I feel you&#x27;ve done little but directly translate the LIGO experiment into Flatlandian physics. That doesn&#x27;t answer the question.<p>Use a sheet of paper as your Flatland. Draw two points, measure the distance. Crinkle up the paper. There&#x27;s still the same &#x27;distance&#x27; of paper between the two points. Should the points be able to travel, they have to traverse the same number of paper molecules whether the paper is crinkled or not. No one living in this Flatland can measure the crinkles in this space because they live inside this space. They would need to step outside their own space with some ability to measure variations in a third dimension.<p>If the physics of a universe necessitates movement from one point to the next (let&#x27;s suppose these points are Planck length apart, call them &#x27;Planck-points&#x27;), if particles must be translated from Planck-point to Planck-point and can&#x27;t skip anything in between, how are we to ever measure that Planck length expanded or contracted? Surely if it &quot;takes longer&quot; to traverse an expanded Planck length, then it hasn&#x27;t expanded, but there now exists more space - more Planck-points.<p>If gravity wells stretch and contract _matter_ (rather than space), then this fits my mental model. If they actually stretch _space_, within which matter exist and along which matter traverses, I struggle to see how we could ever detect space deformations without stepping outside our own space.