Some of you may have already come to a similar conclusion so I don't expect to blow everyone's mind. But for those who may not have pieced together this puzzle, here’s my version of the Swan's purpose.
The Swan station is home to the hydrogen bomb. While exploring the Swan in season 2, Sayid concluded that there was something encased in ten feet of concrete on all sides and surrounded by a strong presence of magnetic energy.
In "Jughead", Faraday's 1954 assessment of the hydrogen bomb was that is was unstable and needed to be buried. Richard's a smart guy. He knows that to 'bury' it means more than just digging a big hole and throwing dirt over it. So Richard and the Others encased the bomb in 10 feet of concrete to keep it from being disturbed by external elements. Later on, Dharma built the Swan to keep the bomb stabilized in a magnetic field to prevent it from being triggered by its own molecular changes. This magnetic field was created by utilizing the exotic material on the island that, as Pierre Chang mentioned in the premiere of season 5, may be a limitless energy source. The energy for the stasis field must be constantly applied to maintain stability but it also must be released (every 108 minutes) to prevent the energy from building up and becoming unstable itself.
Obviously, this is a very important job and being around this amount of energy could have negative effects on the people working the station. That's why the Pearl was created to monitor the Swan workers and make sure they stayed healthy and capable.
And now for the best part, the ultimate turning point, the moment when Desmond became either the savior or destroyer of mankind: THE FAILSAFE KEY. Failure to enter the numbers causes the electromagnetic energy to build up until the magnetic field itself becomes unstable. Once a certain amount of energy has built up, it crosses a critical point where release of the energy would no longer help; the magnetic field has already become too unstable. That's when the failsafe key has to be turned. Instead of allowing a small stream of energy to keep the bomb stable, the failsafe key lets in a full wave of energy (like breaking down a dam, according to Inman). This large amount of energy creates a miniature black hole (possibly wormhole, that would be consistent with Chang mentioning the Casimir Effect) which causes the Swan to implode (possibly pass through the wormhole). Sure, the violent event would detonate the bomb, but because light can not escape the gravity of a black ! hole, the explosion stays confined within the implosion.
This raises the question of why Dharma/Others didn't just send the bomb into a black hole in the first place. I can think of two possible reasons why the failsafe was a last resort.
1) They didn't know for sure if it would work. And even if it did work, what if the black hole swallowed the entire island? Basically, the effect of releasing a large amount of energy at one time was unpredictable.
2) Maybe they knew exactly what would happen, that whoever turned the failsafe key would become a person who seems to be exempt from the laws of time and causality. But that doesn't sound like a safe person to have around.Theory by timeisrelative
The Swan station is home to the hydrogen bomb. While exploring the Swan in season 2, Sayid concluded that there was something encased in ten feet of concrete on all sides and surrounded by a strong presence of magnetic energy.
In "Jughead", Faraday's 1954 assessment of the hydrogen bomb was that is was unstable and needed to be buried. Richard's a smart guy. He knows that to 'bury' it means more than just digging a big hole and throwing dirt over it. So Richard and the Others encased the bomb in 10 feet of concrete to keep it from being disturbed by external elements. Later on, Dharma built the Swan to keep the bomb stabilized in a magnetic field to prevent it from being triggered by its own molecular changes. This magnetic field was created by utilizing the exotic material on the island that, as Pierre Chang mentioned in the premiere of season 5, may be a limitless energy source. The energy for the stasis field must be constantly applied to maintain stability but it also must be released (every 108 minutes) to prevent the energy from building up and becoming unstable itself.
Obviously, this is a very important job and being around this amount of energy could have negative effects on the people working the station. That's why the Pearl was created to monitor the Swan workers and make sure they stayed healthy and capable.
And now for the best part, the ultimate turning point, the moment when Desmond became either the savior or destroyer of mankind: THE FAILSAFE KEY. Failure to enter the numbers causes the electromagnetic energy to build up until the magnetic field itself becomes unstable. Once a certain amount of energy has built up, it crosses a critical point where release of the energy would no longer help; the magnetic field has already become too unstable. That's when the failsafe key has to be turned. Instead of allowing a small stream of energy to keep the bomb stable, the failsafe key lets in a full wave of energy (like breaking down a dam, according to Inman). This large amount of energy creates a miniature black hole (possibly wormhole, that would be consistent with Chang mentioning the Casimir Effect) which causes the Swan to implode (possibly pass through the wormhole). Sure, the violent event would detonate the bomb, but because light can not escape the gravity of a black ! hole, the explosion stays confined within the implosion.
This raises the question of why Dharma/Others didn't just send the bomb into a black hole in the first place. I can think of two possible reasons why the failsafe was a last resort.
1) They didn't know for sure if it would work. And even if it did work, what if the black hole swallowed the entire island? Basically, the effect of releasing a large amount of energy at one time was unpredictable.
2) Maybe they knew exactly what would happen, that whoever turned the failsafe key would become a person who seems to be exempt from the laws of time and causality. But that doesn't sound like a safe person to have around.Theory by timeisrelative
