I'm not very familiar with the Torah, or many descriptions of this layout of Earth so forgive me if this is a stupid question -- what are the columns of the Earth for? They seem to end before the abyss ends, if this diagram is accurate to the descriptions, and so don't seem to actually be supporting the Earth the way you'd typically expect from a "column".

They just sort of seem like rock extrusions with nothing else going for them. Are they supposed to connect to anything at the other end?