Perpendicularity

[Essence]

Is there another scientific term for this perpendicularity

[Weltall]

Welcome to the Shard!

Perpendicularity is the 'scientific' term; it's what Khriss uses to describe them and she's the most authoritative voice on this sort of thing in the Cosmere. The fan term 'Shardpool' got used a lot before we had a proper term and still crops up on occasion but it's misleading in the sense that not all Perpendicularities appear as liquid, even if most of the known ones do.

EDIT: Regarding the question you slipped into the tag (PS you really don't want to do that in the future, It's hard to read and very easy to overlook) Perpendicularities generally work by being a massive concentration of Investiture that warps the three Realms in a way that makes transitioning between them very easy. A Shard spending enough time on a planet will create one by default but there are other ways it can happen. Shards can also divest from a system but leave an existing Perpendicularity intact. By extension we know that a Perpendicularity can be willingly destroyed by the Shard that created it (and possibly interfered with in other ways, since we know Autonomy was able to bar passage to Taldain in some way) and we also have Word of Brandon that if you were to draw Nightblood within a Perpendicularity there's a pretty good chance the thing would collapse.

Edited January 9, 2021 by Weltall