Numbers: Latitude/Longitude

[newgal]

I apologize if this has been posted before.........my husband is a cartographer--he and his buddies came up with this explanation:

We were looking at the numbers from last night's episode. I think they are latitude/longitude map coordinates. If you look at the coordinates on a map they put you just southwest of Hawaii.

http://www.farmworks.com/support/utmmaps.html

Latitude 04 08 42
Longitude 16 23 15
Just look for lat 04 and long 16.

Next, if you are flying from Australia(Sydney?) to Los Angeles, you aircraft would fly what is known as a Great Circle Route. This is the shortest path between two points on the round earth. Your non-stop flight from Australia to LA would take you just south of Hawaii on your way to LA.

So, if you got blown off course you could easily end up located/Lost at those grid coordinates!

* See Gilligans Island for further notes of reference.

[sharpnfuzzy]

Just to add to this

the Longitude is usually written with 3 digits so reorganizing the coordinates yields:
Latitude 04 08 42
Longitude 162 03 15

If you take the longitude going West these coordinates land in the Pacific ocean right between Australia and the US. Check out the map:
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y32/stat115/map.gif

If you take the longitude going East it just moves the point closer to Papua New Guinea.

[mitluf]

I am cross posting, as I totally agree with you guys:

Holy mole! This so jives!

I was thinking about the number, why put a set of number on the hatch thingy and then broadcast them over and over ... only answer I got was location.

So, off to Mapquest I went and I started looking into where that would put you in the world and after some experimenting I came up with:
Latitude: -4° 81 Min.5 Sec.
Longitude: 162° 34 Min. 2 Sec or* Longitude: 162° 3 Min. 42 Sec
This puts you East of Papua New Guinea.

Then I searched the boards, figuring someone else must have thought of this, and they did:
http://forum.thefuselage.com/...p?topic=8734.0

But, not only that, they did a much better job than me. Here is what elfdream wrote:
Quote from: sharpnfuzzy on March 04, 2005, 0129 PM
By playing a bit with the numbers I got:
Latitude: 4° 8 Min.15 Sec.
Longitude: -162° 3 Min. 42 Sec.* *

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y32/stat115/map.gif

Why is this a better location than mine? Well, look at what the co-pilot and Daniel said:

Co-pilot said:
"6 hours in. Our radio went out, no one could see us. We turned back to land in Fiji, by the time we hit turbulence we were 1000 miles off course. They're looking for us in the wrong place."

And Daniel said:
"Our vessel was 3 days out of Tahiti when our instruments malfunctioned. It was night, a storm, the sounds. The ship slammed into rocks, ran aground, the hull breached beyond repair...."
and
"Our ship picked up a transmission, a voice repeating those numbers. We changed course to investigate. After we shipwrecked my team continued to search for the transmission source. It was weeks before we found the radio tower. "

Then looking at this:
Tahiti: Latitude/Longitude 17° 52S, 149° 56W
Fiji:* Latitude/Longitude* 9º 43S, 159º 91E

I'm going with the numbers being location and with elfdream's location -- it is further out in the middle of nowhere, which just seems right. AND, it jives with what you found as well!