers by blocking these radioactive waves from getting them "SICK." Maybe that is what they are trying to protect? Especially because ever since the survivors of 815 have landed there, none of them have gotten "sick." And perhaps when he made the comment that if Jack made the call to the freighter, "every living person on this island will die." Maybe he knew that they would all get SICK if they allowed the people from the freighter to get there, assuming they want to do some type of experiments on the island that would cause the electromagnetic waves to be present again.
Anyway...I just thought that since we have heard so much about the sickness, the incident, the injections, etc. - that it all ties in to what we saw in last night's episode. Just wanted to bring that up as it sort of just hit me, like "OH!" Now that all makes sense!!
posted by Stacey @ 10:44 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
Good call on Rosseau's crew and the "sickness." That really seems to fit together.
Awesome theory on all that! It would also explain why Ben won't let anyone (mainly Juliet) leave the island. That really explains a lot, although I like to think Ben is the bad guy ;)
kelvin died because desmond hit his head into a rock - not because of a sickness. but i really think you are on to something with that theory. i can't wait until it's proven to be the case and you get to post that you were right. you get to do that a lot!
1st, my wife and I love your posts and refer to them often.
Some observations...
Time dilation and span:
The path the helicopter followed to the boat is 40 miles + 7 "k" (presumably k = knots, although it's an odd mix of units), so let's say the copter traveled around 48 miles. At 120 mph (decent cruising speed), that's around 24 minutes (close to Juliet's prediction). However, we know it took more than 24 hours (based upon conversations between the group), so time apparently is consciously perceived to pass about 60 times slower on the island than in the outside world. Sayid also noted the time difference when asked the pilot to share why they left the island at dusk but arrived on the boat in the middle of the day, so apparently the difference is remarkable to those in transit as well. Also, when the rocket payload was launched, my Seiko ticked off 30 seconds from "payload away" to "Regina, it's not here." 31 minutes later (Faraday's clocks), it arrived...again, a ratio of approximately 60:1. 30 minutes passed for the islanders while only 30 seconds passed for the boaties and the rocket (another observation...the time the rocket landed was 03:16:23, or 15:16:23 in military time...refer to "the numbers" for the convenient arrangement of those figures, but I think just a coincidence). So there we have 2 closely matching instances where time dilation is explicitly described. There are other things, however, that would contradict this application to a wider scope (the natural conclusion that even though the islanders believe they have been on the island for roughly 90 days, they have in fact only been there for 1.5 days, a conclusion which we know to be wrong).
Aging:
Ben has aged while the (presumably all of the) Others have not. Apparently Ben has. at one or more times, left the island. He could have aged faster while off the island with respect to those on the island. If he made the trip in a submarine, that could explain why he didn’t “go nuts.” A submarine is effectively a Faraday cage (no doubt the presence of a character named Faraday when electromagnetism is involved is critical). In a Faraday cage (conductive body completely surrounding the subject), there are no effects of electromagnetic radiation on the subject inside. Of course, this contradicts the time dilation effect mentioned above.
Parallels to other media:
Desmond’s mental bouncing is similar to the premise behind Quantum Leap, Primer (practical movie about time travel), and the Star Trek episode “All Good Things…” In these, the consciousness of a person in one time frame is traded with the consciousness of the same person in a different time frame. In this episode, Desmond’s 2004 mind seems to trade places with his 1996 mind, but his 2004 mind gets stuck in limbo and the 1996 mind continues to bounce around back and forth. Perhaps when the physical brain is without the mind for the time it is in another time frame, it becomes damaged, thus the reason for something to lock it in one place. The “constant” is something with which the mind can identify in both time frames to bring familiarity and a sense of normalcy. Making contact with Penny in 2004 must have dislodged Desmond’s 2004 mind from limbo in the same way that the particular frequency used by Faraday brought Eloise’s (rat) mind back from being “stuck” in time.
So, why is Desmond Faraday’s constant if something goes wrong? Apparently the Faraday we know and love on the island has been doing a little time hopping, too, whether intentionally or otherwise. I’ll need a late night of drinks and good discussion to offer the time frame period from which he came, though. Desmond told 1996 Faraday that 2004 Faraday had no memory of the 1996 meeting, which makes me think that 2004 Faraday may in fact be from a time *before* that meeting. Perhaps when 1996 Faraday blasted Eloise with the time travel radiation, he was also exposed (“What about your head, brother?”) and perhaps did not realize it.
Alas, thanks for your dedicated updates. We love them!
This is a really interesting (and complicated) theory page that gets into the issue of time and fate. Worth taking a look at: www.timelooptheory.com/
Great catch on the painting and journal! Totally went over my head!
Yowza! You guys are way too smart for me! But I want to play too!
I didn't remember the name of Desmond's buddy in the hatch. But, I do remember from physics that Kelvin is a unit increment of temperature and is one the 7 base units of measurments.
Minkowski per Wikkipedia...By 1907 Minkowski realized that the special theory of relativity, introduced by Einstein in 1905 and based on previous work of Lorentz and Poincaré, could be best understood in a four dimensional space, since known as "Minkowski spacetime", i n which the time and space are not separated entities but intermingled in a four dimensional space-time, and in which the Lorentz geometry of special relativity can be nicely represented. In physics and mathematics, Minkowski space (or Minkowski spacetime) is the mathematical setting in which Einstein's theory of special relativity is most conveniently formulated. In this setting the three ordinary dimensions of space are combined with a single dimension of time to form a four-dimensional manifold for representing a spacetime. Minkowski space is named after the German mathematician Hermann Minkowski.
In theoretical physics, Minkowski space is often compared to Euclidean space. While a Euclidean space has only spacelike dimensions, a Minkowski space has also one timelike dimension. Therefore the symmetry group of a Euclidean space is the Euclidean group and for a Minkowski space it is the Poincaré group.
So...I don't get it. Based on the theory of relativity, E=MC2 and the conservation of energy theory and all that, there is no really past, present or future, no? It is all a concurrent series of events going on.
That's about as scientific (and unrelatable to me) as you can get. Ok, so here's where it gets interesting to me more so than the whole time space continuum physics thing which I don't get...let's juxtapose that with all of the discussion of CS Lewis and the Chronicles of Narnia and its "time portal" and Christian context. Lewis was a known atheist until a conversion in his 30s. One of his main theses about the foundation of the universe and his explantion behind a divinity (per Wikkipedia) was 1.that there are a series of natural laws known and ascribed to throughout humanity and 2. that humans break these laws.
Where, when, how and why the science and the religious intersect is what is keeping me up at night. Will "man of science, man of faith" come together or are they complimentary? Or do they conflcit? Which characters fall on which side? Does that have anything to do with how the characters are interelated?
Anyway, all I have to say is that these posts make me jealous of how dang smart those like Einstein, minkowski, Lewis, the creators of Lost and Stacy too are!!!!! Because this is making me as crazy as all the character's from last week's show!
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