I have been attempting to come up with a theory that can explain most of Lost's mysteries without resorting to outlandish reasoning and out-there logic. In order for there to be such a grand plan, there must be one constant, one that is at the root of all the others, one ring to rule them all. And that constant is the island's unique electromagnetic properties. Electromagnetism can explain the islands invisibility, time travel, miraculous healing, immortality, and even the incapability of sexual reproduction. Welcome to the Anomaly Island Theory.
Electromagnetism and Invisibility
There is a specific area outside the island that all ships and aircraft must pass through in order to ensure they make it out the island's "field." If they don't go through this coordinate either they arrive at exactly where they started (the island) or something else, possibly far worse, happens. Many have described this as the bearing that Ben gave to Michael or the bearing that Faraday gave Lepidus to follow. Both bearings were different, and that is most likely because they started from different locations and would arrive at the same point. This point is The Looking Glass.
When Desmond had a vision of Naomi coming to the Island, part of his vision included Hurley finding a cable. We later find that this cable is connected to The Looking Glass. The reason why Hurley had to find the cable is because this was the direction that Naomi was to come "into" the island.
The function of The Looking Glass is to guide ships into the island. It emits a sonar ping that Ben's submarine can hear and follow. But why does Ben use a submarine, and why is The Looking Glass underwater? It's underwater so it stays hidden from people that are passing by the island. If the a ship is passing by the island and they see this station strangely sticking out of the water, they might coast right to it, and at the same time find the path that will lead them to the island.
It would be quite perplexing for passengers on a passing ship if they saw this island and found that it was impossible to land on it. People on the ship would tell others about the island and it wouldn't be a secret anymore. How does the island deter passing ship? This is tricky to explain but imagine that island is blanketed by a magnetic field, it covers the entire island, except for one spot, and that spot is the area around The Looking Glass. This magnetic field will deflect compass needles. Remember Sayid found this out in season one.
Ships move according to the bearing of a compass. If they follow a certain bearing continuously, and the island moves the compass, they may think they are moving in a straight line, but in reality they are not. This is how ships that follow a certain bearing don't intersect the island and find it.
But just because the path of a ship and the island don't meet, doesn't mean that a passing ship wouldn't be able to see it. A person on a ship may be passing the island and look to his east or west and actually see the island. If the island is a secret, how does it stay hidden from passing ships?
In real life there was a scientist named Michael Faraday. He studied electromagnetism and founded a strange phenomenon known as theFaraday Effect. This effect is when a strong magnetic field bends polarized light. If an object is inside this field and we are looking at it from outside the field, it would be difficult to actually see the object. This is how the island stays invisible! In one episode Faraday says something quite weird, " Do you ever notice how light scatters weird here?" Dan Faraday on the show is referring to the phenomenon that the real Faraday discovered!
The second purpose of The Looking Glass is to jam signals leaving the island. This is how Danielle's transmission was never heard outside the island. This theory can also explain how The Looking Glass does this. Many lost viewers have said that it would be impossible for one station to block transmissions for the entire island. They have claimed that there would have to be several of these stations encircling the island for it jam everything. However, the field that surrounds the island also has the power to refract radio waves (it just does). The only area where transmissions can pass to the outside world is through this hole in the magnetic field where The Looking Glass is located. So the jammer only has to have enough strength to cover this hole in the islands magnetic field.
Also the satellite dish in The Flame that at one point was used to communicate to the outside world was pointed directly at The Looking Glass, where it could break through the Islands field.
The islands magnetic field has defended the island for thousands of years but over the last three decades advancing technology has made the island easier to find. It is still very improbable for one to randomly encounter the island, but those who know what to look for have a better advantage of discovering its location.
Electromagnetism and Time Travel
When Desmond turned the key, did he really travel through time, or was he just dreaming? Being lost in his own subconscious would make more sense, because it is impossible to scientifically link electromagnetism and time travel. But we don't have to-- the writers already have. It is no coincidence that the moment Desmond turned the key and the sky turned purple, was the same moment he traveled into his past. When the hatch imploded, an enormous amount of electromagnetism coursed through Desmond's veins. This allowed Desmond to shift between times.
This is not the only clue that the writers have given us to explain Desmond's flashes. When Faraday learns about Desmond's side effects during his trip to the freighter, he asks Jack if Desmond had "been exposed to high levels of electromagnetism." As Faraday had described it, if Lepidus followed the exact bearing that he gave him, everything would be fine, but if he didn't there would be side effects. This bearing is also the same point as The Looking Glass, yet another link between magnetism and time travel. Apparently those who leave the island who have been exposed to electromagnetism become victims to a mental time shift.
But Desmond's mental time shift is not the only element of time travel on the island. The island itself has its own ability to trap itself in time. As explained before, the island is isolated from the outside world because it naturally generates it's own magnetic field. The perimeter of this field is also it's time barrier. The writers have left us four big clues regarding this bewildering power of the island.
The first clue to this phenomenon is Michael's return to the island. The time it took for Michael to return to the island from when he left was twenty two days on the island's time-line. But in twenty two days, is it possible for Michael to have left the island, find a shipping lane, get rescued, travel to Fiji, fly to New York, give Walt to his mother, become suicidal, run in with Tom, travel to Fiji again, board the Freighter, and travel back to the island? Keep in mind that Desmond said, "I should have been in Fiji in a week," after returning from his unsuccessful island escape. Putting all of this together makes it quite impossible for Michael to have done all of these things in twenty two days. There appears to be some difference in the rate at which time passes between the island and the outside world. It appears that the island's time-line flows at a slower pace.
Jack and Juliet were very concerned when they did not hear from Desmond and Lepidus who had left for the freighter. They departed the day before, yet they still did not receive a phone call from them. But Faraday was not worried because, as he described it, "Your perception of how long your friends have been gone is not necessarily how long they've actually been gone." While exiting the island's time barrier through the bearing, the helicopter moved slower than the island's time-line.
While on the island Faraday phoned the Freighter and told Regina to fire the payload, a small rocket, through the coordinates that he gave her. Once Regina fired the payload, she counted down the kilometers until it reached Faraday's beacon-- it took about thirty seconds. However, thirty one minutes later the payload arrives. How is this possible? We can safely say that while entering the island's time barrier through the bearing, the rocket moved slower than the island's time-line.
Another example is the corpse of the doctor washing up on shore, which didn't enter the island through the bearing. He washed up onshore before he actually died on the freighter.While entering the island's time barrier without passing through the bearing, the doctor moved faster than the island's time-line.
The last three examples seem to suggest that objects that pass through the bearing appear to go though in a time trap, while objects that don't pass through the bearing appear to go through a time warp.
Not only does the island naturally distort time but it also has a direct way physically travel through time. In the finale of season 4, Ben moved the island through time. It is most likely that Ben moved the Island exactly 297 days into the future. One can figure this out by counting the days between 12/31/04 and 10/24/05. Oct. 24th is the date Ben woke up in the desert with his Halawax jacket in the episode "The Shape of Things to Come." Some say that the island was just moved in space, but the orientation video for The Orchid explained that objects seem to disappear when they travel through time.
There are also other clues that are far more subtle than the ones aforementioned. Walt looks much older in Locke's vision than he should. The Faraday in the show studies time travel where the Faraday in real life studied electromagnetism. Lost viewers travel in time through flashbacks and flash-forwards. Lost's four years of airtime portray only four months on the island. All of these could very well be more clues as to the existence of two separate time-lines as well as to its link to electromagnetism.
Electromagnetism and Immortality
For centuries the power of magnets has been know to improve health in Asian cultures. Just a decade ago, we saw this come to The States a typical health fad. There was little scientific backing that these magnets did anything to improve health, so they were quickly dismissed by the medical community. Nevertheless, some people did have miraculous results from wearing these magnets.
The writers have also linked magnetism to miraculous healing in one Rose's flashbacks. In the flashback, Bernard takes Rose to the healer Isaac in Australia. He tells Rose, "There are places with great energy, spots on the earth, like the one we are over now. Perhaps this energy is geological-- magnetic, or perhaps it's something else." Isaac was not able to heal Rose, "It's not that you can't be healed. It's like I said, there's different energies. This is not the right place for you." As this dialogue is going on, crutches, walkers, and wheelchairs are seen covering the walls-- a link to John Locke. Once Rose crashes on the Island, she is healed just as John Locke was. Apparently the Island was the right magnetic energy for Rose and Locke as Isaac had explained.
But can magnetism do more for the human condition than just heal? What if the power of the island's magnetic field could effect humans at the cellular level? Our cells can only replicate themselves a finite number of times. Once a cell gets close to its expiration, we age. If the magnetic field can heal people miraculously, could it also heal our cells? Could the island make its inhabitants live forever? Enter Richard Albert. Richard Albert is a native to the island. He was here before anyone else, even before Ben. Ben came to the island as a boy with The Dharma Initiative, and as a boy he met Richard. Ben grew up, but Richard did not. The island's magnetic field was able to heal Richard's cells so they could replicate an infinite number of times-- immortality. But why is it that Richard did not age but Ben did? Does the island decide who can be immortal and who cannot? Or is it something else?
Cells know when to die. They can only replicate a certain number of times, and they know when their time is up. Just as The Swan operators know when their replacements would come by etching hatch marks on the walls, cells keep track of mitosis. In order for the magnetic field to make these cells "forget," it must influence them at their creation, or conception.
Only those that are conceived on the island can live forever. If they come to the island after birth, their cells are already too influenced by the outside world and will eventually die. Richard was a native, so his cells know only the island, so they can replicate an infinite number of times. But there is one problem. Pregnant mothers die before giving birth to immortal children. This is because "the universe has a sort of way of course correcting." To explain this let us take a trip back in time.
Thousands of years ago, the island was in a way it's own universe, isolated from Earth by time and space. It was an impossible for people to leave and enter the island. In many ways the ancient island was the isolated utopian society that DHARMA was experimenting with. The natives lived peacefully on the island, having no idea there was an outside world. There was no war, no conflict, no struggle. The natives were not violent people, they would have little to risk their lives for because their lives were infinite. But just because they could live forever didn't mean they couldn't die. The typical human death they saw was during pregnancy, and they soon learned that reproduction was not possible. The natives saw the mothers' death as divine intervention. They thought the island knew that its space was limited and the natives couldn't expand their boarders. So in order to ensure the survival of their species, no pregnant woman could survive to pregnancy. In order for the nat! ives to survive they had to understand the island's paradox of life and death.
And then DHARMA came. With their technology, they forcefully tried to take over the island and manipulate its powers. The natives finally found something to fight for. They soon realized a bullet through the head doesn't care if you're immoral or not, you'll die like the rest of them. After the purge Jacob despised technology, because it was not in the "cosmic order" of things (which by the way is the dictionary definition of dharma).
This is why Ben stole Alex and tried to steal Aaron. Although they were not conceived on the island, he thought it still possible for the birth of an immortal child. This is also why Ben hired Juliet, as to try to scientifically bypass the islands "course correction." Ben wanted to recreate Richard's immortal society.
Thank you for reading my theory!
Theory by Awesomeaj108
Electromagnetism and Invisibility
There is a specific area outside the island that all ships and aircraft must pass through in order to ensure they make it out the island's "field." If they don't go through this coordinate either they arrive at exactly where they started (the island) or something else, possibly far worse, happens. Many have described this as the bearing that Ben gave to Michael or the bearing that Faraday gave Lepidus to follow. Both bearings were different, and that is most likely because they started from different locations and would arrive at the same point. This point is The Looking Glass.
When Desmond had a vision of Naomi coming to the Island, part of his vision included Hurley finding a cable. We later find that this cable is connected to The Looking Glass. The reason why Hurley had to find the cable is because this was the direction that Naomi was to come "into" the island.
The function of The Looking Glass is to guide ships into the island. It emits a sonar ping that Ben's submarine can hear and follow. But why does Ben use a submarine, and why is The Looking Glass underwater? It's underwater so it stays hidden from people that are passing by the island. If the a ship is passing by the island and they see this station strangely sticking out of the water, they might coast right to it, and at the same time find the path that will lead them to the island.
It would be quite perplexing for passengers on a passing ship if they saw this island and found that it was impossible to land on it. People on the ship would tell others about the island and it wouldn't be a secret anymore. How does the island deter passing ship? This is tricky to explain but imagine that island is blanketed by a magnetic field, it covers the entire island, except for one spot, and that spot is the area around The Looking Glass. This magnetic field will deflect compass needles. Remember Sayid found this out in season one.
Ships move according to the bearing of a compass. If they follow a certain bearing continuously, and the island moves the compass, they may think they are moving in a straight line, but in reality they are not. This is how ships that follow a certain bearing don't intersect the island and find it.
But just because the path of a ship and the island don't meet, doesn't mean that a passing ship wouldn't be able to see it. A person on a ship may be passing the island and look to his east or west and actually see the island. If the island is a secret, how does it stay hidden from passing ships?
In real life there was a scientist named Michael Faraday. He studied electromagnetism and founded a strange phenomenon known as theFaraday Effect. This effect is when a strong magnetic field bends polarized light. If an object is inside this field and we are looking at it from outside the field, it would be difficult to actually see the object. This is how the island stays invisible! In one episode Faraday says something quite weird, " Do you ever notice how light scatters weird here?" Dan Faraday on the show is referring to the phenomenon that the real Faraday discovered!
The second purpose of The Looking Glass is to jam signals leaving the island. This is how Danielle's transmission was never heard outside the island. This theory can also explain how The Looking Glass does this. Many lost viewers have said that it would be impossible for one station to block transmissions for the entire island. They have claimed that there would have to be several of these stations encircling the island for it jam everything. However, the field that surrounds the island also has the power to refract radio waves (it just does). The only area where transmissions can pass to the outside world is through this hole in the magnetic field where The Looking Glass is located. So the jammer only has to have enough strength to cover this hole in the islands magnetic field.
Also the satellite dish in The Flame that at one point was used to communicate to the outside world was pointed directly at The Looking Glass, where it could break through the Islands field.
The islands magnetic field has defended the island for thousands of years but over the last three decades advancing technology has made the island easier to find. It is still very improbable for one to randomly encounter the island, but those who know what to look for have a better advantage of discovering its location.
Electromagnetism and Time Travel
When Desmond turned the key, did he really travel through time, or was he just dreaming? Being lost in his own subconscious would make more sense, because it is impossible to scientifically link electromagnetism and time travel. But we don't have to-- the writers already have. It is no coincidence that the moment Desmond turned the key and the sky turned purple, was the same moment he traveled into his past. When the hatch imploded, an enormous amount of electromagnetism coursed through Desmond's veins. This allowed Desmond to shift between times.
This is not the only clue that the writers have given us to explain Desmond's flashes. When Faraday learns about Desmond's side effects during his trip to the freighter, he asks Jack if Desmond had "been exposed to high levels of electromagnetism." As Faraday had described it, if Lepidus followed the exact bearing that he gave him, everything would be fine, but if he didn't there would be side effects. This bearing is also the same point as The Looking Glass, yet another link between magnetism and time travel. Apparently those who leave the island who have been exposed to electromagnetism become victims to a mental time shift.
But Desmond's mental time shift is not the only element of time travel on the island. The island itself has its own ability to trap itself in time. As explained before, the island is isolated from the outside world because it naturally generates it's own magnetic field. The perimeter of this field is also it's time barrier. The writers have left us four big clues regarding this bewildering power of the island.
The first clue to this phenomenon is Michael's return to the island. The time it took for Michael to return to the island from when he left was twenty two days on the island's time-line. But in twenty two days, is it possible for Michael to have left the island, find a shipping lane, get rescued, travel to Fiji, fly to New York, give Walt to his mother, become suicidal, run in with Tom, travel to Fiji again, board the Freighter, and travel back to the island? Keep in mind that Desmond said, "I should have been in Fiji in a week," after returning from his unsuccessful island escape. Putting all of this together makes it quite impossible for Michael to have done all of these things in twenty two days. There appears to be some difference in the rate at which time passes between the island and the outside world. It appears that the island's time-line flows at a slower pace.
Jack and Juliet were very concerned when they did not hear from Desmond and Lepidus who had left for the freighter. They departed the day before, yet they still did not receive a phone call from them. But Faraday was not worried because, as he described it, "Your perception of how long your friends have been gone is not necessarily how long they've actually been gone." While exiting the island's time barrier through the bearing, the helicopter moved slower than the island's time-line.
While on the island Faraday phoned the Freighter and told Regina to fire the payload, a small rocket, through the coordinates that he gave her. Once Regina fired the payload, she counted down the kilometers until it reached Faraday's beacon-- it took about thirty seconds. However, thirty one minutes later the payload arrives. How is this possible? We can safely say that while entering the island's time barrier through the bearing, the rocket moved slower than the island's time-line.
Another example is the corpse of the doctor washing up on shore, which didn't enter the island through the bearing. He washed up onshore before he actually died on the freighter.While entering the island's time barrier without passing through the bearing, the doctor moved faster than the island's time-line.
The last three examples seem to suggest that objects that pass through the bearing appear to go though in a time trap, while objects that don't pass through the bearing appear to go through a time warp.
Not only does the island naturally distort time but it also has a direct way physically travel through time. In the finale of season 4, Ben moved the island through time. It is most likely that Ben moved the Island exactly 297 days into the future. One can figure this out by counting the days between 12/31/04 and 10/24/05. Oct. 24th is the date Ben woke up in the desert with his Halawax jacket in the episode "The Shape of Things to Come." Some say that the island was just moved in space, but the orientation video for The Orchid explained that objects seem to disappear when they travel through time.
There are also other clues that are far more subtle than the ones aforementioned. Walt looks much older in Locke's vision than he should. The Faraday in the show studies time travel where the Faraday in real life studied electromagnetism. Lost viewers travel in time through flashbacks and flash-forwards. Lost's four years of airtime portray only four months on the island. All of these could very well be more clues as to the existence of two separate time-lines as well as to its link to electromagnetism.
Electromagnetism and Immortality
For centuries the power of magnets has been know to improve health in Asian cultures. Just a decade ago, we saw this come to The States a typical health fad. There was little scientific backing that these magnets did anything to improve health, so they were quickly dismissed by the medical community. Nevertheless, some people did have miraculous results from wearing these magnets.
The writers have also linked magnetism to miraculous healing in one Rose's flashbacks. In the flashback, Bernard takes Rose to the healer Isaac in Australia. He tells Rose, "There are places with great energy, spots on the earth, like the one we are over now. Perhaps this energy is geological-- magnetic, or perhaps it's something else." Isaac was not able to heal Rose, "It's not that you can't be healed. It's like I said, there's different energies. This is not the right place for you." As this dialogue is going on, crutches, walkers, and wheelchairs are seen covering the walls-- a link to John Locke. Once Rose crashes on the Island, she is healed just as John Locke was. Apparently the Island was the right magnetic energy for Rose and Locke as Isaac had explained.
But can magnetism do more for the human condition than just heal? What if the power of the island's magnetic field could effect humans at the cellular level? Our cells can only replicate themselves a finite number of times. Once a cell gets close to its expiration, we age. If the magnetic field can heal people miraculously, could it also heal our cells? Could the island make its inhabitants live forever? Enter Richard Albert. Richard Albert is a native to the island. He was here before anyone else, even before Ben. Ben came to the island as a boy with The Dharma Initiative, and as a boy he met Richard. Ben grew up, but Richard did not. The island's magnetic field was able to heal Richard's cells so they could replicate an infinite number of times-- immortality. But why is it that Richard did not age but Ben did? Does the island decide who can be immortal and who cannot? Or is it something else?
Cells know when to die. They can only replicate a certain number of times, and they know when their time is up. Just as The Swan operators know when their replacements would come by etching hatch marks on the walls, cells keep track of mitosis. In order for the magnetic field to make these cells "forget," it must influence them at their creation, or conception.
Only those that are conceived on the island can live forever. If they come to the island after birth, their cells are already too influenced by the outside world and will eventually die. Richard was a native, so his cells know only the island, so they can replicate an infinite number of times. But there is one problem. Pregnant mothers die before giving birth to immortal children. This is because "the universe has a sort of way of course correcting." To explain this let us take a trip back in time.
Thousands of years ago, the island was in a way it's own universe, isolated from Earth by time and space. It was an impossible for people to leave and enter the island. In many ways the ancient island was the isolated utopian society that DHARMA was experimenting with. The natives lived peacefully on the island, having no idea there was an outside world. There was no war, no conflict, no struggle. The natives were not violent people, they would have little to risk their lives for because their lives were infinite. But just because they could live forever didn't mean they couldn't die. The typical human death they saw was during pregnancy, and they soon learned that reproduction was not possible. The natives saw the mothers' death as divine intervention. They thought the island knew that its space was limited and the natives couldn't expand their boarders. So in order to ensure the survival of their species, no pregnant woman could survive to pregnancy. In order for the nat! ives to survive they had to understand the island's paradox of life and death.
And then DHARMA came. With their technology, they forcefully tried to take over the island and manipulate its powers. The natives finally found something to fight for. They soon realized a bullet through the head doesn't care if you're immoral or not, you'll die like the rest of them. After the purge Jacob despised technology, because it was not in the "cosmic order" of things (which by the way is the dictionary definition of dharma).
This is why Ben stole Alex and tried to steal Aaron. Although they were not conceived on the island, he thought it still possible for the birth of an immortal child. This is also why Ben hired Juliet, as to try to scientifically bypass the islands "course correction." Ben wanted to recreate Richard's immortal society.
Thank you for reading my theory!
Theory by Awesomeaj108
