Like others, I am amused by the role of daemons and how they find their true form when the child becomes an adult. I realize most of my questions should be answered later in the book, but what I find myself thinking about while reading the Golden Compass is the Multiverse hypothesis.
As soon I read about a city hidden in the Northern Lights I immediately thought about this hypothesis. This idea describes that true reality is the juxtaposition of many multiple universes. I had a hard time understanding this concept till my astrophysicist professor described how when two 3D objects (like bubbles) collide a 2D plane is created. Taking that same concept to the next level, when two 4D dimensions collide a 3D world like ours is produced. M-theory asserts that there are as many as 11 Dimensions. These dimensions are then reduced to a lower energy :the 3-Dimensions of space and 1-Dimension of time as we understand.
The word Dust reminded me of a seminar that I recently attended at Hayden Planetarium where the speaker explained how Space is no longer considered just a vacuum, but filled with “dust”. With biologists discovering more and more extremophiles it is becoming increasingly likely that life exists across the entire universe and that planets only need to yield the perfect conditions for life to bloom. It seems that dust can act as a vector for life exchange across the universe. Dust exchange from a now lifeless Mars could have once seeded life on our planet.
P.S. Here is a link for anyone still interested in more Gruesome Fairy Tale Origins
4 comments:
So then Pullman is correcting in denying his fantasy ties?
This is just very elaborate Sci-Fi
With animals replacing the robots?
That's actually part of why I thought the setting was in the future.
All the scientific advances and interest in the North.
I kind of melded that into all of our ecological woes and just threw all of the candles and basin baths within the book as form of conservation.
Interesting, Irene - I actually never thought of it quite in the ecological way.
I always thought of it as being something of a steampunk setting, something that has become popular in a lot of books nowadays, even in futuristic ones - take Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson as an example, where a segment of future society chooses to behave as Neo-Victorians, incorporating technology and old fashion/architecture perfectly well.
I think there's a lot about the universe we still don't know, and all the stories might end up being true.
Maybe that's what the other 90 something % of our brain contains the truth about all things, and our imagination is just something we've named a leaky brain.
Imagine we do know everything about every universe and that numb part is just suffocating. Woaw! We just blew my mind a bit there.
I'm going to go look up this "steampunk setting" you mentioned.
Post a Comment