From His Dark Materials Wiki
Dust is the physical manifestation of conscious thought and love. Dust is flowing away through the windows created by the Subtle Knife, until Will and Lyra fall in love, creating enough Dust to halt the flow, for a time. The Angels - who are themselves made of Dust - close the remaining windows, and ask Will to destroy the Subtle Knife in order to protect Dust.
Study of Dust
Experimental theology and Rusakov Particles
Jordan College had no rival (not even in New France or Europe) as a center for experimental theology. Lyra imagines that experimental theology is
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" concerned with magic, with the movements of the stars and planets, with tiny particles of matter"
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The Golden Compass
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Will Parry equates the term with the study of physics in his world, where theology is the study of religion. Boris Mikhailovitch Rusakov was an experimental theologian from Muscovy. He discovered
Rusakov Particles which are referred to as Dust in Lyra's World. Rusakov Particles were unique in that they didn't react with other particles but are attracted to human beings -- especially to adults. The inspector from the Consistorial Court of Discipline thought Rusakov was possessed and performed an exorcism in the lab. He also interrogated Rusakov under the rules of the Inquisition but finally had to acknowledge that the particles existed.
Dust
Lyra first becomes aware of dust when Lord Asriel shows the photograms with the special emulsion that can take a picture of Dust. Lord Asriel wants financial to travel to the north for the further study of Dust. Dust can't normally be seen with the naked eye. The exception is when Lord Asriel is working his way to the Abyss in The Amber Spyglass. The bomb has caused so much dust to fall into the abyss that it is visible with the naked eye. Mary Malone was able to see dust through the amber spyglass. The angel Balthamos explains that dust is
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"Only a name for what happens when matter begins to understand itself. Matter loves matter. It seeks to know more about itself, and Dust is formed."
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The Amber Spyglass
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The angel
Xaphania says
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"Conscious beings make Dust -- they renew it all the time, by thinking and feeling and reflecting, by gaining wisdom and passing it on."
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The Amber Spyglass
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The angels are created from Dust. Dust begins to accumulate on humans as they approach puberty and their dæmons become settled or when innocence becomes experience. The
Magisterium of the church decided that Dust is
Lord Asriel explains to Lyra that dust makes the
alethiometer work. He also tells her
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"... the Bible gave us the name Dust as well. At first they were called Rusakov Particles, but soon someone pointed out a curious verse toward the end of the Third Chapter of Genesis, where God's cursing Adam for eating the fruit. ... 'In the sweat of thy face shall thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return...'."
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The Amber Spyglass
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Particle research, Shadows and Dark Material
Mary Malone conducted research into particle physics and discovered shadow particles, or Shadows (also called dark matter), in her laboratory in Will's world. Shadows is her word for Dust. She writes a program so she can communicate with the Shadows in her computer, which she calls "Shadows on the walls of the Cave" from Plato. Her associate Oliver Payne experimented on some fossil skulls and discovered that there was a point about thirty or forty thousand years ago. Before that, there were no Shadows. Mary points out that is about the time that modern human beings appeared. When Mary communicates with the computer, she asks what the ones communicating with her are. They respond angels and state that there are "uncountable billions" of them. They also confirm that the Shadows are the same as Lyra's Dust which is the same as dark matter. When Mary asks if the shadow matter is what she calls spirit, the angels reply
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"From what we are, spirit; from what we do, matter. Matter and spirit are one."
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The Subtle Knife
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The angels tell Mary that she must find the boy and girl (Will and Lyra) and play the serpent, but first she must destroy the computer and related equipment to prevent enemies from taking control of it.
Sraf and the Mulefa
The Mulefa call dust "sraf" or "sarf" with a leftward flick of the trunk, and it's visible to them as golden sparkles. Mary has a hard time understanding exactly what the word is. Atal tells Mary that sraf comes from the Mulefa and from the seedpod oil. The Mulefa have been around for 33,000 years and have a complete oral history. Atal explains that
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"One day a creature with no name discovered a seedpod and began to play, and as she played she ... saw a snake coiling itself through the hole in a seedpod"
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The Amber Spyglass
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. The snake tells the female to put her foot through the hole in the seedpod to become wise. When the oil entered her blood, she began to generate sraf. She is the equivalent of Eve in the Bible story. When the Mulefa children are old enough to be given seedpod wheels, they begin to generate sraf. Mary makes a spyglass out of sap lacquer, and one she applies the seedpod oil to it, she can see sraf. The Mulefa are concerned because some of the trees started to die 300 years ago. With the spyglass, she sees that sraf is leaving the Mulefa world, in a horizontal path, which is causing some of the seedpod trees to die because the flowers of the tree point upward and aren't being fertilized.
Alternate names
- Dark Matter, in the Dr. Malone's study of particle physics
- Sraf, by the Mulefa
- Rusakov Particles after their discoverer, Boris Rusakov, in Lyra's world
