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:
 * "Several attractor fields are superpositioned like this. In each attractor field, the converging result of events is different. They don't interfere. Each remains independent. There's only one if you trace it back to the origin. Attractor fields do converge at a very macro level, but that spans hundreds of years. It's best to think of them as large divergences."
 * [...]
 * D: "But then, isn't it impossible to change the future? It'll converge in the end, right? No matter what you do, the result is the same."


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


 * S: "…We're going to escape outside the scope of this Attractor Field α we're in."


 * O: "Outside the scope…?"


 * S: "Basically, we're going to leap to the β World Line in Attractor Field β."


 * K: "We won't get interfered with?"


 * S: "Attractor fields completely diverge. But if we go to the instant they diverge, then..."


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


 * S: "I was taught that a large crossroads in Divergence exists in 2010. "An earth-shattering divergence, on par with the ones in 2000 and 1991, occurs, causing a branching on the attractor field level."

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.