With your help, readers, we’ve solved Lost! Again! And just in time for a soul-crushing monthlong hiatus.
Stop reading right now if (a) you don’t want your mind blown and (b) you prefer to remain in the dark about the origin of the mysterious recurrent Numbers.
I’m proud to say I can take some credit for this one. My recap of last week’s episode included a link to a page about Ayers Rock, Australia’s famous magnetic mound. (It figured big in last week’s episode.) Now, I wasn’t smart enough to understand the full impact of that link, but luckily, Ed Markel was. He submitted the following to our illustrious Doc Jensen, expert on all things Lost.
"The magnetic field of Ayers Rock was not strong enough to heal Rose, but the mag field of the Island was. The numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 are points along the Becker-Hagens Planetary Grid System. It’s all kind of complicated and strange, but the final answer is the Island is located exactly at point 42 on the grid — it’s about halfway between Australia and the east side of the African continent.
"This magnetic stuff is pretty weird, if you read it all — and there’s a lot of it — but the whole mystery of Lost is contained in these pages. Everything. The Dharma symbol — the octagon — is a Becker-Hagens grid. I’m kind of sad now that I have solved it, no more mystery."
No more mystery, Ed? Oh, I doubt that. Unless you’re proficient in New Age sciento-theology, there are quite a few things left mysterious. For instance: Why are all the castaways magnetically attuned to the island? How did "magnetic fields" bring a small airplane all the way from Africa to the Southern Indian Ocean? And does Magnetic Fields frontman Stephin Merritt know about this theory? Is he behind it all? Does this explain why I get his songs stuck in my head?
More explanations, please. Clearly, we’re going to need the full power of the collective consciousness to crack Lost. And after that’s done, maybe we’ll move on to priority two: world peace.
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And this solves the mystery of the numbers…..how? Sure all of the numbers appear on that grid, but so do all the numbers between 1 and 60. 42 is halfway between Australia and the east side of the African continent. So? Why 42? Why not 23 if they went so far off course? Meh, another theory debunked….
Yeah, uh-huh.
All the numbers are also retired Yankee’s jersey numbers.
And they add up to 108 which is the number of stitches on a baseball. And the number of beads on a rosary.
The numbers have no basis in reality, they pulled some random numbers, perhaps for all we know, FROM the yankee’s retired jersey list, just because they needed 6 numbers.
Scott Brown, that is hysterical, Scott Brown.
But, Scott Brown, could not more univeral truths and realities been somehow been thrown into the mix, Scott Brown?
And you, Scott Brown, the very sly Scott Brown, do note imaginary magnetic co-ordinates in relationship to the mystery of the island, do you Scott Brown, compare and contrast this Amazing Story, with the similiar Magnetic Field Equations on the Map inside the blast door? Well, do you Scott Brown? Scott Brown, are you there?
Do you deny, Scott Brown, that the viral pregnancy of Katie Holmes is somehow not uncompletly unrelated to those who chose not to see the clear pattern between Lost and the fabric of those who are not crazy, Scott Brown?
Scott Brown, the most accomplished author of EW magazine—- (to which I subscribe–can you get me a magazine discount–or a comp, take note, please, Scott Brown?)—- you must dig much deeper into the mysteries of Lost for us, your loyal followers, we, the cult of Scott Brown.
Scott Brown, until I type things back to you I remain….
Scott Brown
krushgroove is correct, numbers 1-60 are too on the grid. Are you forgetting (a few months back), the writers of LOST confessed that even they don’t know what the numbers mean? They’re making this show up as they go along. I’ve “lost” interest in what had the potential to be an intriguing show.
I always thought priority 2 was Tom Cruise…damn my life has gone astray.
Why would the plane be between Africa and Australia when it was flying to Los Angeles? They may have been off course, but that’s a little extreme. It explains the little plane, I guess, but not the Oceanic flight.
It may not be right, but at the very least, it’s something to think about. Only the show’s creators know.
The creators have said that the numbers do not have a “meaning”. Their only importance is that they constantly reoccur. Do your homework.
I’ve been posting this theory (in more detail) since early in the first season. I also have to agree with the poster above who said all numbers from 1 – 60 are on the grid.l I wouldn’t be using that as my ‘proof’ of the theory. I also disagree with you on which grid point they are at, but the theory is the same. We’re on the same page, anyway!
http://o.forums.go.com/abc/thread?threadID=1007135
It’s an interesting addition to the stockpile of Lost theories, sure, but I’d agree with the other posters here that it’s a much too soon — and too incomplete a solution — to suggest that the numbers have been solved. (Unless, of course, it was a facetious statement; those don’t always translate well online.)
In the meantime, here’s another interesting link which seems to help in linking the number 108 to satellite revolutions and the Swan station:
http://www.uen.org/swan/argos.html
Well, no.
Do you honestly think–if in fact this is THE “solution”–that the writers could pull off explaining this to an avg. audience even with two hours? Talk about New Age sciento-theology.
Hello! We’re talking America here! People aren’t going to dry swallow this any easier than they would Doc Jensen’s gagged up Aaron Theory. This is pretty heavy stuff we’re dealing with, and by “pretty heavy” I mean “pretty-hard-to-understand-for-the-average-citizen.”
FYI, not all of the numbers correspond with retired Yankees.
While the number 42 was retired throughout all of Major League Baseball (in honor of Jackie Robinson, who played for the Brooklyn Dodgers, not the Yankees), the Yankees themselves never retired that number.
I don’t believe in the ‘retired Yankees theory’ – for one thing, there are a lot of other numbers that are also retired from the Yankees: 1, 3, 5, 7, 8 (it was retired twice), 9, 10, 32, 37, 44, and 49.
If that theory is correct, why weren’t any of those numbers used, then?
The magnetic field theory makes a bit more sense – they’ve already established that the Dharma Initiative was conducting experiments in magnetism. And, there’s that great big electromagnet in the Swan bunker.
Huh?
Flights to LA leave Sydney (east coast) and fly, North east. The island at #42 would be about a 6 hour flight directly west.
I think not.
Last time I checked, The Island was in the Pacific Ocean, not the Indian ocean. Good try, guys, but you won’t be able to decode LOST that easily.
I’ve said it before…. The numbers are part of the geographic measurements of latitude and longitude!
In Google Earth, Search for N4.815, W162.342 and you will find the location (granted there is no land mass) but the location meets the roughly 1000 miles off course explanation from episode 1p2.
just something random to think of, but when you add the numbers together, you come up with 108, like in 108 minutes for the countdown
How many people have been visibly introduced thus far on the series?
Uh, why do we think the Island is located at grid point 42? That’s between Australia and Africa. Weren’t they flying to California? Or is this some variation of the “they were actually flying east” theory?
Incidentally, talk of the vile vortices has been around since the start of the show.
If you look at how the Numbers operate on the show, they act as “religious symbols”: they’re used in a sacred, world-saving “ritual”, and hold mysterious but unknown power.
I reckon that the Castaways have built a “religion” around the Numbers, even though the Numbers are simply an activation code for the computer, nothing more. The Numbers could be in Hurley’s head because the process activated by pressing the button has overwritten Hurley’s lottery numbers with “The Numbers”. In other words, Hurley won the lottery with a different set of numbers, and his memory of the lottery numbers was overwritten with “The Numbers” POST-crash.
A thought about “The Flame Hatch” – might that Hatch have a different set of Numbers on its door? And will the “Flame Hatch” community revere those different Numbers in the same way the Castaways revere their Numbers?
Perhaps notHenry thinks the Swan Hatch is “a joke” because he has a different belief-system: he worships the numbers on the Flame Hatch, not “4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42″?
You’ve got it all wrong. The Island isn’t LOCATED at point 42. That’s just the location of a “doorway” that the drug plane used to access the Island. Perhaps the Island is accessible by several such doorways, including those located at points 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42.
The Island is located inside a tesseract (aka wrinkle in time). That’s why God can’t see them.
Re: Yankee’s jerseys
Well, yes, 42 is supposed to be retired across the board, when all people using it are retired.
It was just a point of being that the numbers have no meaning OUTSIDE of Lost.
If you really want some insight you should look at The Divine Comedy. Canto VIII is pretty interesting.
Canto VI interesting too.
this theory doesnt know anything about the streets. everyone come together and booo this theory with me.
BOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
This theory would be more interesting and original if there weren’t perhaps two dozen similar theories floating around on the internet, including some that precisely put the island in the South Pacific and one that puts the “island” in the middle of Africa.
Some of the theorys I have just read are wacky. But I do have some questions. I wonder if the faith healer in australia knew about the island and will have something to do with the plot.
Did some of you miss it?
4+8+15+16=43
43, 23, & 42 creates a triangle on the first map, that is EXACTLY where the “Bermuda triangle” off the Australian coast is located on the second map!
This website is obviously a plant by the makers of LOST, hoping to fool people into thinking its real. Nice try, Lindelof, but you have to get up pretty early in the morning to fool me…(I could be crazy but I doubt it).
Umm, they’re GPS coordinates and they point to somewhere out in the pacific.
The man in the psyc ward kept repeating the numbers,he had heard them on a radio frequency repeatedly,during war I presume. Hurley heard them so much he remembered them, played them,,ends up on island where the numbers are stamped on the hatch. The french lady heard the broadcast, wrote the numbers went to island, found the transmitter, no one there. Paper with numbers ends up with Hurley after the guy FRench lady captured escapes and returns to camp. Inside the hatch is the computer that requires the numbers every 108 minutes to be entered in,,,which does something to be discovered yet, or not. Now what does this all mean?
And there is a story for everyone on the show…that is just Hurleys. How are all those stories connected to the island? Stay tuned……