The Seven Superuniverses

15:5.1The bulk of the mass con­tained in the suns and plan­ets of a super­uni­verse orig­i­nates in the neb­u­lar wheels; very lit­tle of super­uni­verse mass is or­ga­nized by the di­rect ac­tion of the power di­rec­tors (as in the con­struc­tion of ar­chi­tec­tural spheres), al­though a con­stantly vary­ing quan­tity of mat­ter orig­i­nates in open space.

15:5.2As to ori­gin, the ma­jor­ity of the suns, plan­ets, and other spheres can be clas­si­fied in one of the fol­low­ing ten groups:

15:5.31. Con­cen­tric Con­trac­tion Rings. Not all neb­u­lae are spi­ral. Many an im­mense neb­ula, in­stead of split­ting into a dou­ble star sys­tem or evolv­ing as a spi­ral, un­der­goes con­den­sa­tion by mul­ti­ple-ring for­ma­tion. For long pe­ri­ods such a neb­ula ap­pears as an enor­mous cen­tral sun sur­rounded by nu­mer­ous gi­gan­tic clouds of en­cir­cling, ring-ap­pear­ing for­ma­tions of mat­ter.

15:5.42. The Whirled Stars em­brace those suns which are thrown off the great mother wheels of highly heated gases. They are not thrown off as rings but in right- and left-handed pro­ces­sions. Whirled stars are also of ori­gin in other-than-spi­ral neb­u­lae.

15:5.53. Grav­ity-ex­plo­sion Plan­ets. When a sun is born of a spi­ral or of a barred neb­ula, not in­fre­quently it is thrown out a con­sid­er­able dis­tance. Such a sun is highly gaseous, and sub­se­quently, af­ter it has some­what cooled and con­densed, it may chance to swing near some enor­mous mass of mat­ter, a gi­gan­tic sun or a dark is­land of space. Such an ap­proach may not be near enough to re­sult in col­li­sion but still near enough to al­low the grav­ity pull of the greater body to start tidal con­vul­sions in the lesser, thus ini­ti­at­ing a se­ries of tidal up­heavals which oc­cur si­mul­ta­ne­ously on op­po­site sides of the con­vulsed sun. At their height these ex­plo­sive erup­tions pro­duce a se­ries of vary­ing-sized ag­gre­ga­tions of mat­ter which may be pro­jected be­yond the grav­ity-recla­ma­tion zone of the erupt­ing sun, thus be­com­ing sta­bi­lized in or­bits of their own around one of the two bod­ies con­cerned in this episode. Later on the larger col­lec­tions of mat­ter unite and grad­u­ally draw the smaller bod­ies to them­selves. In this way many of the solid plan­ets of the lesser sys­tems are brought into ex­is­tence. Your own so­lar sys­tem had just such an ori­gin.

15:5.64. Cen­trifu­gal Plan­e­tary Daugh­ters. Enor­mous suns, when in cer­tain stages of de­vel­op­ment, and if their rev­o­lu­tion­ary rate greatly ac­cel­er­ates, be­gin to throw off large quan­ti­ties of mat­ter which may sub­se­quently be as­sem­bled to form small worlds that con­tinue to en­cir­cle the par­ent sun.

15:5.75. Grav­ity-de­fi­ciency Spheres. There is a crit­i­cal limit to the size of in­di­vid­ual stars. When a sun reaches this limit, un­less it slows down in rev­o­lu­tion­ary rate, it is doomed to split; sun fis­sion oc­curs, and a new dou­ble star of this va­ri­ety is born. Nu­mer­ous small plan­ets may be sub­se­quently formed as a by-prod­uct of this gi­gan­tic dis­rup­tion.

15:5.86. Con­trac­tural Stars. In the smaller sys­tems the largest outer planet some­times draws to it­self its neigh­bor­ing worlds, while those plan­ets near the sun be­gin their ter­mi­nal plunge. With your so­lar sys­tem, such an end would mean that the four in­ner plan­ets would be claimed by the sun, while the ma­jor planet, Jupiter, would be greatly en­larged by cap­tur­ing the re­main­ing worlds. Such an end of a so­lar sys­tem would re­sult in the pro­duc­tion of two ad­ja­cent but un­equal suns, one type of dou­ble star for­ma­tion. Such catas­tro­phes are in­fre­quent ex­cept out on the fringe of the super­uni­verse starry ag­gre­ga­tions.

15:5.97. Cu­mu­la­tive Spheres. From the vast quan­tity of mat­ter cir­cu­lat­ing in space, small plan­ets may slowly ac­cu­mu­late. They grow by me­te­oric ac­cre­tion and by mi­nor col­li­sions. In cer­tain sec­tors of space, con­di­tions fa­vor such forms of plan­e­tary birth. Many an in­hab­ited world has had such an ori­gin.

15:5.10Some of the dense dark is­lands are the di­rect re­sult of the ac­cre­tions of trans­mut­ing en­ergy in space. An­other group of these dark is­lands have come into be­ing by the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of enor­mous quan­ti­ties of cold mat­ter, mere frag­ments and me­te­ors, cir­cu­lat­ing through space. Such ag­gre­ga­tions of mat­ter have never been hot and, ex­cept for den­sity, are in com­po­si­tion very sim­i­lar to Uran­tia.

15:5.118. Burned-out Suns. Some of the dark is­lands of space are burned-out iso­lated suns, all avail­able space-en­ergy hav­ing been emit­ted. The or­ga­nized units of mat­ter ap­prox­i­mate full con­den­sa­tion, vir­tual com­plete con­sol­i­da­tion; and it re­quires ages upon ages for such enor­mous masses of highly con­densed mat­ter to be recharged in the cir­cuits of space and thus to be pre­pared for new cy­cles of uni­verse func­tion fol­low­ing a col­li­sion or some equally re­viv­i­fy­ing cos­mic hap­pen­ing.

15:5.129. Col­li­sional Spheres. In those re­gions of thicker clus­ter­ing, col­li­sions are not un­com­mon. Such an as­tro­nomic read­just­ment is ac­com­pa­nied by tremen­dous en­ergy changes and mat­ter trans­mu­ta­tions. Col­li­sions in­volv­ing dead suns are pe­cu­liarly in­flu­en­tial in cre­at­ing wide­spread en­ergy fluc­tu­a­tions. Col­li­sional de­bris of­ten con­sti­tutes the ma­te­rial nu­cle­uses for the sub­se­quent for­ma­tion of plan­e­tary bod­ies adapted to mor­tal habi­ta­tion.

15:5.1310. Ar­chi­tec­tural Worlds. These are the worlds which are built ac­cord­ing to plans and spec­i­fi­ca­tions for some spe­cial pur­pose, such as Sal­ving­ton, the head­quar­ters of your lo­cal uni­verse, and Uversa, the seat of gov­ern­ment of our super­uni­verse.

15:5.14There are nu­mer­ous other tech­niques for evolv­ing suns and seg­re­gat­ing plan­ets, but the fore­go­ing pro­ce­dures sug­gest the meth­ods whereby the vast ma­jor­ity of stel­lar sys­tems and plan­e­tary fam­i­lies are brought into ex­is­tence. To un­der­take to de­scribe all the var­i­ous tech­niques in­volved in stel­lar meta­mor­pho­sis and plan­e­tary evo­lu­tion would re­quire the nar­ra­tion of al­most one hun­dred dif­fer­ent modes of sun for­ma­tion and plan­e­tary ori­gin. As your star stu­dents scan the heav­ens, they will ob­serve phe­nom­ena in­dica­tive of all these modes of stel­lar evo­lu­tion, but they will sel­dom de­tect ev­i­dence of the for­ma­tion of those small, non­lu­mi­nous col­lec­tions of mat­ter which serve as in­hab­ited plan­ets, the most im­por­tant of the vast ma­te­rial cre­ations.