aura
02-16-2008, 07:19 PM
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that we have two other pieces of info that can be used to build theories. This is the payload rocket's velocity and the time it took to land.
When you listen to Regina count down the rocket, you find it is moving at pretty much exactly 2km per second. (Using iTunes' timer as the counter, she makes the "40km call to beacon" call at 19:33 mins into the episode, 35km at circa 19:36, 30km at 19:38, 25km at circa 19:41, 20km at 19:43, 15km at circa 19:45, 10 km at 19:48 5km at 19:51 and 0 at 19:53). All up, precisely 20 seconds for a 40km flight.
The call "payload away" is at 19:25 into the episode.
Now, first we have to assume that the calls as we hear them are in real time in the outside world. (That is, (i) there are no breaks between 19:25 and 19:53 in the episode; and (ii) the calls are heard on the island at the same time (or with no measurable delay) as they are made in the real world. Note also that the writers may not have intended the speed of the countdown to be significant, but just for dramatic effect - you don't want to waste on-screen time doing a countdown, sitting there for minutes while nothing happens. The fact it seems to be precisely 2km/sec tends to weigh against this. But if you let reality intrude, that speed is almost 7 times the speed of sound, about 3.5 times faster than the Concorde, suggesting that (a) there should have been a huge sonic boom and (b) the rocket should have gone deep into the ground and been pulverised on impact. But that's not good TV....)
On those assumptions, 28 seconds elapsed on the boat between firing the rocket and "0 km". At 2 km/sec, this suggests the boat is 56 km from what it sees as the "0 mark".
Next, we have an interlude scene, and then the payload rocket touches down at about 23:18.
Again, if we assume that there are no breaks in the episode (ie time runs for Daniel (and Jack) while the interlude is happening, at the same speed and for the same duration) then this is 3 mins 53 sec since the rocket was launched. (Note that there is a fade to black, which I think might be a spot where an ad would be inserted when played on free to air TV. Because its length is indeterminate, I have to assume this doesn't affect timing.)
Now, some calculations.
1. Let's assume that the rocket is travelling in real space, at non-relativistic speeds. Time of flight is 3 mins 53 secs, which is 233 secs, which at 2km/sec means it has travelled 466 km. Note that this would be consistent with radio communications with the outside world being essentially in real time, as radio waves travel at 3.0 x 10^8 m/s (300,000 km/sec), which means they would cover 466km in 0.00155 sec.
Putting my writer's hat on, this means that we would have to find that much extra distance in the travel, and a reason it is not seen that way from the outside world.
To put it in context, if you were to go straight up, 466km is above the earth's atmosphere (which is about 100km high) but still within its exosphere -- and only about 0.12% of the way to the moon. So you would be somewhere in low earth orbit, much closer to earth than many satellites.
Moving horizontally on the earth's surface would not work, as the ship would see this increased distance and the increased time it took for the rocket to arrive.
So you are likely in the area of a portal/wormhole idea. (Bear in mind that a writer has carte blanche to fictionalise anything, so my conception of a wormhole may well not match JJ's.) So there is a "portal" or wormhole entrance near the 0km mark, 56km from the ship, and the ship sees the rocket hit there as expected. Then the rocket enters the wormhole, travels extra distance, and finally arrives at our island.
Pros: may explain why the exit bearing must be the same as incoming (really, 180 degree inverse) -- so you hit the same portal/worhmole that got you there. Otherwise you just circle around the small globe the island is located on and hit it from the other side - and run out of fuel in a low-fuel helicopter.
Cons: does not explain the apparent time difference between the clocks. If we were to be ultra pedantic, we would also have to consider whether the rocket had enough fuel for the journey in - but this is impossible to tell one way or another.
2. Let's assume that the rocket encounters some kind of time discontinuity. This could be some kind of boundary layer, or also a time-shifting portal/wormhole. In this case, the two clocks suggest that time runs slower on the island. The fact Daniel compares them suggests that they were synchronised at some point. By the time he comes to inspect them, they are 31 minutes apart.
Note that the 31 minutes does not seem related to the rocket's flight - we didn't see Daniel call to synchronise them, nor do they seem to be countdown timers. Rather, they seem to be clocks, one left onboard the boat, the other Daniel carried with him. The 31 mins difference is presumably caused by Daniel himself having entered the time discontinuity on entering the island (prior to which, I assume the clocks were showing the same time).
In order to know how much slower time runs on the island, you need to know how long he's been there. I don't think we do, so we can't use this method. But there may be another.
If the rocket calculations above are accurate, then what took 28 secs as seen in the outside world took 3 mins 53 secs as seen on the island - a factor of 8.3 times slower. Every 44 days on the island would be 1 year outside. The 100 days Jack says they've been there would be 2.28 years outside. This assumes a simple multiple between the two - it doesn't work if there is a fixed time offset (say 3 minutes) and then a multiple, or some other permutation.
Con: This doesn't explain a 31 minute difference, however. One possibility is that the boat's clock has "wrapped around", as it is only a 24 hour display and doesn't track *days*. If Daniel has been on the island say 12 hours, 96 hours could have passed outside, and the time difference might seem smaller on the clock that it actually is.
Of course, all Daniel needs to do is ask the ship "what date is it"/"how many nights have I been on the island" and then "tell me exactly when it's sunset" and then compare his own observation. However I doubt the writers would give it up this easily!
3. Note that if the rocket has travelled at relativistic speeds at any point, the onboard clock would have slowed compared to the outside world.
4. My own theory is that the island is on its own relatively small sphere, mostly covered in ocean. It's somewhere completely physically separate from the earth. There are at least 2 portals to & from the outside world. One that goes to Africa (which is how the drug plane gets in and the bear gets out) and one to the Pacific (where Desmond and flight 815, and presumably the Black Rock ship came in). That's why sailing/swimming etc away from the island leads you over miles of ocean and then back to the island -- unless you happen to hit one of the portals.
I think we know that time was in sync between the outside world and reality at the time 815 made it onto the Island -- ie the show started in the real world and the plane crashed (using the show timeline) on 22 September 2004. But we don't know if time was in sync between the island and the outside world at that point. If it was, maybe the button was what kept it going, and there has been drift ever since the station blew up.
And if that's the case, with my writer's hat on, for dramatic effect I'd accelerate the differential (ie time passes slower and slower on the island) so that after long enough, 1 second on the island equals aeons in the outside world, so that eventually the outside world will cease to exist (heat death of the universe). Or more pragmatically, by the time anyone gets off the island, it's the distant future in the outside world. Hence the "end of the world" being averted by pressing the button.
Finally, for what it's worth, I'm a trained scientist (non-practising as such). I lurk, but this is my first time posting. Apologies for any errors or duplications - sick child, not much sleep last few nights.
When you listen to Regina count down the rocket, you find it is moving at pretty much exactly 2km per second. (Using iTunes' timer as the counter, she makes the "40km call to beacon" call at 19:33 mins into the episode, 35km at circa 19:36, 30km at 19:38, 25km at circa 19:41, 20km at 19:43, 15km at circa 19:45, 10 km at 19:48 5km at 19:51 and 0 at 19:53). All up, precisely 20 seconds for a 40km flight.
The call "payload away" is at 19:25 into the episode.
Now, first we have to assume that the calls as we hear them are in real time in the outside world. (That is, (i) there are no breaks between 19:25 and 19:53 in the episode; and (ii) the calls are heard on the island at the same time (or with no measurable delay) as they are made in the real world. Note also that the writers may not have intended the speed of the countdown to be significant, but just for dramatic effect - you don't want to waste on-screen time doing a countdown, sitting there for minutes while nothing happens. The fact it seems to be precisely 2km/sec tends to weigh against this. But if you let reality intrude, that speed is almost 7 times the speed of sound, about 3.5 times faster than the Concorde, suggesting that (a) there should have been a huge sonic boom and (b) the rocket should have gone deep into the ground and been pulverised on impact. But that's not good TV....)
On those assumptions, 28 seconds elapsed on the boat between firing the rocket and "0 km". At 2 km/sec, this suggests the boat is 56 km from what it sees as the "0 mark".
Next, we have an interlude scene, and then the payload rocket touches down at about 23:18.
Again, if we assume that there are no breaks in the episode (ie time runs for Daniel (and Jack) while the interlude is happening, at the same speed and for the same duration) then this is 3 mins 53 sec since the rocket was launched. (Note that there is a fade to black, which I think might be a spot where an ad would be inserted when played on free to air TV. Because its length is indeterminate, I have to assume this doesn't affect timing.)
Now, some calculations.
1. Let's assume that the rocket is travelling in real space, at non-relativistic speeds. Time of flight is 3 mins 53 secs, which is 233 secs, which at 2km/sec means it has travelled 466 km. Note that this would be consistent with radio communications with the outside world being essentially in real time, as radio waves travel at 3.0 x 10^8 m/s (300,000 km/sec), which means they would cover 466km in 0.00155 sec.
Putting my writer's hat on, this means that we would have to find that much extra distance in the travel, and a reason it is not seen that way from the outside world.
To put it in context, if you were to go straight up, 466km is above the earth's atmosphere (which is about 100km high) but still within its exosphere -- and only about 0.12% of the way to the moon. So you would be somewhere in low earth orbit, much closer to earth than many satellites.
Moving horizontally on the earth's surface would not work, as the ship would see this increased distance and the increased time it took for the rocket to arrive.
So you are likely in the area of a portal/wormhole idea. (Bear in mind that a writer has carte blanche to fictionalise anything, so my conception of a wormhole may well not match JJ's.) So there is a "portal" or wormhole entrance near the 0km mark, 56km from the ship, and the ship sees the rocket hit there as expected. Then the rocket enters the wormhole, travels extra distance, and finally arrives at our island.
Pros: may explain why the exit bearing must be the same as incoming (really, 180 degree inverse) -- so you hit the same portal/worhmole that got you there. Otherwise you just circle around the small globe the island is located on and hit it from the other side - and run out of fuel in a low-fuel helicopter.
Cons: does not explain the apparent time difference between the clocks. If we were to be ultra pedantic, we would also have to consider whether the rocket had enough fuel for the journey in - but this is impossible to tell one way or another.
2. Let's assume that the rocket encounters some kind of time discontinuity. This could be some kind of boundary layer, or also a time-shifting portal/wormhole. In this case, the two clocks suggest that time runs slower on the island. The fact Daniel compares them suggests that they were synchronised at some point. By the time he comes to inspect them, they are 31 minutes apart.
Note that the 31 minutes does not seem related to the rocket's flight - we didn't see Daniel call to synchronise them, nor do they seem to be countdown timers. Rather, they seem to be clocks, one left onboard the boat, the other Daniel carried with him. The 31 mins difference is presumably caused by Daniel himself having entered the time discontinuity on entering the island (prior to which, I assume the clocks were showing the same time).
In order to know how much slower time runs on the island, you need to know how long he's been there. I don't think we do, so we can't use this method. But there may be another.
If the rocket calculations above are accurate, then what took 28 secs as seen in the outside world took 3 mins 53 secs as seen on the island - a factor of 8.3 times slower. Every 44 days on the island would be 1 year outside. The 100 days Jack says they've been there would be 2.28 years outside. This assumes a simple multiple between the two - it doesn't work if there is a fixed time offset (say 3 minutes) and then a multiple, or some other permutation.
Con: This doesn't explain a 31 minute difference, however. One possibility is that the boat's clock has "wrapped around", as it is only a 24 hour display and doesn't track *days*. If Daniel has been on the island say 12 hours, 96 hours could have passed outside, and the time difference might seem smaller on the clock that it actually is.
Of course, all Daniel needs to do is ask the ship "what date is it"/"how many nights have I been on the island" and then "tell me exactly when it's sunset" and then compare his own observation. However I doubt the writers would give it up this easily!
3. Note that if the rocket has travelled at relativistic speeds at any point, the onboard clock would have slowed compared to the outside world.
4. My own theory is that the island is on its own relatively small sphere, mostly covered in ocean. It's somewhere completely physically separate from the earth. There are at least 2 portals to & from the outside world. One that goes to Africa (which is how the drug plane gets in and the bear gets out) and one to the Pacific (where Desmond and flight 815, and presumably the Black Rock ship came in). That's why sailing/swimming etc away from the island leads you over miles of ocean and then back to the island -- unless you happen to hit one of the portals.
I think we know that time was in sync between the outside world and reality at the time 815 made it onto the Island -- ie the show started in the real world and the plane crashed (using the show timeline) on 22 September 2004. But we don't know if time was in sync between the island and the outside world at that point. If it was, maybe the button was what kept it going, and there has been drift ever since the station blew up.
And if that's the case, with my writer's hat on, for dramatic effect I'd accelerate the differential (ie time passes slower and slower on the island) so that after long enough, 1 second on the island equals aeons in the outside world, so that eventually the outside world will cease to exist (heat death of the universe). Or more pragmatically, by the time anyone gets off the island, it's the distant future in the outside world. Hence the "end of the world" being averted by pressing the button.
Finally, for what it's worth, I'm a trained scientist (non-practising as such). I lurk, but this is my first time posting. Apologies for any errors or duplications - sick child, not much sleep last few nights.