More "serious science" - Flatland movement

[ffutures]

Ok... so... Flatlanders are rigid geometric shapes moving through some sort of vaguely defined medium - we know that it's air-like and has mist, Abbott implies it's ordinary fog. So how do they move, manipulate objects, etc.?

The first answer I came up with is cillia - zillions of microscopic filaments covering their surface, used for propulsion (but what are they pushing against? If it's air it must be VERY dense), to adhere to things, etc. It sounds good, but there's no evidence for it whatever, and Abbot makes a big point of how flat their lines are.

So I'm wondering... if they're genuinely one atom thick could it be some sort of quantum or electrostatic effect? In the thread on visual processes yesterday cdybedahl pointed out that there must be a lot of energy going spare if there's the omnipresent white light Abbott describes. Maybe they use some of it to move, manipulate and stick to things, etc. In fact they might use this energy for all their needs, using food only for growth and repairing wear and tear of the body etc.

What I need here is some hand waving - this is almost good enough to go in as speculation as it is, but a bit more would be nice. Or if someone has a better alternative please post a comment!

Comments

[gbsteve.livejournal.com]

Maybe gravity just points perpendicular to the plane they inhabit. The way Abbot wrote, it always sounded as if they were sitting on a surface but that can't be the case in true 2D.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I always assumed that they were lines on paper or a blackboard, with a very gentle gravity pull from the South. But I'd really prefer not to write it that way.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Did you know that AK Dewdney's "science of Flatland" pieces from Scientific American have been collected?

Definitely worth a look!

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

This is distinct from The Planiverse? Just tried Amazon.com and .uk and can't find anything else related to Flatland.

Colour me ignorant...

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Aargh - sorry, no. I've just tracked back through your "Flatland" tagged pieces and seen that you'd already referred to The Planiverse.

[doctor-toc.livejournal.com]

They're not actually one atom thick though, are they? They simply don't have thickness at all, which implies that they're not composed of any kind of matter that we'd recognise as such. In which case, worrying about the exact science of it seems a little pointless.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Pointless but fun...

See The Planiverse for the definitive guide to 2D physics - including 2D atoms and a 2D periodic table!

I'm assuming something similar for the RPG; I'm not going to get too specific on the details of the chemistry, but the whole movement thing strikes me as one of those things I need to explain, at least to the extent of saying "It's probably Quantum"*

*© T. Pratchett

[doctor-toc.livejournal.com]

I've just ordered the Flatland/Sphereland collection and The Planiverse from Amazon - don't know why I didn't have them in my library anyway!

It's probably string related :-)

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Blue string pudding from the soup polygon?

[doctor-toc.livejournal.com]

You just made me snort-laugh. Now everyone knows I'm slacking off on LJ, dammit! :-)