Talk:Attractor Field/@comment-150.101.121.161-20151015142725/@comment-7888499-20151015152614

I think you might find this article explaining World Line Convergence interesting. It is due to world line convergence that Mayuri keeps dying in august 2010 in the Alpha attractor field, that Suzuha always died in 2000 in the Alpha attractor field, and that Kurisu would always die on July 28, 2010 in the Beta attractor field, as well as several other important events that occur in the story, like the time machine being built.

Attractor fields are like bundles of world lines that on a macro scale act like world lines themselves being able to converge and diverge away from each other. To use Suzuha's own words from the visual novel:
 * S: "Attractor fields are superpositioned like this.
 * In each attractor field, the worldlines converge on a different result.


 * "They don't interact. Each attractor field is independent of the others.


 * "Of course, they all diverged from a common point somewhere in the past, and they will all converge again at some point in the future, but that takes many hundreds of years. You can think of the attractor fields as very long worldlines."
 * [...]
 * D: "But then, isn't it impossibe to change the future? It always converges in the end, right? No matter what you do, the result is the same."


 * Okabe thinking: That's right. That's why Mayuri dies no matter how many times I leap.


 * S: "We have to escape Attractor Field Alpha."


 * O: "Escape?"


 * S: "In other words, we're going to jump to a worldline in Attractor Field Beta."


 * K: "I thought attractor fields couldn't interact."


 * S: "Attractor fields are normally separate, but if we go to the instant they diverge..."


 * K: "The instant they diverge... is that now?"


 * S: "I was taught that a major divergence occurs in 2010.
 * "This year, an earth-shattering event causes divergence at the attractor field level. The last time such a divergence occurred was in the year 2000, and before that, in 1991."

So basically, Okabe has to produce a large enough change to change the world to a different attractor field in order to not have Mayuri's death be forced by world line convergence. But changing attractor fields can only be done at important points in history where attractor fields diverge away from each other, such as 2010 the first D-Mail getting noticed by SERN, which was the trigger for the world to change from the Beta attractor field at the start of the story to the Alpha attractor field.

Also, it should be noted that it is not just Okabe who "jump[s] from one attractor field to the other" the whole world changes to a different world line in a different attractor field. Okabe is, however, aware of this shift when it occurs unlike others due to his Reading Steiner ability.

If you'd like to read more of the conversation that Suzuha and the others had in the VN, I have it copied here. To read just click the "Part 1" and "Part 2" under the "Suzuha explaining about Attractor Fields and convergence to the labmems in the VN" section.