Quote:
Originally Posted by Eomer of the Rohirrim
The blessed lands were not before on a different plane, and I don't think they became so. How can you remove part of the world (Valinor) to a different plane, and what does that mean? Physical removal? Surely that would completely rupture everything, with remarkable geological effects in both Middle-earth and Valinor.
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And yet, that's exactly what happened. The story is, after all, a myth, and the myth is accounting for what previously appeared to be a "flat" world being reshaped into a globe (which Tolkien says in various letters and such is what was meant by "the world was bent" in the Akallabeth, and the effect was indeed catastrophic to both Arda and Aman). In the letter I quote above (which is not the only place he speaks of this), he does indeed say that he meant that during the events that resulted in the destruction of Numenor, Aman (Valinor and Eressea) was physically removed from the world. It is clear in his writings that he means ripped away from a direct physical connection with Arda (the earth) by not removed from existence within Ea (the universe as we know it). The elven ships, by his description, simply continue to sail in a perfectly straight and level line away from the earth's curve and then disappear, entering the West. At this point, basic science can no longer apply; we need to enter the realm of theoretical thinking, which by post-Einsteinian theory allows for the existence of multiple dimensions (or planes, in some parlance). If the ship remained within our dimension to travel to a place disconnected from Earth (like, say, the moon), it would then face problems with gravity, escape velocity, air, etc. Since this doesn't appear to be the case, and the ship is said to simply "disappear" rather than dwindle until it is no longer able to be seen by any naked eye, the extrapolation that it somehow shifts into another dimension of existence would appear to follow.
That's the way I saw it, anyway, for what it's worth.
