PAPER 41
- PHYSICAL ASPECTS OF THE LOCAL UNIVERSE
The
characteristic space phenomenon which sets off
each local creation from all others is the
presence of the Creative Spirit. All Nebadon is
certainly pervaded by the space presence of the
Divine Minister of Salvington, and such presence
just as certainly terminates at the outer
borders of our local universe. That which is
pervaded by our local universe Mother Spirit
is Nebadon; that which extends beyond her
space presence is outside Nebadon, being the
extra-Nebadon space regions of the superuniverse
of Orvonton--other local universes.
While the
administrative organization of the grand
universe discloses a clear-cut division between
the governments of the central, super-, and
local universes, and while these divisions are
astronomically paralleled in the space
separation of Havona and the seven
superuniverses, no such clear lines of physical
demarcation set off the local creations. Even
the major and minor sectors of Orvonton are (to
us) clearly distinguishable, but it is not so
easy to identify the physical boundaries of the
local universes. This is because these local
creations are administratively organized in
accordance with certain creative
principles governing the segmentation of the
total energy charge of a superuniverse, whereas
their physical components, the spheres of
space--suns, dark islands, planets, etc.--take
origin primarily from nebulae, and these make
their astronomical appearance in accordance with
certain precreative (transcendental)
plans of the Architects of the Master Universe.
One or
more--even many--such nebulae may be encompassed
within the domain of a single local universe
even as Nebadon was physically assembled out of
the stellar and planetary progeny of Andronover
and other nebulae. The spheres of Nebadon are of
diverse nebular ancestry, but they all had a
certain minimum commonness of space motion which
was so adjusted by the intelligent efforts of
the power directors as to produce our present
aggregation of space bodies, which travel along
together as a contiguous unit over the orbits of
the superuniverse.
Such is the
constitution of the local star cloud of Nebadon,
which today swings in an increasingly settled
orbit about the Sagittarius center of that minor
sector of Orvonton to which our local creation
belongs.
1.
THE NEBADON POWER CENTERS
The spiral and
other nebulae, the mother wheels of the spheres
of space, are initiated by Paradise force
organizers; and following nebular evolution of
gravity response, they are superseded in
superuniverse function by the power
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centers and physical controllers, who thereupon
assume full responsibility for directing the
physical evolution of the ensuing generations of
stellar and planetary offspring. This physical
supervision of the Nebadon preuniverse was, upon
the arrival of our Creator Son, immediately
co-ordinated with his plan for universe
organization. Within the domain of this Paradise
Son of God the Supreme Power Centers and the
Master Physical Controllers collaborated with
the later appearing Morontia Power Supervisors
and others to produce that vast complex of
communication lines, energy circuits, and power
lanes which firmly bind the manifold space
bodies of Nebadon into one integrated
administrative unit.
One hundred
Supreme Power Centers of the fourth order are
permanently assigned to our local universe.
These beings receive the incoming lines of power
from the third-order centers of Uversa and relay
the down-stepped and modified circuits to the
power centers of our constellations and systems.
These power centers, in association, function to
produce the living system of control and
equalization which operates to maintain the
balance and distribution of otherwise
fluctuating and variable energies. Power centers
are not, however, concerned with transient and
local energy upheavals, such as sun spots and
system electric disturbances; light and
electricity are not the basic energies of space;
they are secondary and subsidiary
manifestations.
The one
hundred local universe centers are stationed on
Salvington, where they function at the exact
energy center of that sphere. Architectural
spheres, such as Salvington, Edentia, and
Jerusem, are lighted, heated, and energized by
methods which make them quite independent of the
suns of space. These spheres were
constructed--made to order--by the power centers
and physical controllers and were designed to
exert a powerful influence over energy
distribution. Basing their activities on such
focal points of energy control, the power
centers, by their living presences, directionize
and channelize the physical energies of space.
And these energy circuits are basic to all
physical-material and morontia-spiritual
phenomena.
Ten Supreme
Power Centers of the fifth order are assigned to
each of Nebadon's primary subdivisions, the one
hundred constellations. In Norlatiadek, your
constellation, they are not stationed on the
headquarters sphere but are situated at the
center of the enormous stellar system which
constitutes the physical core of the
constellation. On Edentia there are ten
associated mechanical controllers and ten
frandalanks who are in perfect and constant
liaison with the near-by power centers.
One Supreme
Power Center of the sixth order is stationed at
the exact gravity focus of each local system. In
the system of Satania the assigned power center
occupies a dark island of space located at the
astronomic center of the system. Many of these
dark islands are vast dynamos which mobilize and
directionize certain space-energies, and these
natural circumstances are effectively utilized
by the Satania Power Center, whose living mass
functions as a liaison with the higher centers,
directing the streams of more materialized power
to the Master Physical Controllers on the
evolutionary planets of space.
2.
THE SATANIA PHYSICAL CONTROLLERS
While the
Master Physical Controllers serve with the power
centers throughout the grand universe, their
functions in a local system, such as Satania,
are more easy of comprehension. Satania is one
of one hundred local systems which
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make
up the administrative organization of the
constellation of Norlatiadek, having as
immediate neighbors the systems of Sandmatia,
Assuntia, Porogia, Sortoria, Rantulia, and
Glantonia. The Norlatiadek systems differ in
many respects, but all are evolutionary and
progressive, very much like Satania.
Satania itself
is composed of over seven thousand astronomical
groups, or physical systems, few of which had an
origin similar to that of your solar system. The
astronomic center of Satania is an enormous dark
island of space which, with its attendant
spheres, is situated not far from the
headquarters of the system government.
Except for the
presence of the assigned power center, the
supervision of the entire physical-energy system
of Satania is centered on Jerusem. A Master
Physical Controller, stationed on this
headquarters sphere, works in co-ordination with
the system power center, serving as liaison
chief of the power inspectors headquartered on
Jerusem and functioning throughout the local
system.
The
circuitizing and channelizing of energy is
supervised by the five hundred thousand living
and intelligent energy manipulators scattered
throughout Satania. Through the action of such
physical controllers the supervising power
centers are in complete and perfect control of a
majority of the basic energies of space,
including the emanations of highly heated orbs
and the dark energy-charged spheres. This group
of living entities can mobilize, transform,
transmute, manipulate, and transmit nearly all
of the physical energies of organized space.
Life has
inherent capacity for the mobilization and
transmutation of universal energy. You are
familiar with the action of vegetable life in
transforming the material energy of light into
the varied manifestations of the vegetable
kingdom. You also know something of the method
whereby this vegetative energy can be converted
into the phenomena of animal activities, but you
know practically nothing of the technique of the
power directors and the physical controllers,
who are endowed with ability to mobilize,
transform, directionize, and concentrate the
manifold energies of space.
These beings
of the energy realms do not directly concern
themselves with energy as a component factor of
living creatures, not even with the domain of
physiological chemistry. They are sometimes
concerned with the physical preliminaries of
life, with the elaboration of those energy
systems which may serve as the physical vehicles
for the living energies of elementary material
organisms. In a way the physical controllers are
related to the preliving manifestations of
material energy as the adjutant mind-spirits are
concerned with the prespiritual functions of
material mind.
These
intelligent creatures of power control and
energy direction must adjust their technique on
each sphere in accordance with the physical
constitution and architecture of that planet.
They unfailingly utilize the calculations and
deductions of their respective staffs of
physicists and other technical advisers
regarding the local influence of highly heated
suns and other types of supercharged stars. Even
the enormous cold and dark giants of space and
the swarming clouds of star dust must be
reckoned with; all of these material things are
concerned in the practical problems of energy
manipulation.
The
power-energy supervision of the evolutionary
inhabited worlds is the responsibility of the
Master Physical Controllers, but these beings
are not responsible
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for
all energy misbehavior on Urantia. There are a
number of reasons for such disturbances, some of
which are beyond the domain and control of the
physical custodians. Urantia is in the lines of
tremendous energies, a small planet in the
circuit of enormous masses, and the local
controllers sometimes employ enormous numbers of
their order in an effort to equalize these lines
of energy. They do fairly well with regard to
the physical circuits of Satania but have
trouble insulating against the powerful
Norlatiadek currents.
3.
OUR STARRY ASSOCIATES
There are
upward of two thousand brilliant suns pouring
forth light and energy in Satania, and your own
sun is an average blazing orb. Of the thirty
suns nearest yours, only three are brighter. The
Universe Power Directors initiate the
specialized currents of energy which play
between the individual stars and their
respective systems. These solar furnaces,
together with the dark giants of space, serve
the power centers and physical controllers as
way stations for the effective concentrating and
directionizing of the energy circuits of the
material creations.
The suns of
Nebadon are not unlike those of other universes.
The material composition of all suns, dark
islands, planets, and satellites, even meteors,
is quite identical. These suns have an average
diameter of about one million miles, that of
your own solar orb being slightly less. The
largest star in the universe, the stellar cloud
Antares, is four hundred and fifty times the
diameter of your sun and is sixty million times
its volume. But there is abundant space to
accommodate all of these enormous suns. They
have just as much comparative elbow room in
space as one dozen oranges would have if they
were circulating about throughout the interior
of Urantia, and were the planet a hollow globe.
When suns that
are too large are thrown off a nebular mother
wheel, they soon break up or form double stars.
All suns are originally truly gaseous, though
they may later transiently exist in a semiliquid
state. When your sun attained this quasi-liquid
state of supergas pressure, it was not
sufficiently large to split equatorially, this
being one type of double star formation.
When less than
one tenth the size of your sun, these fiery
spheres rapidly contract, condense, and cool.
When upwards of thirty times its size--rather
thirty times the gross content of actual
material--suns readily split into two separate
bodies, either becoming the centers of new
systems or else remaining in each other's
gravity grasp and revolving about a common
center as one type of double star.
The most
recent of the major cosmic eruptions in Orvonton
was the extraordinary double star explosion, the
light of which reached Urantia in A.D. 1572.
This conflagration was so intense that the
explosion was clearly visible in broad daylight.
Not all stars
are solid, but many of the older ones are. Some
of the reddish, faintly glimmering stars have
acquired a density at the center of their
enormous masses which would be expressed by
saying that one cubic inch of such a star, if on
Urantia, would weigh six thousand pounds. The
enormous pressure, accompanied by loss of heat
and circulating energy, has resulted in bringing
the orbits of the basic material units closer
and closer together until they now closely
approach the status of electronic condensation.
This process of cooling and contraction
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may
continue to the limiting and critical explosion
point of ultimatonic condensation.
Most of the
giant suns are relatively young; most of the
dwarf stars are old, but not all. The
collisional dwarfs may be very young and may
glow with an intense white light, never having
known an initial red stage of youthful shining.
Both very young and very old suns usually shine
with a reddish glow. The yellow tinge indicates
moderate youth or approaching old age, but the
brilliant white light signifies robust and
extended adult life.
While all
adolescent suns do not pass through a pulsating
stage, at least not visibly, when looking out
into space you may observe many of these younger
stars whose gigantic respiratory heaves require
from two to seven days to complete a cycle. Your
own sun still carries a diminishing legacy of
the mighty upswellings of its younger days, but
the period has lengthened from the former three
and one-half day pulsations to the present
eleven and one-half year sunspot cycles.
Stellar
variables have numerous origins. In some double
stars the tides caused by rapidly changing
distances as the two bodies swing around their
orbits also occasion periodic fluctuations of
light. These gravity variations produce regular
and recurrent flares, just as the capture of
meteors by the accretion of energy-material at
the surface would result in a comparatively
sudden flash of light which would speedily
recede to normal brightness for that sun.
Sometimes a sun will capture a stream of meteors
in a line of lessened gravity opposition, and
occasionally collisions cause stellar flare-ups,
but the majority of such phenomena are wholly
due to internal fluctuations.
In one group
of variable stars the period of light
fluctuation is directly dependent on luminosity,
and knowledge of this fact enables astronomers
to utilize such suns as universe lighthouses or
accurate measuring points for the further
exploration of distant star clusters. By this
technique it is possible to measure stellar
distances most precisely up to more than one
million light-years. Better methods of space
measurement and improved telescopic technique
will sometime more fully disclose the ten grand
divisions of the superuniverse of Orvonton; you
will at least recognize eight of these immense
sectors as enormous and fairly symmetrical star
clusters.
4.
SUN DENSITY
The mass of
your sun is slightly greater than the estimate
of your physicists, who have reckoned it as
about two octillion (2x1027) tons. It
now exists about halfway between the most dense
and the most diffuse stars, having about one and
one-half times the density of water. But your
sun is neither a liquid nor a solid--it is
gaseous--and this is true notwithstanding the
difficulty of explaining how gaseous matter can
attain this and even much greater densities.
Gaseous,
liquid, and solid states are matters of
atomic-molecular relationships, but density is a
relationship of space and mass. Density varies
directly with the quantity of mass in space and
inversely with the amount of space in mass, the
space between the central cores of matter and
the particles which whirl around these centers
as well as the space within such material
particles.
Cooling stars
can be physically gaseous and tremendously dense
at the same time. You are not familiar with the
solar supergases, but these and other
unusual
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forms
of matter explain how even nonsolid suns can
attain a density equal to iron--about the same
as Urantia--and yet be in a highly heated
gaseous state and continue to function as suns.
The atoms in these dense supergases are
exceptionally small; they contain few electrons.
Such suns have also largely lost their free
ultimatonic stores of energy.
One of your
near-by suns, which started life with about the
same mass as yours, has now contracted almost to
the size of Urantia, having become forty
thousand times as dense as your sun. The weight
of this hot-cold gaseous-solid is about one ton
per cubic inch. And still this sun shines with a
faint reddish glow, the senile glimmer of a
dying monarch of light.
Most of the
suns, however, are not so dense. One of your
nearer neighbors has a density exactly equal to
that of your atmosphere at sea level. If you
were in the interior of this sun, you would be
unable to discern anything. And temperature
permitting, you could penetrate the majority of
the suns which twinkle in the night sky and
notice no more matter than you perceive in the
air of your earthly living rooms.
The massive
sun of Veluntia, one of the largest in Orvonton,
has a density only one one-thousandth that of
Urantia's atmosphere. Were it in composition
similar to your atmosphere and not superheated,
it would be such a vacuum that human beings
would speedily suffocate if they were in or on
it.
Another of the
Orvonton giants now has a surface temperature a
trifle under three thousand degrees. Its
diameter is over three hundred million
miles--ample room to accommodate your sun and
the present orbit of the earth. And yet, for all
this enormous size, over forty million times
that of your sun, its mass is only about thirty
times greater. These enormous suns have an
extending fringe that reaches almost from one to
the other.
5.
SOLAR RADIATION
That the suns
of space are not very dense is proved by the
steady streams of escaping light-energies. Too
great a density would retain light by opacity
until the light-energy pressure reached the
explosion point. There is a tremendous light or
gas pressure within a sun to cause it to shoot
forth such a stream of energy as to penetrate
space for millions upon millions of miles to
energize, light, and heat the distant planets.
Fifteen feet of surface of the density of
Urantia would effectually prevent the escape of
all X rays and light-energies from a sun until
the rising internal pressure of accumulating
energies resulting from atomic dismemberment
overcame gravity with a tremendous outward
explosion.
Light, in the
presence of the propulsive gases, is highly
explosive when confined at high temperatures by
opaque retaining walls. Light is real. As you
value energy and power on your world, sunlight
would be economical at a million dollars a
pound.
The interior
of your sun is a vast X-ray generator. The suns
are supported from within by the incessant
bombardment of these mighty emanations.
It requires
more than one-half million years for an
X-ray-stimulated electron to work its way from
the very center of an average sun up to the
solar surface, whence it starts out on its space
adventure, maybe to warm an inhabited planet, to
be captured by a meteor, to participate in the
birth of an atom, to be attracted by a highly
charged dark island of space, or to find its
space flight terminated by a final plunge into
the surface of a sun similar to the one of its
origin.
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The X
rays of a sun's interior charge the highly
heated and agitated electrons with sufficient
energy to carry them out through space, past the
hosts of detaining influences of intervening
matter and, in spite of divergent gravity
attractions, on to the distant spheres of the
remote systems. The great energy of velocity
required to escape the gravity clutch of a sun
is sufficient to insure that the sunbeam will
travel on with unabated velocity until it
encounters considerable masses of matter;
whereupon it is quickly transformed into heat
with the liberation of other energies.
Energy,
whether as light or in other forms, in its
flight through space moves straight forward. The
actual particles of material existence traverse
space like a fusillade. They go in a straight
and unbroken line or procession except as they
are acted on by superior forces, and except as
they ever obey the linear-gravity pull inherent
in material mass and the circular-gravity
presence of the Isle of Paradise.
Solar energy
may seem to be propelled in waves, but that is
due to the action of coexistent and diverse
influences. A given form of organized energy
does not proceed in waves but in direct lines.
The presence of a second or a third form of
force-energy may cause the stream under
observation to appear to travel in wavy
formation, just as, in a blinding rainstorm
accompanied by a heavy wind, the water sometimes
appears to fall in sheets or to descend in
waves. The raindrops are coming down in a direct
line of unbroken procession, but the action of
the wind is such as to give the visible
appearance of sheets of water and waves of
raindrops.
The action of
certain secondary and other undiscovered
energies present in the space regions of your
local universe is such that solar-light
emanations appear to execute certain wavy
phenomena as well as to be chopped up into
infinitesimal portions of definite length and
weight. And, practically considered, that is
exactly what happens. You can hardly hope to
arrive at a better understanding of the behavior
of light until such a time as you acquire a
clearer concept of the interaction and
interrelationship of the various space-forces
and solar energies operating in the space
regions of Nebadon. Your present confusion is
also due to your incomplete grasp of this
problem as it involves the interassociated
activities of the personal and nonpersonal
control of the master universe--the presences,
the performances, and the co-ordination of the
Conjoint Actor and the Unqualified Absolute.
6.
CALCIUM--THE WANDERER OF SPACE
In deciphering
spectral phenomena, it should be remembered that
space is not empty; that light, in traversing
space, is sometimes slightly modified by the
various forms of energy and matter which
circulate in all organized space. Some of the
lines indicating unknown matter which appear in
the spectra of your sun are due to modifications
of well-known elements which are floating
throughout space in shattered form, the atomic
casualties of the fierce encounters of the solar
elemental battles. Space is pervaded by these
wandering derelicts, especially sodium and
calcium.
Calcium is, in
fact, the chief element of the matter-permeation
of space throughout Orvonton. Our whole
superuniverse is sprinkled with minutely
pulverized
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stone.
Stone is literally the basic building matter for
the planets and spheres of space. The cosmic
cloud, the great space blanket, consists for the
most part of the modified atoms of calcium. The
stone atom is one of the most prevalent and
persistent of the elements. It not only endures
solar ionization--splitting--but persists in an
associative identity even after it has been
battered by the destructive X rays and shattered
by the high solar temperatures. Calcium
possesses an individuality and a longevity
excelling all of the more common forms of
matter.
As your
physicists have suspected, these mutilated
remnants of solar calcium literally ride the
light beams for varied distances, and thus their
widespread dissemination throughout space is
tremendously facilitated. The sodium atom, under
certain modifications, is also capable of light
and energy locomotion. The calcium feat is all
the more remarkable since this element has
almost twice the mass of sodium. Local
space-permeation by calcium is due to the fact
that it escapes from the solar photosphere, in
modified form, by literally riding the outgoing
sunbeams. Of all the solar elements, calcium,
notwithstanding its comparative bulk--containing
as it does twenty revolving electrons--is the
most successful in escaping from the solar
interior to the realms of space. This explains
why there is a calcium layer, a gaseous stone
surface, on the sun six thousand miles thick;
and this despite the fact that nineteen lighter
elements, and numerous heavier ones, are
underneath.
Calcium is an
active and versatile element at solar
temperatures. The stone atom has two agile and
loosely attached electrons in the two outer
electronic circuits, which are very close
together. Early in the atomic struggle it loses
its outer electron; whereupon it engages in a
masterful act of juggling the nineteenth
electron back and forth between the nineteenth
and twentieth circuits of electronic revolution.
By tossing this nineteenth electron back and
forth between its own orbit and that of its lost
companion more than twenty-five thousand times a
second, a mutilated stone atom is able partially
to defy gravity and thus successfully to ride
the emerging streams of light and energy, the
sunbeams, to liberty and adventure. This calcium
atom moves outward by alternate jerks of forward
propulsion, grasping and letting go the sunbeam
about twenty-five thousand times each second.
And this is why stone is the chief component of
the worlds of space. Calcium is the most expert
solar-prison escaper.
The agility of
this acrobatic calcium electron is indicated by
the fact that, when tossed by the
temperature-X-ray solar forces to the circle of
the higher orbit, it only remains in that orbit
for about one one-millionth of a second; but
before the electric-gravity power of the atomic
nucleus pulls it back into its old orbit, it is
able to complete one million revolutions about
the atomic center.
Your sun has
parted with an enormous quantity of its calcium,
having lost tremendous amounts during the times
of its convulsive eruptions in connection with
the formation of the solar system. Much of the
solar calcium is now in the outer crust of the
sun.
It should be
remembered that spectral analyses show only
sun-surface compositions. For example: Solar
spectra exhibit many iron lines, but iron is not
the chief element in the sun. This phenomenon is
almost wholly due to the present temperature of
the sun's surface, a little less than 6,000
degrees, this temperature being very favorable
to the registry of the iron spectrum.
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7.
SOURCES OF SOLAR ENERGY
The internal
temperature of many of the suns, even your own,
is much higher than is commonly believed. In the
interior of a sun practically no whole atoms
exist; they are all more or less shattered by
the intensive X-ray bombardment which is
indigenous to such high temperatures. Regardless
of what material elements may appear in the
outer layers of a sun, those in the interior are
rendered very similar by the dissociative action
of the disruptive X rays. X ray is the great
leveler of atomic existence.
The surface
temperature of your sun is almost 6,000 degrees,
but it rapidly increases as the interior is
penetrated until it attains the unbelievable
height of about 35,000,000 degrees in the
central regions. (All of these temperatures
refer to your Fahrenheit scale.)
All of these
phenomena are indicative of enormous energy
expenditure, and the sources of solar energy,
named in the order of their importance, are:
1.
Annihilation of atoms and, eventually, of
electrons.
2.
Transmutation of elements, including the
radioactive group of energies thus liberated.
3. The
accumulation and transmission of certain
universal space-energies.
4. Space
matter and meteors which are incessantly diving
into the blazing suns.
5. Solar
contraction; the cooling and consequent
contraction of a sun yields energy and heat
sometimes greater than that supplied by space
matter.
6. Gravity
action at high temperatures transforms certain
circuitized power into radiative energies.
7. Recaptive
light and other matter which are drawn back into
the sun after having left it, together with
other energies having extrasolar origin.
There exists a
regulating blanket of hot gases (sometimes
millions of degrees in temperature) which
envelops the suns, and which acts to stabilize
heat loss and otherwise prevent hazardous
fluctuations of heat dissipation. During the
active life of a sun the internal temperature of
35,000,000 degrees remains about the same quite
regardless of the progressive fall of the
external temperature.
You might try
to visualize 35,000,000 degrees of heat, in
association with certain gravity pressures, as
the electronic boiling point. Under such
pressure and at such temperature all atoms are
degraded and broken up into their electronic and
other ancestral components; even the electrons
and other associations of ultimatons may be
broken up, but the suns are not able to degrade
the ultimatons.
These solar
temperatures operate to enormously speed up the
ultimatons and the electrons, at least such of
the latter as continue to maintain their
existence under these conditions. You will
realize what high temperature means by way of
the acceleration of ultimatonic and electronic
activities when you pause to consider that one
drop of ordinary water contains over one billion
trillions of atoms. This is the energy of more
than one hundred horsepower exerted continuously
for two years. The total heat now given out by
the solar system sun
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each
second is sufficient to boil all the water in
all the oceans on Urantia in just one second of
time.
Only those
suns which function in the direct channels of
the main streams of universe energy can shine on
forever. Such solar furnaces blaze on
indefinitely, being able to replenish their
material losses by the intake of space-force and
analogous circulating energy. But stars far
removed from these chief channels of recharging
are destined to undergo energy
depletion--gradually cool off and eventually
burn out.
Such dead or
dying suns can be rejuvenated by collisional
impact or can be recharged by certain
nonluminous energy islands of space or through
gravity-robbery of near-by smaller suns or
systems. The majority of dead suns will
experience revivification by these or other
evolutionary techniques. Those which are not
thus eventually recharged are destined to
undergo disruption by mass explosion when the
gravity condensation attains the critical level
of ultimatonic condensation of energy pressure.
Such disappearing suns thus become energy of the
rarest form, admirably adapted to energize other
more favorably situated suns.
8.
SOLAR-ENERGY REACTIONS
In those suns
which are encircuited in the space-energy
channels, solar energy is liberated by various
complex nuclear-reaction chains, the most common
of which is the hydrogen-carbon-helium reaction.
In this metamorphosis, carbon acts as an energy
catalyst since it is in no way actually changed
by this process of converting hydrogen into
helium. Under certain conditions of high
temperature the hydrogen penetrates the carbon
nuclei. Since the carbon cannot hold more than
four such protons, when this saturation state is
attained, it begins to emit protons as fast as
new ones arrive. In this reaction the ingoing
hydrogen particles come forth as a helium atom.
Reduction of
hydrogen content increases the luminosity of a
sun. In the suns destined to burn out, the
height of luminosity is attained at the point of
hydrogen exhaustion. Subsequent to this point,
brilliance is maintained by the resultant
process of gravity contraction. Eventually, such
a star will become a so-called white dwarf, a
highly condensed sphere.
In large
suns--small circular nebulae--when hydrogen is
exhausted and gravity contraction ensues, if
such a body is not sufficiently opaque to retain
the internal pressure of support for the outer
gas regions, then a sudden collapse occurs. The
gravity-electric changes give origin to vast
quantities of tiny particles devoid of electric
potential, and such particles readily escape
from the solar interior, thus bringing about the
collapse of a gigantic sun within a few days. It
was such an emigration of these "runaway
particles" that occasioned the collapse of the
giant nova of the Andromeda nebula about fifty
years ago. This vast stellar body collapsed in
forty minutes of Urantia time.
As a rule, the
vast extrusion of matter continues to exist
about the residual cooling sun as extensive
clouds of nebular gases. And all this explains
the origin of many types of irregular nebulae,
such as the Crab nebula, which had its origin
about nine hundred years ago, and which still
exhibits the mother sphere as a lone star near
the center of this irregular nebular mass.
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9.
SUN STABILITY
The larger
suns maintain such a gravity control over their
electrons that light escapes only with the aid
of the powerful X rays. These helper rays
penetrate all space and are concerned in the
maintenance of the basic ultimatonic
associations of energy. The great energy losses
in the early days of a sun, subsequent to its
attainment of maximum temperature--upwards of
35,000,000 degrees--are not so much due to light
escape as to ultimatonic leakage. These
ultimaton energies escape out into space, to
engage in the adventure of electronic
association and energy materialization, as a
veritable energy blast during adolescent solar
times.
Atoms and
electrons are subject to gravity. The ultimatons
are not subject to local gravity, the
interplay of material attraction, but they are
fully obedient to absolute or Paradise gravity,
to the trend, the swing, of the universal and
eternal circle of the universe of universes.
Ultimatonic energy does not obey the linear or
direct gravity attraction of near-by or remote
material masses, but it does ever swing true to
the circuit of the great ellipse of the
far-flung creation.
Your own solar
center radiates almost one hundred billion tons
of actual matter annually, while the giant suns
lose matter at a prodigious rate during their
earlier growth, the first billion years. A sun's
life becomes stable after the maximum of
internal temperature is reached, and the
subatomic energies begin to be released. And it
is just at this critical point that the larger
suns are given to convulsive pulsations.
Sun stability
is wholly dependent on the equilibrium between
gravity-heat contention--tremendous pressures
counterbalanced by unimagined temperatures. The
interior gas elasticity of the suns upholds the
overlying layers of varied materials, and when
gravity and heat are in equilibrium, the weight
of the outer materials exactly equals the
temperature pressure of the underlying and
interior gases. In many of the younger stars
continued gravity condensation produces
ever-heightening internal temperatures, and as
internal heat increases, the interior X-ray
pressure of supergas winds becomes so great
that, in connection with the centrifugal motion,
a sun begins to throw its exterior layers off
into space, thus redressing the imbalance
between gravity and heat.
Your own sun
has long since attained relative equilibrium
between its expansion and contraction cycles,
those disturbances which produce the gigantic
pulsations of many of the younger stars. Your
sun is now passing out of its six billionth
year. At the present time it is functioning
through the period of greatest economy. It will
shine on as of present efficiency for more than
twenty-five billion years. It will probably
experience a partially efficient period of
decline as long as the combined periods of its
youth and stabilized function.
10.
ORIGIN OF INHABITED WORLDS
Some of the
variable stars, in or near the state of maximum
pulsation, are in process of giving origin to
subsidiary systems, many of which will
eventually be much like your own sun and its
revolving planets. Your sun was in just such a
state of mighty pulsation when the massive
Angona system swung into near approach, and the
outer surface of the sun began to erupt
veritable streams--
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continuous sheets--of matter. This kept up with
ever-increasing violence until nearest
apposition, when the limits of solar cohesion
were reached and a vast pinnacle of matter, the
ancestor of the solar system, was disgorged. In
similar circumstances the closest approach of
the attracting body sometimes draws off whole
planets, even a quarter or third of a sun. These
major extrusions form certain peculiar
cloud-bound types of worlds, spheres much like
Jupiter and Saturn.
The majority
of solar systems, however, had an origin
entirely different from yours, and this is true
even of those which were produced by
gravity-tidal technique. But no matter what
technique of world building obtains, gravity
always produces the solar system type of
creation; that is, a central sun or dark island
with planets, satellites, subsatellites, and
meteors.
The physical
aspects of the individual worlds are largely
determined by mode of origin, astronomical
situation, and physical environment. Age, size,
rate of revolution, and velocity through space
are also determining factors. Both the
gas-contraction and the solid-accretion worlds
are characterized by mountains and, during their
earlier life, when not too small, by water and
air. The molten-split and collisional worlds are
sometimes without extensive mountain ranges.
During the
earlier ages of all these new worlds,
earthquakes are frequent, and they are all
characterized by great physical disturbances;
especially is this true of the gas-contraction
spheres, the worlds born of the immense nebular
rings which are left behind in the wake of the
early condensation and contraction of certain
individual suns. Planets having a dual origin
like Urantia pass through a less violent and
stormy youthful career. Even so, your world
experienced an early phase of mighty upheavals,
characterized by volcanoes, earthquakes, floods,
and terrific storms.
Urantia is
comparatively isolated on the outskirts of
Satania, your solar system, with one exception,
being the farthest removed from Jerusem, while
Satania itself is next to the outermost system
of Norlatiadek, and this constellation is now
traversing the outer fringe of Nebadon. You were
truly among the least of all creation until
Michael's bestowal elevated your planet to a
position of honor and great universe interest.
Sometimes the last is first, while truly the
least becomes greatest.
[Presented by
an Archangel in collaboration with the Chief of
Nebadon Power Centers.] |