The Republic of Heaven

Lord Asriel and Marisa Coulter drag Metatron into the Abyss.

Isn't the Abyss in the world of the dead? Doesn't the window from the world of the dead open into the world of the mulefa? How did Asriel get to the Abyss?

what IS the Abyss? hell?

Well obviously Mrs. Coulter, Lord Asriel, and Metatron died when they fell off the cliff, so of course they went to the World of the Dead. I thought the window led to a field where the battle took place. They got to the mulefa world through a cave that Iorek takes them too.

Before they turn to fight Metatron, Mrs. Coulter asks Lord Asriel if they will survive like the ghosts when they fall into the abyss, and he says no. How he knows this, I have no idea, but I'm assuming Asriel's answer corresponds with what Pullman would have said. Seeing as the abyss is whats outside all the worlds/the place where the spectres come from (which I assumed was kind of like one big, all-encompassing spectre) I can see how their souls might be destroyed but they wouldn't actually die. If that made sense.

I remeber that when Will goes by the Abyss it reminds him of the windows opened by the knife. It scares him as he cannot close it.
Aso I think Lyra says that if someone fell down it they would keep falling as it is bottomless (Don't ask me how).

So if they did fall down then they would not die.. I think but they would not live because they wouldn't be able to get out.

Aimee wrote:I remeber that when Will goes by the Abyss it reminds him of the windows opened by the knife. It scares him as he cannot close it.
Aso I think Lyra says that if someone fell down it they would keep falling as it is bottomless (Don't ask me how).

So if they did fall down then they would not die.. I think but they would not live because they wouldn't be able to get out.

Well, Asriel probably died shortly after taking Metatron down--his head was basically crushed--but that's probably what happened.

The Abyiss is nothing, its like a blackhole or infinity. You just drop for ever until you die from starvation or whatever as it suck you downwards. Nothing can escape from it-not even dust...

Lyra mentions that you would fall forever until you starve. Your ghost would then continue falling. Forever conscious. A true Hell.

The Abyss is the "nothingness" in the tiny cracks between worlds that were blown open by the hair-bomb. As such, your body would die, and your conciousness and daemon would slowly be stripped to oblivion. Not the peaceful oblivion that comes from drifting apart, but true, neverending torture.

did it ever really say that they died....forgot i know i know i said i would be taking a break from this but it just so hard to quit on.... this can actually make into a new hobbie

yesac113 wrote:did it ever really say that they died....

Did it? Why don't you go back and read the passage again. There's nothing we know that you can't find out from the book.

And please stop spamming the forums. You are pushing your luck and I am minded to give you a warning, if not an outright ban, if you continue to ignore gentle advice.

AUST wrote:The Abyiss is nothing, its like a blackhole or infinity. You just drop for ever until you die from starvation or whatever as it suck you downwards. Nothing can escape from it-not even dust...

The word "drop" is... debatable?

AUST wrote:The Abyiss is nothing, its like a blackhole or infinity. You just drop for ever until you die from starvation or whatever as it suck you downwards. Nothing can escape from it-not even dust...

Well no, you wouldn't drop forever. You can't drop anyway unless there's a gravitational force, and you would accelerate towards the gravitational force until you reached it, but then your momentum would carry you past the source. After that the gravitational force woulkd cause you to slow down, until eventually you came to a stop. But then the gravitational source would cause you to fall towards it again...

You would either execute simple harmonic motion about the source, or you would go into an elliptical orbit around it.

It's all a matter of frames of reference.

The simplest explanation for the existence of gravity in the WotD and the fact that you can "fall" through a hole in the "bottom" of it is that there is a very attractive object such as a supermassive black hole "underneath" it. I can easily see how A, M and M could become suspended in time for a subjective eternity as they fell into or close-orbited a black hole.

But.. but... the Abyss is supposed to be empty (How does anyone know this for sure? Is there breathing-air in the Abyss?).

Alternatively, the WotD may be constantly accelerating in Abyss-space at 1G (How?). Or it may be moving at an arbitrary constant velocity but spinning, like the space station in 2001 (but there's no evidence of Coriolis force, as it's called, in the WotD).

PP failed to equip A, M and M with accelerometers so we will probably never know the truth

Caveat: all this presupposes that the WotD and the Abyss obey the same laws of physics that pertain in our universe.

Enitharmon wrote:

AUST wrote:The Abyiss is nothing, its like a blackhole or infinity. You just drop for ever until you die from starvation or whatever as it suck you downwards. Nothing can escape from it-not even dust...

Well no, you wouldn't drop forever. You can't drop anyway unless there's a gravitational force, and you would accelerate towards the gravitational force until you reached it, but then your momentum would carry you past the source. After that the gravitational force woulkd cause you to slow down, until eventually you came to a stop. But then the gravitational source would cause you to fall towards it again...

You would either execute simple harmonic motion about the source, or you would go into an elliptical orbit around it.

Okay...I admit it, I understood about half of that.

I am so glad I dropped physics...

Ok so Asriel, Coulter, and Metatron fall into the abyss, which apparently goes on forever (or reallllly long)

Wouldnt Mrs. Coulter and Asriel eventually let go of Metatron, and him be able to fly out of the abyss? or was he too injured??

Just thinking, thanks for any help

I'm pretty sure Metatron was dead or heavily injured when they all fell.

And it'd be one hell of a way up as well-especally if you wehre heavly injured or whatever.

Even if he wasn't very injured to begin with, I'm doubtful how long a being made of Dust would stay well, together (Congealed? Corporeal?) in a great Dust-sucking vacuum. I always sort of imagined all his particles being torn apart. I don't think he'll be flying anywhere anytime soon.

The abyss isn't just a big pit where you keep on falling forever, its much worse than that. If it was just a big pit that you could eventually fly out of if you tried hard enough, Coulter and Asriel wouldn't have bothered pushing Metatron into it and sacrificing themselves to do so.

When the knife makes a cut and opens another world, it lets a little part of the abyss (which is the thing outside all the worlds) into the world, thus creating a spectre. So we can gather that the abyss is essentially one big vacuum, a gigantic spectre that would suck your soul out and destroy you just as (or in an even worse way than) a single spectre would. My guess is that falling into it would just result in complete obliteration, it would kind of just eat you up.

I've always been really confused about this. I thought the abyss was only in the WotD, which put me in the dark as to how they got to the abyss to push Metatron in. Was there an abyss in every world, or at least an opening into it since the hair bomb? I never quite understood the hair bomb, either. What did it do that opened the abyss like that? I'm so lost!

On the physics of the abyss, I thought it was a sort of bottomless pit through which you just kept falling. But if the abyss is nothing, then does it have gravity to pull you down? How do you fall if you're falling through nothing and towards nothing?