Specifically, does the player's experience of going through the black hole explain the mechanics of time travel as presented in the game?
I've always wondered exactly what is happening from an existential standpoint when your character dies/the loop ends. When your character's memories are sent into the ATP back in time, can it be said that the character's consciousness is essentially traveling as well? Or, is the ATP/time travel in general essentially creating an entirely brand new universe where another version of you exists, and suddenly the memories are incepted into this new version of you that you now play as?
The High Energy Lab doesn't give us a clear answer on this. There, we can simulate from an outside perspective that by launching a probe into the black hole, it arrives slightly earlier out of the white hole than it leaves, allowing you to see both versions at the same time. But we can't say for sure whether (1) The same probe is temporarily existing in two spaces at once; or (2) The time travel has created a new version of the probe, which temporarily exists at the same time as the "original" probe.
However, by going through Brittle Hollow's black hole, we can experience this effect first-hand. The experience is reaching what is essentially the event horizon of the black hole, seeing a flash of white light, and then being spat out of the white hole. If we pretend we are the High Energy Lab probe, this means that we are seeing ourselves come out of the white hole, but there is a version of ourselves still entering the black hole at the same time. If someone were to "close" the Brittle Hollow/White Hole Station loop, it would result in two of us and create a paradox.
The important detail, though, is that your character's observations of the black hole cease completely when observing yourself come out of the white hole. So what does that make of the "you" that has not yet completely entered the black hole? Was that not you, just moments ago, jumping into the black hole? Yet you are now the you, observing yourself coming out of the white hole, no longer able to see the black hole and thus experiencing an entirely different stream of consciousness.
What this tells me is that time travel in Outer Wilds does not move anything at all, but is essentially a reverse cut-and-paste. It creates new matter and energy in the past, then destroys an equal amount of matter and energy in the present. This explains in part why the ATP requires so much energy - there is a very high energy cost to "front load" moving memories back in time before they are destroyed.
In other words, every time you fell through that black hole, or hell, used one of the Nomai teleporter pads, your character ceased to exist, only for a new character to take its place. You don't see the Nomai mask animation because you don't need the ATP for this to happen - you are only going back in time a fraction of a second.
As an aside, I did wonder if this is further established by the fact that when you jump into the ATP black hole and then go back, you find the prior version of yourself waiting there for you. However, this isn't concrete proof. This only establishes that the ATP black hole has both transported (1) Your memories via the masks, and (2) Your body. Theoretically, one of these could be the original "you" consciousness from the future (it can't be both because they clearly operate independently). But based on the above, I see both as new versions of your character, and the game has just decided that the player controls the character that wakes up by the fire.
Thoughts?
