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The 5th Epochal Revelation
-The Urantia Papers
PAPER 41
PHYSICAL ASPECTS OF THE LOCAL UNIVERSE
41:0.1
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.
41:0.2
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.
41:0.3
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.
41:0.4
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
41:1.1
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 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.
41:1.2
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.
41:1.3
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.
41:1.4
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.
41:1.5
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
41:2.1
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 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.
41:2.2
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.
41:2.3
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.
41:2.4
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.
41:2.5
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.
41:2.6
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.
41:2.7
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.
41:2.8
The power-energy supervision of the evolutionary
inhabited worlds is the responsibility of the Master
Physical Controllers, but these beings are not
responsible 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
41:3.1
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.
41:3.2
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.
41:3.3
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.
41:3.4
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.
41:3.5
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.
41:3.6
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 may continue to the limiting and
critical explosion point of ultimatonic condensation.
41:3.7
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.
41:3.8
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.
41:3.9
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.
41:3.10
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
41:4.1
The mass of your sun is slightly greater than the
estimate of your physicists, who have reckoned it as
about two octillion (2 x 1027) 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.
41:4.2
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.
41:4.3
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 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.
41:4.4
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 sixty 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.
41:4.5
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.
41:4.6
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.
41:4.7
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
41:5.1
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.
41:5.2
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.
41:5.3
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.
41:5.4
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.
41:5.5
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.
41:5.6
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.
41:5.7
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.
41:5.8
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
41:6.1
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.
41:6.2
Calcium is, in fact, the chief element of the
matter-permeation of space throughout Orvonton. Our
whole superuniverse is sprinkled with minutely
pulverized 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.
41:6.3
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.
41:6.4
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.
41:6.5
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.
41:6.6
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.
41:6.7
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.
7. SOURCES OF SOLAR ENERGY
41:7.1
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.
41:7.2
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.)
41:7.3
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.
41:7.4
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.
41:7.5
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.
41:7.6
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
each second is sufficient to boil all the water in all
the oceans on Urantia in just one second of time.
41:7.7
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.
41:7.8
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
41:8.1
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.
41:8.2
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.
41:8.3
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.
41:8.4
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.
9. SUN STABILITY
41:9.1
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.
41:9.2
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.
41:9.3
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.
41:9.4
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.
41:9.5
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
41:10.1
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 -- 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.
41:10.2
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.
41:10.3
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.
41:10.4
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.
41:10.5
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.
41:10.6
Presented by an Archangel in collaboration with the
Chief of Nebadon Power Centers.
*
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