History Headscratchers / AWrinkleInTime

** Charles Wallace entered willingly into IT. He cannot be forced from IT; to do so would probably destroy his mind.
** Given that tessering moves around in time as well as space, why couldn't the Happy Medium see if Meg succeeds in the end?
*** Because Time is not fixed. Until she actually does succeed it hasn't happened yet. The future is not fixed. As we see in ''A Swiftly Tilting Planet'', neither is the past, actually.

** So... ''why'' exactly weren't the Mrs. Ws able to enter Camaztoz?

*** Because Time is not fixed. Until [[spoiler:she actually does succeed]] it hasn't happened yet. The future is not fixed. As we see in ''A Swiftly Tilting Planet'', neither is the past, actually.

* Why didn't ''Literature/AWindInTheDoor'' reference anything that happened in AWrinkleInTime at all? No mention of the Mrs. Ws, the fact that they travelled via tesseract, the years that the father was missing, etc.? I mean, I suppose you're not just gonna randomly go "Hey Dad, remember that time you were kidnapped by an evil floating brain?", but still, it felt a bit eerie that the events of the previous book weren't even mentioned, making it not feel like a sequel at all.

* Why didn't AWindAtTheDoor reference anything that happened in AWrinkleInTime at all? No mention of the Mrs. Ws, the fact that they travelled via tesseract, the years that the father was missing, etc.? I mean, I suppose you're not just gonna randomly go "Hey Dad, remember that time you were kidnapped by an evil floating brain?", but still, it felt a bit eerie that the events of the previous book weren't even mentioned, making it not feel like a sequel at all.

** In a pocket dimension. Eventually, the Flatworlders got curious about the outside universe, too, and [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/DoctorWhoS34E9Flatline they did the three dimensional universe no favors.]]

* Something's always bothered me about space-folding in general. Okay, you take points A and B, fold the space between them, and step right over the fold to teleport somewhere. So far so good. But what happens to the region that got folded? In relativity models that treat spacetime like a surface (the same way the space-folding explanation the Mrs W's give does), gravity is treated as a dip in the surface and in this case, the fold is a "dip" that's completely pinched off from the rest of the surface. In other words, a black hole. So, in short, wouldn't folding space to temporarily connect two points ''completely destroy everything between them''? Even when it unfolds again, it'll leave behind a smashed wreck: from the universe's perspective, the entire region between A and B suddenly turned into the event horizon of a black hole, and then it suddenly turned back to normal again. Does it happen too fast to cause damage, or does the math behind what's happening break away from the flat-surface analogy at some point? Space folding is practically a sci-fi trope of its own, but I've never seen a story deal with that implication of the paper sheet model.

* Something's always bothered me about space-folding in general. Okay, you take points A and B, fold the space between them, and step right over the fold to teleport somewhere. So far so good. But what happens to the region that got folded? In relativity models that treat spacetime like a surface (the same way the space-folding explanation the Mrs W's give does), gravity is treated as a dip in the surface and in this case, the fold is a "dip" that's completely pinched off from the rest of the surface. In other words, a black hole. So, in short, wouldn't folding space to temporarily connect two points ''completely destroy everything between them''? Even when it unfolds again, it'll leave behind a smashed wreck: from the universe's perspective, the entire region between A and B suddenly turned into the event horizon of a black hole, and then it suddenly turned back to normal again. Does it happen too fast to cause damage, or does the math behind what's happening break away from the paper-sheet analogy at some point? Space folding is practically a sci-fi trope of its own, but I've never seen a story deal with that implication of the flat-sheet model.

* Something's always bothered me about space-folding in general. Okay, you take points A and B, fold the space between them, and step right over the fold to teleport somewhere. So far so good. But what happens to the region that got folded? In relativity models that treat spacetime like a surface (the same way the space-folding explanation the Mrs W's give does), gravity is treated as a dip in the surface and in this case, the fold is a "dip" that's completely pinched off from the rest of the surface. In other words, a black hole. So, in short, wouldn't folding space to temporarily connect two points ''completely destroy everything between them''? Even when it unfolds again, it'll leave behind a smashed wreck: from the universe's perspective, the entire region between A and B suddenly turned into the event horizon of a black hole, and then it suddenly turned back to normal again. Does it happen too fast to cause damage, or does the math behind what's happening break away from the paper-sheet analogy at some point? Space folding is practically a sci-fi trope of its own, but I've never seen a story deal with that implication of the paper-sheet model.

* Something's always bothered me about space-folding in general. Okay, you take points A and B, fold the space between them, and step right over the fold to teleport somewhere. So far so good. But what happens to the region that got folded? In relativity models that treat spacetime like a surface (the same way the space-folding explanation the Mrs W's give does), gravity is treated as a dip in the surface and in this case, the fold is a "dip" that's completely pinched off from the rest of the surface. In other words, a black hole. So, in short, wouldn't folding space to temporarily connect two points ''completely destroy everything between them''? Even when it unfolds again, it'll leave behind a smashed wreck: from the universe's perspective, the entire region between A and B suddenly turned into the event horizon of a black hole, and then it suddenly turned back to normal again. Does it happen too fast to cause damage, or does the math behind what's happening break away from the paper-sheet analogy at some point? Space folding is practically a sci-fi trope of its own, but I've never seen a story deal with that implication of the paper-surface analogy.

* Something's always bothered me about space-folding in general. Okay, you take points A and B, fold the space between them, and step right over the fold to teleport somewhere. So far so good. But what happens to the region that got folded? In relativity models that treat spacetime like a surface (the same way the space-folding explanation the Mrs W's give does), gravity is treated as a dip in the surface and in this case, the fold is a "dip" that's completely pinched off from the rest of the surface. In other words, a black hole. So, in short, wouldn't folding space to temporarily connect two points ''completely destroy everything between them''? Even when it unfolds again, it'll leave behind a smashed wreck: from the universe's perspective, the entire region between A and B suddenly turned into the event horizon of a black hole, and then it suddenly turned back to normal again. Does it happen too fast to cause damage, or does the math behind what's happening break away from the paper-sheet analogy at some point? Space folding is practically a sci-fi trope of its own, but I've never seen that implication of the paper-surface metaphor dealt with.

* Something's always bothered me about space-folding in general. Okay, you take points A and B, fold the space between them, and step right over the fold to teleport somewhere. So far so good. But what happens to the region that got folded? In relativity models that treat spacetime like a surface (the same way the space-folding explanation the Mrs W's give does), gravity is treated as a dip in the surface and in this case, the fold is a "dip" that's completely pinched off from the rest of the surface. In other words, a black hole. So, in short, wouldn't folding space to temporarily connect two points ''completely destroy everything between them''? Even when it unfolds again, it'll leave behind a smashed wreck: from the universe's perspective, the entire region between A and B suddenly turned into the event horizon of a black hole, and then it suddenly turned back to normal again. Does it happen too fast to cause damage, or does the math behind what's happening break away from the paper-sheet analogy at some point? Space folding is practically a sci-fi trope of its own, but I've never seen that full implication of the paper-surface metaphor dealt with.

* Something's always bothered me about space-folding in general. Okay, you take points A and B, fold the space between them, and step right over the fold to teleport somewhere. So far so good. But what happens to the region that got folded? In relativity models that treat spacetime like a surface (the way the space-folding explanation the Mrs W's give does), gravity is treated as a dip in the surface and in this case, the fold is a "dip" that's completely pinched off from the rest of the surface. In other words, a black hole. So, in short, wouldn't folding space to temporarily connect two points ''completely destroy everything between them''? Even when it unfolds again, it'll leave behind a smashed wreck: from the universe's perspective, the entire region between A and B suddenly turned into the event horizon of a black hole, and then it suddenly turned back to normal again. Does it happen too fast to cause damage, or does the math behind what's happening break away from the paper-sheet analogy at some point? Space folding is practically a sci-fi trope of its own, but I've never seen that full implication of the paper-surface metaphor dealt with.

* Something's always bothered me about space-folding in general. Okay, you take points A and B, fold the space between them, and step right over the fold to teleport somewhere. So far so good. But what happenes to the region that got folded? In relativity models that treat spacetime like a surface, gravity is treated as a dip in the surface and in this case, the fold is a "dip" that's completely pinched off from the rest of the surface. In other words, a black hole. So, in short, wouldn't folding space to temporarily connect two points ''completely destroy everything between them''? Even when it unfolds again, it'll leave behind a smashed wreck: from the universe's perspective, the entire region between A and B suddenly turned into the event horizon of a black hole, and then it suddenly turned back to normal again. Does it happen too fast to cause damage, or does the math behind what's happening break away from the paper-sheet analogy at some point? Space folding is practically a sci-fi trope of its own, but I've never seen that full implication of the paper-surface metaphor dealt with.

** Yeah, that bugged me, too. A lot of people describe it that way, actually, which is incredibly confusing to someone trying to learn higher dimensional thinking.

** Yeah, that bugged me, too. A lot of people word it that way, actually, which is incredibly confusing to someone trying to learn higher dimensional thinking.

** Yeah, that bugged me, too. A lot of people word it that way, actually, which is just confusing to someone trying to understand higher dimensional thinking.

* It's just the word choice, really -- but the shorted distance between any two points is ''always'' a line! It just doesn't necessarily go through our perceived three (four) dimensions.

*** Because Time is not fixed. Until [[spoiler:she actually does succeed]] it hasn't happened yet. The future is not fixed. As we see in ''A Swiftly Tilting Planet'', neither is the past, actually.