The Republic of Heaven

Giacomo Paradisi told Will and Lyra that the spectres came because of the scientists in the Torri degli Angeli, but what the hell are spectres, TAS tells me that they ain't dead ones, they ain't angels and I don't think they are any kind of animal. If I ain't mistaking they have a lot to do with dust, because adults can see them and children can.

As I understood it, specters are created whenever someone uses the knife to cut a window between worlds. Now, I believe them to be embodiments of the Abyss, especially for their more destructive powers against sentient creatures.

now, where did you get the window-cutting-and-spectre-creating part from? I don't remember reading anything about that

As I recall, it was one of the reasons Lyra and Will could not continue to be together. They couldn't leave a window open because Dust would be lost through it, and they couldn't continually open and close windows because then more specters would be created. In addition, Cittagazze is so rampant with specters because of the sheer number of windows created from that world.

The main page's encyclopaedia has an entry here, at "Specters of Indifference."

It says somewhere in the books (someone with a better ordered brain than myself will have the exact quote) that 'spectres are a little bit of the abyss that is released when a window is created'. So that supports it fairly inconfoundibly.

I probebly didn't get that far yet, I'm halfway in TAS so yeah, if i read it i suppose i'll know

I'm now kinda getting to the end and indeed, now there's way more information. I got the books from a friend of mine, and she kinda told me a little bit about dæmons, so yeah...

But if they are only a 'little bit of the Abyss' (or whatever the quote is) how come they seem to be intelligent?

Well... not intelligent as such... but aware of their surroundings.

But then... Dust is conscious as well... magic particles of matter that suddenly aquire awareness and start to form on and react to each other (nitpick away at the above, as I know many users of these boards LOVE to do, because it is a pretty rough summing-up of Dust...)

And Nietzche's quote about the Abyss "if you stare long enough into the abyss, the abyss also stares into you" kinda makes sense now.

If particles can become conscious (and therefore become Dust) then the Abyss, the antithesis of Dust, what is basically a void, must be at least ATTRACTED to un-void things... specifically heat, emotion and life...
Or are the spectres (ENGLISH SPELLING!) sucking Dust FROM adults...?

It's all rather confusing...

mmm Its hard to explain nothingness or any of its characteristics.

angel to follow wrote:mmm Its hard to explain nothingness or any of its characteristics.

No it isn't, because it doesn't have any characteristics, and there's nothing to explain.

When you think about it, Nothing can't exist in our minds because we are never exposed to it... how can you be exposed to something that isn't something.

It all fits in with the dimension of imaginary numbers. Sure, you may think its a number that's just made up, but then you see it has it's own laws and rules and limitations and capabilities, then you realise it isn't imaginary anymore.

You dig?


Didn't think so...

Well the other option is, the Abyss of "nothing" is just a cop-out and Dear PP didn't really know what was down there. Or couldn't think of anything cool enough.

Either Way Spectres form from the great abyss in the world of the dead, they are not sentient beings, they live purely to survive and do so by consuming dust wich is attracted to adults.

It's true, there's no way to imagine nothing. Can you imagine not existing? It's impossible.

I can.

Its like watching a black hole.

you talk of a black hole, but isn't a black hole something? it's still a black hole right, you think of it like being in the dark, but you don't think of nothing

When I think of nothing I think of space minus time.

And what does that look like?

Dante wrote:And what does that look like?

Alot like space really.

i don't know really, but isn't there something in space, like, there most be molecules of something in open space... it does sound like weird, a place without even time...

Space has hydrogen/helium atoms flying around, about 1 atom per cubic centimetre. There's also radiation and neutrinos (tiny particles with negligible or no mass that hardly interact with anything and travel at the speed of light - lots are passing straight through us and the earth all the time). Then there's dark matter - the idea was put forward that these might be neutrinos but has since been dismissed. We have little idea what this is other than there's more of it out there than the matter we're used to and it has mass. I'm guessing the abyss wouldn't have any of this stuff.

Black holes emit EM radiation along their axis of rotation caused by matter being accelerated to near light speeds as it's being sucked in. So if you looked at one with the right equipment, in the right direction, you would see something. It's been hypothesised that beyond the event horizon of a black hole, since you are constrained to move in only one spatial direction (towards the centre) you may be free to move in the temporal dimension.

Imaginary numbers are very real - the square root of -1 (called i) has all kinds of uses in quantum mechanics, which in turn can be used to model the shapes of electron clouds (s, p, d orbitals for anyone who did A-level chem.), which on a macroscopic scale explains aspects of our world.