The Republic of Heaven

I have an interesting problem... If you walk through a space not occupied by a window, you move in space but stay in the same reality. If you walk through a space that is occupied by a window, you move in space and switch realities. But what if you walk through the edge of a window, so part of you passes through the window body and part of you is outside it's area of effect. Would half of you appear in the other reality spewing blood? Presumably the windows themselves are immaterial, so there could be no physical reaction force to prevent this... What if you didn't know the window was there?

Yeah, what if a car crashed over into the window Will went through? Would they be sliced in half?

Now that would be a sight to behold, although maybe not if you were in the car...

I was thinking about that too... and what happens if you walk past a window from behind (where it's not visible)?

Imagine if you opened up a window into the ocean!

One the other hand, the books tell of several people who find they have gone through these windows without realising, so it seems likely that if part of you goes through, all of you does...

But they were the ones who lived to tell of it...

Well, I would think that touching an edge would be like getting cut by the Subtle Knife, as the edge of the knife and the edge of the window is the same width. Remember the "What if Lyra hadn't ducked while going through the window" thread a while back?

And I raised the going-through-the-window-the-other-direction thing a while back too, though no one seemed to care...

Hmm... Very interesting hypothesis. But, luckily, none of the characters ever get vivisected by this window, so I presume either :

1 - They are all extremely careful, and their bodies are all as deft and agile as professional gymnasts.
2 - They were all just bloody lucky not to touch the edge.
3 - The edges of the window (the unseen borders) exert some form of "force field" that acts as a physical barrier, and prevents matter from passing through it.

Otherwise, there'd have been pieces of Will and Lyra dangling from those awful windows by the end of the book.

I dun think that the windows can cut you in half... maybe it expands to fit you, or you just go through if one part touches you...

Yeah, Because Will's father went through a window into Cittagaze during a blizzard with some of his other peoples...They didn't even know it was there and didn't get chopped up or anything...

But that one must have been pretty big anyway, unless they were all walking in a crouched single file...

Some evidence for slicing not occuring is that when Will felt for the edges of a window when closing it, he never once cut his fingers.

Eh! Good observation Blighty.

I always presumed Will never cut himself because he was the knife bearer...

And there's still the thing of how light somehow gets replicated in both worlds while going through the window...perhaps it's another universe split thing? And since everything has a very low but non-zero chance of happening, there's going to be one world/universe/unicluster where neither Will nor Lyra get hurt...

Yeah, but that doesn't mean that they're safe..
Where's that diagram someone did to show the light/matter passing through a window?

I don't know, but I think Daniel posted it. That must have been the first time a code box was ever used.

Hmm... wasn't it Soup who posted it? Anyway, I can't seem to find it...

The basic idea was that light that goes through a window can be seen in both worlds, since the window looks like it isn't there from the back. This means you could get infinite energy by shining a laser through a window onto two solar panels (one in each world), both of which are used to power the laser more.

I like this discussion .

Well, here's my point of view. You simply wouldnt go through the window. You just would be pressing on an invisible barrier basically.

Hmm. What if you put someone halfway through a window and dropped the person. (one half in new world, the other half out)

In a word.... carnage

In a sentence...oh holy crap dear mother of god my eyes, they're melllting... Possibly.