This is what I meant when I said that neither story (Adam & Eve/Lucifer) had a foregone conclusion. For all we know the characters are already inhabiting a time-line in which Lucifer won that crucial battle rather than lost it.

(1) Pole reversal. I blamed the temporal anomalies and the movement of the two conduit exit points on pole reversal. Not so – although pole reversal did occur during the ‘purple phase’ incident and obviously when Ben pulled the donkey wheel. I was correct when I said the Swan Station was built to keep the poles frozen. Its destruction enabled the island to return to its natural state and in its natural state there is time dilation – the paradox of the murdered doctor – along with the apparent movement of the conduit exit points.

(2) The rotation of the earth. I say apparent because the conduit exit points do not move, although there is evidence to suggest the island rotates on its axis. Rather it is the earth that rotates while the exit conduits exert positive and negative pull via a series of discrete pulses out into the future (relatively speaking)* from the island’s fixed location in the past. The pulses are not exactly synchronous. Working out the actual maths for this is a bit outside of my comfort zone, but one example would be the twelve hour discrepancy between entry and exit points in our time line, with the result that (when frozen) the exit point was on the opposite side of the world from the entry point.

*the notion of a constant (something in a fixed position) and an inconsistent (something which moves but exists in tangential relation to its constant) is a theme running through the show and applies not just to the characters but to many other aspects of it as well, but because the writers like to screw with the viewers’ heads, in many cases what appears to be the inconstant is in fact the constant – e.g. Horace’s cabin.

Sorry, Karl – of course you’re right, but I was applying the same geographical terminology to the island as one might to the earth i.e. properly speaking the earth’s north pole is its south dipole.

I said earlier the island was ‘hidden in the past,’ and that if its magnetic field ever failed, it would be exposd to the present. Locke’s mission was to rectify this problem. I wonder if I’m right. There’s another possibility: that the island’s true home is in the past and that shutting down its magnetic field would simply stop it being visited by people from the distant future – i.e. our present.
Why does this matter? Well, in my original theory I argued the writers were trying to combine two popular myths: that of Eden and the Rebel Angel. In my update I still reckoned the island was Eden, while discounting the Rebel Angel storyline.
But let’s just assume these two stories did originate on the island. In fact, let’s go one step futher: let’s assume all the characters in ‘Lost’ are players in these two dramas. Why not? Just being on the island means they’re inhabiting the past – and will do so for good if the island’s power source were ever shut down. Is it so remarkable that their stories might be told and re-told by future generations, until they’d become the stuff of legend?
And it’s easy to imagine the kind of story that might be inspired by, say, the fall from grace of the island’s brightest and most favoured son, his exile (not from the garden, but from the loop, so he’s deprived of the island’s many blessings) and his subsequent attempts to confound his master’s plans. And what about the story of the couple who survive the aftermath of the war between this individual and the island’s master to become the parents of all mankind? To make things really interesting let’s (just for the hell of it) suppose neither story is foregone conclusion, that the future – mankind’s future – is at stake…

Reversing the poles (if only temporarily) caused the positive current to surge outwards, radiating out from the the swan centre across the island (albeit not very far) but also up through the northpole conduit, while the south pole conduit suddenly began to express magnetic pull. This anamolous behaviour would have been detectible by anybody waiting at the end of either conduit. Widmore had some idea of the south pole conduit’s approximate location or possibly he had a number of monitoring stations. The anamolous reading enabled him to pinpoint its exact location, prior to its ‘shift’ – see below.*

The primary function of the Swan Station was to stop pole reversal kicking in. Both poles were kept frozen in ‘neutral’. That all changed after the Swan Station was destroyed. The poles began to express their characteristics to a much greater degree with corresponding temporal anomolies etc. This would have made Widmore’s job even easier. I say this with one qualification.*

The sky turned the same colour on both occasions because the same phenomena occurred on both occasions: pole reversal. The difference was one of degree. I’m guessing the Dharma initiative had some gizmo like a double-switch circuit with one switch being a timer. This would have allowed them to over-ride the main power source and reverse the island’s time line for a matter of minutes – i.e. far enough back into the past to punch in those numbers and get everything back to normal. The last thing they wanted was to have the island’s time-line rewound back years or months into the past – especially while they were still on it! Ben had no reservations about doing so, largely because he was getting off the island anyway, and he seems to have reset the island’s time-line back to a point where it was no longer in its current location.

* the purple sky event did set in motion a process which resulted in the conduit exit points shifting location. The Svalbard exit suddenly became the Tunisian exit. However, Widmore’s team seem to have been prepared for this and finding the polar bear skeleton helped them pinpoint the island’s location once and for all.[/quote]

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Ah, okay. Thanks for the explanation.

Reversing the poles (if only temporarily) caused the positive current to surge outwards, radiating out from the the swan centre across the island (albeit not very far) but also up through the northpole conduit, while the south pole conduit suddenly began to express magnetic pull. This anamolous behaviour would have been detectible by anybody waiting at the end of either conduit. Widmore had some idea of the south pole conduit’s approximate location or possibly he had a number of monitoring stations. The anamolous reading enabled him to pinpoint its exact location, prior to its ‘shift’ – see below.*

The primary function of the Swan Station was to stop pole reversal kicking in. Both poles were kept frozen in ‘neutral’. That all changed after the Swan Station was destroyed. The poles began to express their characteristics to a much greater degree with corresponding temporal anomolies etc. This would have made Widmore’s job even easier. I say this with one qualification.*

The sky turned the same colour on both occasions because the same phenomena occurred on both occasions: pole reversal. The difference was one of degree. I’m guessing the Dharma initiative had some gizmo like a double-switch circuit with one switch being a timer. This would have allowed them to over-ride the main power source and reverse the island’s time line for a matter of minutes – i.e. far enough back into the past to punch in those numbers and get everything back to normal. The last thing they wanted was to have the island’s time-line rewound back years or months into the past – especially while they were still on it! Ben had no reservations about doing so, largely because he was getting off the island anyway, and he seems to have reset the island’s time-line back to a point where it was no longer in its current location.

* the purple sky event did set in motion a process which resulted in the conduit exit points shifting location. The Svalbard exit suddenly became the Tunisian exit. However, Widmore’s team seem to have been prepared for this and finding the polar bear skeleton helped them pinpoint the island’s location once and for all.