Paper 41 Overview: Physical Aspects of the Local Universe

This Paper explores the physical organization and characteristics of our local universe Nebadon, which is defined by the presence of the Divine Minister. The physical components of Nebadon, including stars, planets, and space bodies, originated primarily from nebulae, with Andronover being a significant contributor. These components now travel together in an increasingly settled orbit around the Sagittarius center of our minor sector of Orvonton.

The Paper details the intricate energy management systems that govern our universe, including the functions of power centers and physical controllers. It examines the nature of stars, their composition, radiation, and life cycles, as well as the mechanisms that sustain these celestial bodies. Special attention is given to the role of calcium in space, the sources of solar energy, and the formation of planetary systems like our own.

The characteristic space phenomenon that defines each local creation is the presence of the Creative Spirit. All of Nebadon is pervaded by the space presence of the Divine Minister of Salvington, and this presence terminates at the outer borders of our local universe. While the administrative organization of the grand universe shows clear divisions between central, super, and local universes, there are no clear physical boundaries between local creations.

Local universes are administratively organized according to creative principles that govern the segmentation of the superuniverse's energy charge, while their physical components originate from nebulae following the plans of the Architects of the Master Universe. Nebadon was physically assembled from the stellar and planetary progeny of Andronover and other nebulae, all adjusted by the power directors to travel together as a contiguous unit in increasingly settled orbits around the Sagittarius center of our minor sector of Orvonton.

The spiral and other nebulae, which are the mother wheels of space spheres, are initiated by Paradise force organizers. After gravity response begins, power centers and physical controllers take over directing physical evolution. When our Creator Son arrived, physical supervision was immediately coordinated with his plan for universe organization, creating a complex system of communication lines, energy circuits, and power lanes that bind the space bodies of Nebadon together.

One hundred Supreme Power Centers of the fourth order are permanently assigned to our local universe, receiving incoming lines of power from third-order centers on Uversa and relaying modified circuits to constellation and system power centers. These power centers function together to maintain energy balance and distribution throughout the system, though they are not concerned with transient disturbances like sunspots. The one hundred local universe centers are stationed on Salvington at the exact energy center of that sphere, while architectural spheres like Salvington, Edentia, and Jerusem are powered by methods that make them independent of space suns.

While Master Physical Controllers serve 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, with neighboring systems including Sandmatia, Assuntia, Porogia, and others that differ in many respects but are all evolutionary and progressive.

Satania itself contains over seven thousand astronomical groups or physical systems, with origins unlike our solar system in most cases. The astronomic center of Satania is an enormous dark island of space with attendant spheres, located near the system government headquarters. A Master Physical Controller stationed on Jerusem coordinates with the system power center, supervising energy manipulation throughout Satania through five hundred thousand living and intelligent energy manipulators who can mobilize, transform, and transmit nearly all physical energies of organized space.

There are over two thousand brilliant suns pouring forth light and energy in Satania, and our sun is an average blazing orb. Of the thirty suns nearest to ours, only three are brighter. Universe Power Directors initiate the specialized energy currents that flow between individual stars and their systems, with these solar furnaces and dark giants serving as way stations for concentrating and directing energy circuits.

The suns of Nebadon have the same material composition as those in other universes, with an average diameter of about one million miles (our sun is slightly smaller). The largest star in the universe, Antares, is four hundred and fifty times the diameter of our sun and sixty million times its volume. Stars that are too large when thrown off a nebular mother wheel soon split into double stars, while smaller ones contract and cool. Some older reddish stars have acquired tremendous density, with one cubic inch weighing up to six thousand pounds on earth due to pressure and energy loss bringing their basic material units closer together.

The mass of our sun is slightly greater than earth physicists estimate, about two octillion (2 x 10²⁷) tons. It exists halfway between the most dense and most diffuse stars, with about one and one-half times the density of water. Although difficult to explain, our sun remains gaseous rather than liquid or solid despite this density, which challenges conventional understanding of matter states.

Density varies directly with the quantity of mass in space and inversely with the amount of space in mass, including the space between atomic cores and particles. Cooling stars can be physically gaseous yet tremendously dense simultaneously. The dense "supergases" that make up such stars have exceptionally small atoms containing few electrons and have largely lost their ultimatonic energy stores. Some nearby stars have contracted to enormous densities—one has compressed to Urantia's size but is forty thousand times denser than our sun, weighing about one ton per cubic inch while still maintaining a gaseous-solid state and a faint reddish glow.

The relatively low density of space suns is evidenced by the steady streams of escaping light-energies. Too great a density would retain light through opacity until the pressure caused an explosive outburst. There is tremendous light and gas pressure within a sun that sends energy millions of miles through space to energize, light, and heat distant planets. Just fifteen feet of material with earth's density would effectively block all X-rays and light from escaping.

Light in the presence of propulsive gases becomes highly explosive when confined at high temperatures by opaque retaining walls. On earth, sunlight would be economically valued at a million dollars per pound. The interior of our sun functions as a vast X-ray generator, with these powerful emanations supporting the sun from within. It takes more than half a million years for an X-ray-stimulated electron to work its way from the center of an average sun to the surface before beginning its space adventure, which might end warming a planet, being captured by a meteor, or plunging into another sun.

When analyzing spectral phenomena, it's important to remember that space is not empty, and light traversing space is sometimes modified by various forms of energy and matter. Some of the unknown spectral lines in our sun are due to modifications of known elements floating through space in shattered form, particularly sodium and calcium, which are atomic casualties of fierce solar elemental battles.

Calcium is the chief element permeating space throughout Orvonton, with our superuniverse being sprinkled with pulverized stone. The cosmic cloud or space blanket consists largely of modified calcium atoms. The stone atom shows remarkable persistence, enduring solar ionization and surviving battering by destructive X-rays and high solar temperatures. Calcium atoms can literally ride light beams for vast distances through space due to the atom's unique structure and behavior. This special calcium atom moves outward by alternate jerks of forward propulsion, grasping and letting go the sunbeam about twenty-five thousand times each second, making stone the chief component of the worlds of space.

The internal temperature of many suns, including our own, is far higher than commonly believed. Inside a sun, virtually no whole atoms exist due to the intensive X-ray bombardment native to such high temperatures. Regardless of what elements appear in the outer layers, those in the interior are rendered similar by the dissociative action of disruptive X-rays, which act as great equalizers of atomic existence.

The surface temperature of our sun is almost 6,000 degrees, rapidly increasing to about 35,000,000 degrees in the central regions. Solar energy comes from multiple sources, listed in order of importance: atomic annihilation, element transmutation, accumulation of universal space-energies, meteors diving into the sun, solar contraction, gravity action at high temperatures, and recaptured light and energies. A regulating blanket of hot gases envelops suns and stabilizes heat loss, maintaining the internal temperature at about 35,000,000 degrees throughout a sun's active life despite the progressive drop in external temperature.

In suns that are connected to space-energy channels, solar energy is released through complex nuclear reaction chains, with the hydrogen-carbon-helium reaction being most common. In this metamorphosis, carbon functions as an energy catalyst without being changed, allowing hydrogen protons to penetrate carbon nuclei. When saturated with four protons, the carbon begins emitting protons as fast as new ones arrive, with the incoming hydrogen particles emerging as helium atoms.

Reducing hydrogen content increases a sun's luminosity, with peak brightness occurring when hydrogen is exhausted. Afterward, gravity contraction maintains brilliance until the star eventually becomes a "white dwarf." In large suns, when hydrogen is depleted and gravity contraction begins, if the body isn't opaque enough to retain internal pressure, a sudden collapse may occur. This happens when "runaway particles" escape the solar interior, causing the star to collapse within days or even minutes, as happened with the giant nova in the Andromeda nebula about fifty years ago, which collapsed in just forty minutes.

The larger suns maintain such powerful gravity control over their electrons that light escapes only with the help of powerful X-rays. These helper rays penetrate all space and maintain basic ultimatonic associations of energy. The major energy losses in a sun's early days, after reaching temperatures over 35,000,000 degrees, come more from ultimatonic leakage than light escape, with these energies escaping to engage in electronic association and energy materialization elsewhere in space.

Atoms and electrons are subject to gravity, but ultimatons are not affected by local material attraction, though they do follow the universal circuit of creation. Our solar center radiates almost one hundred billion tons of actual matter annually, while giant suns lose matter at a prodigious rate during their early growth. A sun's life stabilizes after reaching maximum internal temperature when subatomic energies begin to be released. Sun stability depends on the balance between gravity and heat, with interior gas elasticity supporting the overlying layers of materials in a precise equilibrium that allows our sun to shine at present efficiency for more than twenty-five billion years.

Some variable stars that are pulsating maximally are giving birth to subsidiary systems, many of which will eventually resemble our own sun with its revolving planets. Our sun was in such a state of pulsation when the massive Angona system swung nearby, causing the sun's surface to erupt streams of matter with increasing violence. At closest approach, the limits of solar cohesion were reached, and a vast pinnacle of matter—the ancestor of our solar system—was disgorged.

Most solar systems had origins different from ours, yet gravity always produces the same basic pattern: a central sun or dark island with planets, satellites, subsatellites, and meteors. The physical characteristics of individual worlds are determined by their mode of origin, astronomical situation, and physical environment. Planets with a dual origin like Urantia experience a less violent youth than others, though still undergo mighty upheavals including volcanoes, earthquakes, and storms. Urantia is comparatively isolated on the outskirts of Satania, with one exception being the farthest removed from Jerusem, while Satania itself is near the outer edge of Norlatiadek, currently traversing the outer fringe of Nebadon.