I believe the section here from ToM is completely wrong. The columns always showed the one who entered it the lives of others in their bloodline. It don't think it has anything to do with need. Going through a second time gave her the future instead of the past. Joe 13:54, February 18, 2011 (UTC)
- I think it's just something completely different. Maybe aMoL will give us more information. I don't want to beleve it's true. It would mean everything would went wrong, despite the victory at Shayol Ghul. And besides, how could the Aes Sedai be free again in the next Age of Legends? Asha'man Leyrann Gaidin 16:16, June 18, 2011 (UTC)
"Glass" columns?[]
Looking at the books, the columns in question are always named "glass columns." But we know what glass is, and it has no properties that might be exploited in even the remotest way such as are exploited in the glass columns of Rhuidean. So what I am saying is that the glass columns, so named by the authors and such names are inviolate (I can't argue with them), should probably not be described as "columns made of glass" here in the Wiki. The definition would be more correct if we described the glass columns as "columns made of a glass-like substance, perhaps with a substrate of glass, and impurities added to give it the requisite properties," though the "perhaps with a substrate of glass" phrase is still pushing it. The truth of the matter is that there are a lot of substances that give us the clarity of glass but are not glass. For example, those panes that separate you from the sharks in your favorite public shark tank. I believe they are some kind of plastic...maybe a derivitive of Lucite. And then of course, there is always transparent aluminum to consider (grin).
So why does Rand describe them as glass? Probably because in his day and age, Lucite or any of its derivitives are a thing of the past...the only clear material that exists is the stuff made from sand. It looks like glass, so call it glass, even though technically it is not glass, but he wouldn't know that.
Anyway, that's my two cents worth.
Pedantic 16:16, April 16, 2012 (UTC)