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Calculations of the duration of Rousseau's transmission

I removed any theory that the message is not 30 seconds long, as this is disproven by the numbers of iterations between the day sayid firt heard the message in season 1 and the day they eject the tape in season3. Here's what i removed:

• The real gap of time between some of the iterations is 18 seconds, and not 30 seconds as Sayid presumes, which means the loop has been playing for approximately 10 years.
  18_secs * 17294535_iterations / 60_secs / 60_minutes / 24_hours / 365_days = ~9.871_yrs
  • This indicates that Rousseau was lying about Alex being abducted by The Others a week after Alex's birth (which is presumably two months after her expedition shipwrecked), since Alex is definitely not 10 years old.
    • It is more likely that the show did not have enough time to play the transmission for the actual 30 seconds that it takes place. They needed it to work out to 30 seconds to make Alex 16 years old (a 9 year old would be hard pressed to offer the assistance that Alex has provided).

• • A duration of 32 seconds per iteration means that the transmission had a total duration of 17 standard years, 295 days, 3 hours, 57 minutes, 52 seconds and was activated at 8:02:08am on March 8, 1987.
  • A duration of 18 seconds per iteration means that the transmission had a total duration of 10 standard years, 6 days, 8 hours, 13 minutes, 48 seconds and was activated at 3:46:12am on December 20, 1994.

I left the rest of the theories based on 30 seconds calculations, but it would have been nice if more explaination was provided. For example why assume that a particular iteration was made at precisely 12:00, i didnt get the point of that ? Also none of these seem to take into account that the first iterations had a shorter duration, since the "iteration XXXX" part of the message only had a few digits to begin with. I dont think the calculating the precise date and time of the first message really matters anyway unless they want to tie it with another theory or some other date reference. While i agree that trying to prove the message was shorter was interesting as a theory (it could have meant rousseau was a liar), I'm not sure what is the point of a theory based on the now known duration if it isnt tied to anything else ? maybe these should be removed too, and an approximation added to the main page ? FabC 11:27, 26 May 2008 (PDT)