Is it possible to kill a Weeping Angel?

; Date: Wed Apr 25 2018

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The Weeping Angels in my head-canon are nearly invulnerable creatures of the quantum world, that existed from before the universe was formed, who do scary things to folks time streams. That makes the Angels pretty much invulnerable to physical level attacks. But is that really the case?

It's possible to get rather geeky and look at the sort of rocks that make up the Weeping Angels we've seen in the documentary TV shows aired by the BBC. The Angels have been shown to be made of Limestone, Granite, and even Marble.

So let's back up a second and discuss just what the Weeping Angels are...

We were introduced to Weeping Angels in Blink, a Doctor-Lite episode focusing on a woman who discovered a cluster of Angels in an abandoned house. That house curiously had a Police Box in the basement, and during Sally Sparrows first visit to the house her friend got zapped away to 100 years earlier. During that documentary program, we learned the importance of not blinking while looking at a Weeping Angel because the only time they can move is when they're not observed. That's due to some wibbly wobbly timey wimey quantum effects. Eventually Sparrow and the guy she hooked up with free'd The Doctor from a trap and everything was right.

Over time we learned that The Angels are beings working with the quantum level of reality.

The don't blink admonition is because of the observer effect. The act of observing a quantum particle freezes it in place. So blinking means you're no longer observing the particle, and it is free to move elsewhere.

Scientists have discovered making continuous measurements of atoms -- essentially not blinking -- freezes matter in place. See (gizmodo.com) https://gizmodo.com/quantum-weeping-angel-effect-freezes-atoms-in-place-1730914717

There's various other attributes of Weeping Angels ... which all add up to them being beings of the quantum nature of reality.

Does this mean that Weeping Angels are actually made of stone? They appear in the various episodes of the documentary known as Doctor Who as stone statues that, when given the opportunity, will move and capture victims to either feed off their time energy (sending the victim back in time) or else killing the victim to use some of their body parts.

Weeping Angels are made of stone, and respond to chemicals?

If the Weeping Angels are indeed made of stone, the Angels can be attacked by dissolving the stone. Stone looks to be impregnible, but in actuality stones can be attacked chemically. Namely, an acid will dissolve stone.

In the real world this is known - for example caves form over thousands of years when acidic water enters underground geology and dissolves the part of the subterranean rock that dissolves in acid. Another example is the effect air pollution has on marble and limestone buildings, in that they crumble over time.

In both cases we're talking about weak acids and a dissolving process taking hundreds of years. A strong acid could be made that dissolves these rocks more quickly.

Presumably since The Doctor is very clever, this idea may have already occurred to him/her. That we've not seen The Doctor use this approach suggests two things:

  • It's a bonkers idea that doesn't hold water
  • The Doctor simply did not have the fortune to have a chemical factory at hand when dealing with Angels

I think it's more the first possiblity. As I said earlier, in my head the Angels are not simply made of normal matter. These are quantum creatures and therefore their bodies made of stuff that simply looks like limestone or granite, but is instead quantum whatevers.

About the Author(s)

(davidherron.com) David Herron : David Herron is a writer and software engineer focusing on the wise use of technology. He is especially interested in clean energy technologies like solar power, wind power, and electric cars. David worked for nearly 30 years in Silicon Valley on software ranging from electronic mail systems, to video streaming, to the Java programming language, and has published several books on Node.js programming and electric vehicles.