Dust

Dust in Philip Pullman's trilogy of novels His Dark Materials is a fictional form of dark matter, an elementary particle that is of fundamental importance to the novels. Dust is invisible to the human eye and cannot be seen without the use of special instruments such as the amber spyglass or a special film. However, while humans cannot see dust without the use of outside devices, creatures such as the mulefa are able to see dust with their own eyes. Unlike ordinary particles, Dust is conscious. It falls from the sky and is attracted to people (especially adults) and objects made by people. This makes it of great interest to the Church, which believes that it may be the physical manifestation of Original Sin. It is later learnt that Dust actually confers consciousness, knowledge and wisdom, and that Dust is formed when matter becomes conscious. This allows creatures who have the ability to see dust to identify other sentient and intelligent creatures. An example of this is when the... full article at wikipedia