I’m going to assume, for now, that they were Brazilian. Reason? Brazilian researchers occupy Antarctica (if that is, in fact, where they were) while there are currently no Portuguese researcher on the continent, IRL.
The hatches also seem to be there for concealment - particularly from the air.
-Joe
Yeah, I just figured Kelvin had decided to give up on waiting for his long-overdue replacements. But that does raise a question I’ve been thinking about for a while: obviously the Dharma initiative is still operating in some capacity, what with the food drops. So why did they never send in more people to man the Swan station, or pick up the ones who were there? How can they even be sure those they’re dropping food to are still alive?
I agree. I don’t know how to explain the hatch door, but there’s no way they killed off Locke, Eko, and Desmond all in the same episode. Plus, as I pointed out earlier, it looked like Charlie was still down there with them when whatever happened happened.
This is just a hunch, but I think those who are saying it was the failure to push the button, and not Desmond’s turning of the key, that caused the phenomenon we saw are barking up the wrong tree. As Desmond turned the key, the screen went white–and then we cut to outside, and the sky lit up and that loud noise was heard. Yes, there could have been a time shift back a few seconds in that cutaway, but it just seems to me like the light/noise was intended to be the “system termination” itself.
It’s possible, but we’d be moving into the territory of some real pseudoscience (force fields or something.) If whatever was in the Swan station was generating a plain 'ol magnetic field, that’s going to pull the plane to the ground faster than gravity alone would, whether it’s decreasing with time or not.
This makes me wonder about the nature of the race–weren’t there other competitors? And if they were following the same route, they’d be dragged to the island too.
True, I just tend to chalk that quote up to some vague idea of “fate”, rather than some actual live person or organization planning the passenger list and flight crash. It is Locke speaking, after all. 
Besides, if Kelvin was trying to cause the plane crash, that was certainly an inefficient way to go about it. Why wouldn’t he just let Desmond go outside like he wanted to, and Kelvin could just stay in and not push the button?
And I know this was a couple of pages back, but would dental fillings really have been ripped out of people’s heads? I know Desmond said at the beginning of the season that when he walked past that wall his fillings hurt, but in real life aren’t dental fillings made out of non-magnetic materials?
4 8 15 16 23 42 [execute]
-Joe
It was kind of a joke but kind of not. My point was that a magnet that can pull apart a plane that’s 8+ miles away would be so insanely powerful close to the source that I’m pretty sure anything metal on the island would be nothing but a flattened disc pressed up against the outside of the hatch.
As for the fillings…I think Desmond is probably too young, but didn’t old-fashioned “silver” fillings have mercury in them? As a kid I seem to remember pulling a blob of mercury around with a magnet.
So…mostly a joke, but the power of an electromagnet is immense at short ranges. Your typical maglock runs off of about 300ma of current at 12VDC. So, like, 4 Watts.
Oh, and I know that silenus was joking before, but if it’s a bigass magnet that can be turned on and off…I’m calling it an electromagnet until someone can prove me wrong.
-Joe
Well, something pulled that hatch lid into the sky. If the hatch didn’t explode, then some kind of force did it.
We’re assuming that the sole source of the magnetic field is in the hatch. Maybe the magnetic field in the hatch is just a way of connecting to or activating a much bigger force from outside. Like tuning a radio, or signalling with a beacon. So the airplane wouldn’t have to have been pulled down towards the hatch, it simply got caught in whatever force was activated when the hatch started up its magnetic field.
That would also explain the inverse square law problem.
Yes, the numbers are still being pressed, although no longer by a team of two people. (And weren’t they supposed to be relieved after six months? Maybe that’s why Kelvin was so eager to leave when Desmond showed up. No one had relieved him in so long that he was sick of it.) But the Pearl station was abandoned. And the station that Sayid found near the yurts was just a stone wall (perhaps a cave collapsed?). So something happened on the island that caused the Hanso Foundation to evacuate. My guess is that we’re going to learn more in the next season about the foundation’s activities elsewhere and why they aren’t on the island.
Locke said they had been there around 65-66 days, which would make it around November 26-27.
As for why Ms. Desmond had a team looking for her lover, if she knew he was in the race and one night he disappeared. With her money she could have hired a team of people to investigate the days he went missing looking for anything that might explain it - earthquake, tsunami etc. And they would turn up an odd electromagnetic anomaly that occurred around the time he disappeared.
And if that is the only thing they could find, then she would be crazy enough in love to pay 2 guys to sit in some arctic-like region and watch for similar events.
I’m pretty sure that the Others’ Hatch was strictly a ruse.
Keep in mind that that hatch was guarded by the only two guys with guns at their camp.
Total BS.
-Joe
True, it’s possible that a record of the numbers being entered is being transmitted off the island. But if that’s how Dharma knows whether anyone is still there or not, that proves they don’t care whether the button gets pressed, since if they detected an interval of greater than 108 minutes where the button wasn’t pressed, they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.
That’s an interesting thought. I hadn’t thought of the possibility that something other than an explosion forced the door into the air.
According to the Swan station orientation film, their stint was supposed to last 540 days (108 x 5), a little under a year and a half.
When Sayid opened the door and we saw the stone wall, I got the impression it was part of the hoax, just like the beard and the huts.
On preview, what Merijeek said.
Since we’re talking about a large/powerful EM force, is it possible that the built-up energy + whatever happens when you turn the key = something like this? (Google video) Think of the the disjointed hatch door as the last ball bearing.
Girlfriend? You mean Penny (Penelope) the fiance who patiently waits for Desmond while he undertakes a long voyage? Man, you can make an epic poem about such a situation, no? 
Throw in an obscure reference to the Collossus of Rhodes for good measure, and you have either an interesting revelation about the mystery, or just another curve-ball to throw off the audience.
Anyway, I’m certain Libby is working for someone, and it could well be Daddy Widmore Bucks. But it might be something even bigger, with Widmore being part of the Hanso Group. She stalked Desmond and then she stalked Hurley.
Aw, bollocks, yerself. What show have you been watching? They won’t show us that until at least episode three. Or later.
Because otherwise, the multiple overlapping coincidences of how they’ve all had contact with each other are staggeringly unlikely and weird. People want there to be some logical connection holding everything together, and a Plot of Evil is the simplest McGuffin to provide that.
No, it was an Apple II, which has a separate monitor. I think they might even be able to use a TV as a monitor…
dibs on that idea for next year, since nobody’s called it yet.
No, Kelvin was a good button-pushing Dharmite. No EMP incidents for Desmond; he just crashed in a storm.
That, and the fact that there was nothing behind it but hillside when Sayid opened the door.
How about the lack of a measureable EMP incident? Maybe the drops will stop now.
Ah, but Desmond’s boat was likely a ‘gift’ from the Hanso group, so who knows what jiggery was built into it? Just a small deviance in the compass reading once he was setting off across the Pacific could have brought him hundreds of miles away from the route all the other racers were following. They’d have to jigger with any GPS equipment, too, but that should be doable.
Not to mention that they (Sayid) already repaired it once earlier in Season 2. Aren’t there some spare parts lying around that they used?
Still, the counter was pretty much destroyed, so they’d have to set up a new timing system (unless the alarm mechanism is still working). But it’s going to a huge stretch of the imagination to believe that the Swan station is still operable after what happened in the Season Finale. Of coures, mayge all the Lostwaways will get hit with tranquilizer darts while a Dharma System Repair SWAT team is HALO’ed in to put the Swan Station back in working order. Who knows… anything seems possible in this show.
I like this theory a lot. I would just add that the portion of the hatch which is enclosed by the blast doors is the real ship. That’s the part with the geodesic walls, right? The others tunnels are just service entries to the actual vehicle. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a big ball flying up into the air and into a dimensional gateway in the sky at the beginning of next season. As far as we know only Locke was inside. But it would make for an interesting situation if Desmond and Ecko were with him. These three would be lost in the dimension where Spock has a beard and would be trying to get back to the other Losties all season. In the season finale, the sky would open up and they would return with quite a story to tell.
Also, am I the only one who thinks the sign on the dock, “Pala Ferry” is interesting? I can’t remember any other location signage anywhere else on the island.
Mmmmm… Dharmite…
OK, I like your spaceship theory, but where was it suggested that extraterrestrials are involved?
Adding to my own post; Locke, Desmond and Ecko would return from another dimension with quite a story to tell. But in true “Lost” tradition, they wouldn’t breath a word of it to anyone. Nor would anyone even ask.