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Urantia Book Paper 41 Physical Aspects Of The Local Universe
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Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART II: The Local Universe :
The Evolution Of Local Universes Administration Of The Local Universe The Local
Universe Mother Spirit The Local Universe Sons Of God The Life Carriers
Personalities Of The Local Universe Ministering Spirits Of The Local Universe
The Seraphic Hosts The Ascending Sons Of God Physical Aspects Of The Local
Universe Energy--mind And Matter The Constellations The Celestial Artisans The
Local System Administration The Local System Headquarters The Seven Mansion
Worlds The Morontia Life The Inhabited Worlds The Planetary Princes The
Planetary Adams Planetary Mortal Epochs The Lucifer Rebellion Problems Of The
Lucifer Rebellion The Spheres Of Light And Life Universal Unity
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Paper 41 Physical Aspects Of The Local Universe
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Introduction
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 re-
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sponsible 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 con-
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traction 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 (2 X 10 27) 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 pul-
top of page - 462
verized 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
top of page - 464
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-
top of page - 466
-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.]
top of page - 467
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Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART II: The Local Universe :
The Evolution Of Local Universes Administration Of The Local Universe The Local
Universe Mother Spirit The Local Universe Sons Of God The Life Carriers
Personalities Of The Local Universe Ministering Spirits Of The Local Universe
The Seraphic Hosts The Ascending Sons Of God Physical Aspects Of The Local
Universe Energy--mind And Matter The Constellations The Celestial Artisans The
Local System Administration The Local System Headquarters The Seven Mansion
Worlds The Morontia Life The Inhabited Worlds The Planetary Princes The
Planetary Adams Planetary Mortal Epochs The Lucifer Rebellion Problems Of The
Lucifer Rebellion The Spheres Of Light And Life Universal Unity
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