Ok so having watched the last 2 episodes from here in the UK. I am now thinking that at least the smoke monster has a plausible reason for being on the Island.

Essentially the island has jumped in the future and the smoke monster has jumped at the same. Simply Smokey is a future technology which has jumped, just like the boat (dinghy) jumped or the characters clothes are jumping.

I would not be surprised if Richard Alpert is also from the future as well.

In fact we could assume that the time jump mechanism is also from the future.

Most of Lost does not make sense since the Island at anyone time is made up of people objects and scenarios which belong to very different points in time.

Ouch my brain hurts.

I'm kinda with you -- not sure about Smokey -- but I think the same theory explains the whispers.

Could it be that the whispers that people hear are really other past inhabitants still skipping merrily through time, from previous moves? Or, perhaps our beloved Losties themselves? And that eventually all that is left of them is some vocal fragments, and their bodies have basically disintegrated?

Basically now time travel has been proven to effect the Island everything can now be explained. The statue, Adam & Eve, the Black Rock etc.

It's obvious that the island is bouncing around in time. We can tell by Richard's actions that the others understand these time shifts and, at the very least, can predict the moves; at the very most, they can control them.

The whispers seem to occur when something seemingly supernatural happens, or someone shows up presumably from a different time. Perhaps the whispers are the sounds of two different time streams passing close one another as an 'other' is deposited to perform a particular task.

I read an interesting theory over at Fearless Leader's (sorry I don't recall who presented it). The writer suggested that the mysterious four toed statue is not an artifact from the past,but from the future...four toes being an indication of evolution. And all this time skipping is about the inhabitants of the island in the future going back in time to orchestrate a specific outcome on which an incredibly important something hinges.

What I really don't get is why can't anyone see the island? What am I missing? If we shift from this time to that time...how would that move the island? It wouldn't. It's a separate phenomena. Ben turning the frozen donkey wheel must have reactivated the island's cloaking device. I don't think it literally "moved" the island. People within the cloaked perimeter can see the island, people outside the perimeter can't see the island.

I'm not convinced people cannot see the island. As I think back on all of the conversations, it might be that people wouldn't find what they expect on the island. That said, the entire time shift becomes a brain teaser. What stabilizes one artifact and not another? If the foot statue is from the future, why does it remain in the past for the Losties to see yet the camp on the beach disappears.

I tend to agree with several others that the whispers are remnants of people whose time transitions are not proper. Are they trapped between times, not able to reach any stable period? That's what I think. That would imply that all of the times are interconnected, part of the same loaf of bread, as quantum theory implies. Like the statue why do the Black Rock and Smokie travel with the island?

I also wonder why the wheel appears so much like an older artifact. If the foot statue and the wheel come from the future, does their lack of visual sophistication imply that the B-52s were right about de-evolution? That the future has regressed to a point of building effigies like the foot?

I'm especially interested in how the time shift could be controlled, given the wild oscillations we have seen. Did Ben screw something up?

quote:

Originally posted by undaunted:
I read an interesting theory over at Fearless Leader's (sorry I don't recall who presented it). The writer suggested that the mysterious four toed statue is not an artifact from the past,but from the future...four toes being an indication of evolution. And all this time skipping is about the inhabitants of the island in the future going back in time to orchestrate a specific outcome on which an incredibly important something hinges.

What I really don't get is why can't anyone see the island? What am I missing? If we shift from this time to that time...how would that move the island? It wouldn't. It's a separate phenomena. Ben turning the frozen donkey wheel must have reactivated the island's cloaking device. I don't think it literally "moved" the island. People within the cloaked perimeter can see the island, people outside the perimeter can't see the island.

pagecarl said,

quote:

I'm not convinced people cannot see the island. As I think back on all of the conversations, it might be that people wouldn't find what they expect on the island. That said, the entire time shift becomes a brain teaser. What stabilizes one artifact and not another? If the foot statue is from the future, why does it remain in the past for the Losties to see yet the camp on the beach disappears.

The island has to be moving in physical space because if it wasn't moving, invisible or not, you could find it by it's geographical coordinates.

Or is it where it has always been, but the door is locked and what Mrs. Hawking is trying to find isn't the island, but the key to get in?

As for the statue vs the camp: if the lostees lept forward in time, the acropolis stands but the houses of the people who built it are long gone. But you are right, What is an artifact of the future doing in 2004 when the lostees fell out of the sky?

quote:

Originally posted by undaunted:
pagecarl said,

quote:

I'm not convinced people cannot see the island. As I think back on all of the conversations, it might be that people wouldn't find what they expect on the island. That said, the entire time shift becomes a brain teaser. What stabilizes one artifact and not another? If the foot statue is from the future, why does it remain in the past for the Losties to see yet the camp on the beach disappears.

The island has to be moving in physical space because if it wasn't moving, invisible or not, you could find it by it's geographical coordinates.

Or is it where it has always been, but the door is locked and what Mrs. Hawking is trying to find isn't the island, but the key to get in?

As for the statue vs the camp: if the lostees lept forward in time, the acropolis stands but the houses of the people who built it are long gone. But you are right, What is an artifact of the future doing in 2004 when the lostees fell out of the sky?

I completely agree. Once again, we get final confirmation that there is a time shift happening, yet we have significant inconsistancies.

First, I'm still not convinced the island does physically move. People might find the island but not find what they are looking for on the island and thus believe it to be the wrong island.

Some items shift with the island and some don't. Examples are the Losties, clothing vs. the items in the camp.

Some items change with time and others don't. Examples are the hatches, which go from blown up to whole again and the Losties themselves, who remain unchanged.

Events have yet to be established. Certainly the drug airplane and the hatches show that the timeline is changing. But why do these oscillations seem to be limited to the timeframe of the Lost plane crash? Why not go back so the Losties can watch the Black Rock ride a wave or ??forward?? to watch some group build the foot?

What is it about the plane crash and the arrival of the Losties on the island that seems to be a center point? Ben seems to know. That's why he is in such a panic to get everyone back to the island before "all is lost". Ben knew it when he turned the wheel. He needed the time shifts to happen so he could rearrange events.

Not spoken of much is Faraday's meeting with Desmond at the back door of the hatch. Desmond never previously mentioned meeting Faraday. Does that imply that it doesn't happen or that Faraday was not truthful (I know, a shocking thought) and that events can be changed.

My favorite concept of time and event is that we are surrounded by an infinity of event lines, each line being a slight modification from all of the lines around it based on some insignificant change that happened at some insignificant moment. A flower leaning one direction instead of the other would cause different event lines. Thus, ALL possible event lines are happening and have happened, all around us.

Oh, and Dauntless, was that you with the "halfway there" idea in another thread? We actually learned that in a college math/engineering class fofr integrations. The idea was presented as walking to one place in a city to another, block by block, so every turn ended up as a right angle turn, like a stair step. No matter how many turns you take, no matter how many blocks you can divide the trip into, approaching an infinite number of blocks, the distance traveled is exactly the same. Until you make that one final leap and turn the blocks into a straight line, when the distance changes. Okay, I'm an engineer. Sill things excite me. I like flowers and elk and mountain snow, too. Not just math concepts.

Pagecarl...I think island is the nexus for alternative timelines, going off in an infinite number of directions. In addition to the inhabitants, the island itself can move along space-time lines but still remain the nexus.
Cheers.

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I think the island must be moving to a different dimension as well as time.

If it were "simply" physically moving, it wouldn't be as hard to find.

If it were only moving in time, it wouldn't likely disappear, unless they went hundreds of thousands of years before. And it's not an invisibility shield, because you'd either still land on it & not be able to see it, or you'd bounce off it. We did talk about the snow globe effect for quite awhile. I think a different dimension explains it better - you could sail right through it, fly over it, and if you had the wrong heading, you just wouldn't find it, visually or physically. Remember they needed the same heading whether leaving or returning. So flipping into still another dimension causes the side effect of time-jumping (however that works - we're in pure sci-fi here).

I agree completely Hurling,the island isn't simply invisible,it is another dimension. I hate to think they've entered the twilight zone but it seems that way.