Paper 41 Overview: Physical Aspects of the Local Universe

This Paper explains how the physical parts of our local universe Nebadon are organized and work together. The space of Nebadon is filled with the presence of the Divine Minister, and many different beings help control the energy and power in this space.

Our local universe is made up of stars, dark islands, planets, and other space bodies that came from nebulae like Andronover. These travel together around the Sagittarius center of our section of the superuniverse Orvonton. Power centers and physical controllers help manage all the energy in our universe.

The local universe Nebadon is filled with the space presence of the Divine Minister of Salvington. This presence stops at the outer borders of our local universe, marking what is Nebadon and what is beyond it. The organization of the grand universe shows clear divisions between central, super, and local universes.

The physical boundaries of local universes are not as clear as their administrative divisions. Local universes are organized by creative principles that divide the energy of a superuniverse, while the physical parts like suns and planets come from nebulae. Nebadon was assembled from stars and planets that came from Andronover and other nebulae.

Spiral and other nebulae are started by Paradise force organizers. After gravity begins to work, power centers and physical controllers take over directing physical evolution. When our Creator Son arrived, he coordinated the physical supervision with his plans for the universe.

One hundred Supreme Power Centers of the fourth order are permanently assigned to our local universe. They receive power from Uversa centers and send it to constellation and system power centers. These centers work together to maintain balance of energies in the universe, but they don't handle local energy disturbances like sunspots.

While Master Physical Controllers work with power centers throughout the grand universe, their functions in a local system like Satania are easier to understand. Satania is one of one hundred local systems in the constellation of Norlatiadek, and has neighbors like Sandmatia and Assuntia.

Satania contains over seven thousand astronomical groups or physical systems. The center of Satania is a huge dark island of space with attending spheres not far from the system government headquarters. A Master Physical Controller on Jerusem works with the system power center to coordinate energy throughout the local system.

There are more than two thousand bright suns in Satania, and our sun is an average one. Only three of the thirty suns closest to us are brighter. Universe Power Directors start energy currents that flow between stars and their systems.

The material in all suns, dark islands, planets, and other objects in Nebadon is the same. Most suns are about one million miles in diameter, with our sun being slightly smaller. The largest star in the universe, Antares, is four hundred and fifty times larger than our sun.

The mass of our sun is slightly more than what earth scientists calculate, about two octillion tons. It is about halfway between the most dense and most diffuse stars, being about one and a half times as dense as water. Our sun is not solid or liquid but gaseous.

Density is about the relationship between space and mass. Density changes directly with the amount of mass in space and inversely with the amount of space in mass. Cooling stars can be gaseous yet very dense at the same time because their atoms contain few electrons and have lost much of their energy.

The suns of space are not very dense, as shown by the steady streams of light-energy escaping from them. If they were too dense, light would be trapped until the pressure caused an explosion. The pressure inside a sun pushes light-energy through space for millions of miles.

Light in the presence of propulsive gases is highly explosive when confined at high temperatures by opaque walls. The interior of our sun is a vast X-ray generator. These X-rays give electrons enough energy to travel through space past many obstacles and reach distant planets.

When studying spectral phenomena, remember that space is not empty. Light traveling through space is sometimes changed by various forms of energy and matter. Some unknown lines in the spectra of our sun are due to broken elements floating in space, especially sodium and calcium.

Calcium is the main element spreading throughout space in Orvonton. Our superuniverse is sprinkled with tiny bits of stone. The cosmic cloud, the great space blanket, is mostly made of modified calcium atoms. Calcium atoms can survive solar ionization and persist even after being hit by X-rays and high temperatures.

The internal temperature of many suns, including our own, is much higher than commonly believed. Inside a sun, there are almost no whole atoms because of the intense X-ray bombardment at such high temperatures. X-rays make all atoms in a sun's interior very similar.

The surface temperature of our sun is almost 6,000 degrees, but it increases rapidly toward the center, reaching about 35,000,000 degrees in the central regions. Solar energy comes from many sources including atom annihilation, element transmutation, space-energy accumulation, and meteors diving into the sun.

In suns that are connected to space-energy channels, solar energy is released by complex nuclear reaction chains. The most common is the hydrogen-carbon-helium reaction. In this process, carbon acts as an energy catalyst, helping convert hydrogen into helium without being changed itself.

When a sun's hydrogen content decreases, its brightness increases. In suns destined to burn out, maximum brightness happens when hydrogen is used up. After this point, gravity contraction maintains the brightness. Eventually, such a star becomes a "white dwarf," a highly condensed sphere.

The larger suns maintain such strong gravity control over their electrons that light escapes only with the help of powerful X-rays. These helper rays travel through all space and help maintain basic energy associations. The big energy losses in a sun's early days happen when it reaches maximum temperature.

Atoms and electrons are affected by gravity, but ultimatons (the smallest energy particles) are not affected by local gravity. They follow the universal circuit of the universe. Our sun loses almost one hundred billion tons of matter every year, while giant suns lose much more during their early growth.

Some variable stars that are pulsating strongly can create new systems, some of which may become like our sun and its planets. Our sun was in such a state of pulsation when the Angona system passed nearby, causing the sun's surface to erupt streams of matter that formed our solar system.

Most solar systems had a different origin than ours, but gravity always produces the same type of creation: a central sun or dark island with planets, satellites, and meteors. The physical aspects of individual worlds depend on how they were formed, their location, and their environment. Urantia is located on the outskirts of Satania, far from Jerusem.