LOST: Catch a falling star, put it in your pocket...

I believe that a baby black hole "powers" the Island. It's the perfect not-completely-understandable might-as-well-be-magic spacetime-bending theoretic-physically-kinda-possible phenomenon to pseudo-scientifically account for most of the weirdness associated w the Island and inflicted upon our Losties.

Also, have you caught the (to my mind, unusual and conspicuous) choice of lullaby for Aaron? "Catch a falling star, put it in your pocket...?" I think that's what happened with/to the Island. A black hole was created within it or collided with it from space.

As much as I'd like for fresh-off-the-sub Daniel to be something other than our ragged Daniel (like a twin, or his own father, or a future/older Daniel) I think the "simplest" explanation will probably prevail. That he *is* our ragged Daniel, just cleaned up after a couple years off-Island playing the role of premier DI scientist in the civilized world.

I would LOVE for him to have been the scientist who developed the Lamppost, which is what I hoped for when Eloise first introduced it... but how would that have happened...?

Our ragged Faraday would join the Orchid work crew and get into the wheel chamber, or at least to those bore holes that penetrated into the chamber, to access the "negatively charged exotic particles," and with a coconut and bamboo time machine, launch himself farther back in time, and maybe off the Island, to become the DI scientist who develops the Lamppost, which leads the DI to the Island.

Y'know, that could've happened already, sometime between 1974 and 1977, but a LOST time jump seems to require and discharge a lot of energy, so it's unlikely it could've been done secretly or quietly...

MAYbe... it hasn't happened yet. MAYbe, our ragged Faraday *has* been a kinda wacko Charlotte's creepy uncle hermit in the DI on the Island for three years, and crisp future F.O.S. Faraday has returned to the Island coincidentally/fatefully/because he'd already experienced what's about to come—the Swan Incident that sends ragged Faraday farther back in time (to become the DI sage who creates the Lamppost) and returns crisp Faraday and the Losties to the present day...

I like that.

Which of course means it's totally wacked and wrong.

A few posts back, I mentioned the cop-out idea of the Island being the site of a shipwrecked spaceship or spacetimeship. It's kind of a cop-out, cuz it sort of cheapens what sacrifice and faith and crises of faith that the Losties and Others have had to endure. But, y'know, I'm finding more and more potential in the idea. It doesn't have to cheapen the harrowing and inspiring experiences of our favorite characters because the Island doesn't have to be the cause of everything. People, and their beliefs and greed and relationships, do. The Island could be a cosmic McGuffin. A little REPO MAN, but of course, I don't think of that as a bad thing.

So, maybe the black hole is the power source of the spaceship that crashed into the Island millions of years ago. OR, the spaceship, with an exotic particle drive, is the falling star that's put in a dimensional pocket on earth. Over time, geology and the spacetime bending-force of the black hole/hyperdrive caused the Island to overgrow the extraterrestrial technology, to the point where you can't tell where one ends and the other begins. I originally thought the Orchid would be the stardrive and the Swan would be a regulator for its power. The Orchid would have been designed to push the spaceship thru time and space. Early Islanders (or crash survivors?) would discover the damaged Orchid chamber and rig a primitive workaround interface from available materials, the Wheel, to try to reactivate it.

Ben and Christian and Widmore speak about moving the Island somoewhat matter-of-factly, as a last resort defense against outsiders. So, we can assume that in the Island's history, turning the wheel moved the Island safely thru space, without jumping thru time. The chaotic power of the Orchid was regulated to do that. However, when Ben turns the wheel, what about the Island is different? The Swan. Its energies have been completely released in the detonation of hatch. Without the Swan's regulating energies, the Orchid's power when released by Ben affects both space and time, and the time skipping begins. When Locke turns the wheel, he is in a time before the loss of the Swan's energies, so the wheel turns as it should and the Island is returned to a fixed point in space time.

I'm a little less happy with the idea of the energies of the Orchid and Swan working in tandem by design since Jughead showed up on the scene. It seems like the concrete block in the Swan must be Jughead's resting place. And that notion makes me want to say that Jughead is the Island-tainting cause of the Swan's weird EM phenomenon, which would mean that there were no Swan energies before Jughead was buried there in the 50s.

Of course, that doesn't have to be the case. The site could have been home to an Island-natural/spaceship-tech spike or weirdness in the EM field, and that weirdness and the radiation from the damaged Jughead could have interacted with each other to produce even greater weirdness, with unexpected effects on the Orchid phenom and Island-moving.

Or... I could get a life. Y'know, whichever.

Also... Doesn't that crate that the Shadow Pact is hauling around look vaguely... coffin-sized? Or could we say... Sarcophagus-scaled? Anyone up for resurrecting an Island leader, or offering up a vessel to a lost/fallen/dormant maverick Egyptian demi-god? Or something?

Alien mummy?

Right. Shutting up...

Now.

Keep on keepin on~