**Spoilers** Numbers Fanatics

mr_angry

Ok, I decided to do a bit of sniffing around the numbers to see if I could determine whether or not they were an arithmetic or geometic series. However, I soon realised that there were people out there on the Internet who would have no doubt done this before me. So, I decided to take a little look, and came across this site dedicated to the numbers, which I thought I should share.

http://thenumbers.greatestjournal.com/

I think it'd also be nice to have a thread to talk exclusively about the numbers, and their interesting properties. So far, my best theory revolves around...

4 8 15 16 23 42.

4 is a multiple of 1.
8 is a multiple of 2.
15 is a multiple of 3.
16 is a multiple of 4.
23 is a prime number.
42 is a multiple of 6.

This is probably absolutely meaningless, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless, and something to keep us going over the long, Lost-free summer.

mr_angry

Ok, it seems I've just perked my own interest even more with this one. A bit more searching led me to the following site...

http://athensohio.net/entertainment/4-8-15-16-23-42/

...which contains some even spookier representations. Firstly...

4+8+15+16+23+42 = 108
Note: 108=6^2+6^2+6^2

It looks better if you read it as 6 squared, 6 squared, 6 squared. Think that's slightly ominous? Check out the next one. The sites creators think that the 42 maybe supposed to be treated separately because they were the "Mega Ball" in Hurley's lottery jackpot.

4+8+15+16+23 = 66. 4+2 = 6. Squish the answers together, and you get 666. Cursed numbers? Walt saying "Don't open it Mr Locke! Don't open it!"? Sayid saying "It doesn't have a handle... maybe that means it was never meant to be opened from the outside"? The uber defense mechanism? This is kind of spooking me, I have to say!

You should also check out "The Magic Square" on that link. Very interesting...


Edit: Some people are also suggesting that the next number in the sequence is 48. Hurley wins $156 million dollars in the lottery.

4+8+15+16+23+42+48=156.

48 is the number of survivors from the original crash, and is also used elsewhere in the series. Some people are speculating that becuase some of the 48 survivors are already dead, this sequence read in reverse displays the number of characters surviving each series / plot arc. 48-42-23-16-15-8-4.

zoro

mr_angry wrote:

The sites creators think that the 42 maybe supposed to be treated separately ...

Well it is the answer to the ultimate question of Life, the Universe and Everything

mr_angry

Another reference to the numbers, this time from http://www.driveshaftband.com/flight815_5.htm

In December, 2004, a jury held Oceanic Airlines, L.L.P. criminally negligent and found in favor of the plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit filed against the airline on behalf of the victims of the crash and their families. The award set a staggering precedent for corporate liability - to the tune of $4,815,162,342 (yes, that's over four BILLION and a most unusual number). The rationale for such a high amount is due in no small part to the efforts of council retained by Sabrina Carlyle, CEO of Carlyle Weddings, Inc. Her son, Boone, (COO of Carlyle) and step-daughter Shannon Rutherford were among those lost on the flight.

mr_angry

I have a couple more general links I thought I'd post up here too. At this point, I've read so much science information, I think my head is about to bleed. Its damn interesting though.

One fansite seems to be home to a mysterious poster named Tiberius. A collection of his posts have been published and discussed at length here:

http://www.thefuselage.com/threaded/index.php?topic=13713.0

Be prepared - this stuff is a vast mix of science, astrology, religion, archiology, and history. The links given do have subtle references to possible Lost plotlines though. Make sure you have some time on your hands when you read it though.

After that, I ran into a discussion on "The Singularity", which linked to a BBC website explaining it all in lay-mans terms. Current thinking on the message boards seems to lean towards the idea that the numbers represent something to do with space-time. You only need 4 numbers to define a point in space-time, 5 to define a line, and 6 to define a plane. This article seems to concentrate more on an AI background to it all. I'm not sure of the relevance, but Tiberius linked the two together in one of his posts, so I thought I'd keep the two together. Anyway, here's the link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A569522

If you're on the dole, or a budding (or retired) scientist, I recommend looking these up and seeing if you can figure it out. If all of this is somehow written into the storyline of Lost, it must have taken them 10 years of research!