That should have been the tabloid headline when the freighter blew up and the helicopter was going back to the beach to make an emergency landing. The island, in a flash of light, disappeared, leaving only a small ripple on the surface of the Pacific Ocean.
An island is the volcanic upheaval from the ocean floor of lava rock which then reaches past the surface of the ocean water. Islands are anchored on the ocean floor.
When the island disappeared without displacing any great water mass, we knew then that the island was not an island. It could not be.
From fan maps and dialog in the series, the island was approximately 12 miles wide and 18 miles long with the Hydra Island two miles off shore, with a dimension of 2 square miles. If one calculates the surface area of the island, it would be approximately 220 square miles.
The Pacific Ocean is 35, 797 feet in depth from the surface to the floor. Therefore, the island would have had real Earth dimensions of 12 miles x 18 miles x 6.77 miles or 1,462.32 cubic miles of mass.
The sudden disappearance of the island would have created an instantaneous hole in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The island surface area of 220 miles x ocean depth of 6.77 miles equals 1,489 sq. miles of water. The entire mass of the Pacific Ocean is 96, 658, 000 sq miles so the island disappearance would have displaced a large amount of water, as the surrounding ocean would rush into the void, and thereby creating a huge geyser and tsunami.
The island was not an island, but a floating structure. There is other evidence for this fact, such as the Daniel rocket experiment that showed that the island was moving away from the freighter.
Another piece of evidence was the sideways memories of the island and its artifacts being shown at the bottle of the ocean, encrusted with corral. This would suggest that the island "sank" to the bottom of the ocean.
So we have an island on earth which is not an earth island in mass or physics.
Theorists have proposed that the island was a disguise for some alien technology such as space ship or a star gate (a portal into other dimensions).
Other theorists believe that the island is an actual life form. It has a "heart" of life force and unique properties that allows it to move about in both time and space. It would be like a space tortoise landing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with its back turned into a tropical island over time.
Other theorists believe the island is a transition station between Earth and the after life, a gateway that souls need to traverse on their way to heaven.
No matter what theory one subscribes to, it is clear that the island was a floating mass and not a "true" island was we know them.
