The Seven Superuniverses

15:6.1Ir­re­spec­tive of ori­gin, the var­i­ous spheres of space are clas­si­fi­able into the fol­low­ing ma­jor di­vi­sions:

15:6.21. The suns—the stars of space.

15:6.32. The dark is­lands of space.

15:6.43. Mi­nor space bod­ies—comets, me­te­ors, and plan­etes­i­mals.

15:6.54. The plan­ets, in­clud­ing the in­hab­ited worlds.

15:6.65. Ar­chi­tec­tural spheres—worlds made to or­der.

15:6.7With the ex­cep­tion of the ar­chi­tec­tural spheres, all space bod­ies have had an evo­lu­tion­ary ori­gin, evo­lu­tion­ary in the sense that they have not been brought into be­ing by fiat of De­ity, evo­lu­tion­ary in the sense that the cre­ative acts of God have un­folded by a time-space tech­nique through the op­er­a­tion of many of the cre­ated and even­tu­ated in­tel­li­gences of De­ity.

15:6.8The Suns. These are the stars of space in all their var­i­ous stages of ex­is­tence. Some are soli­tary evolv­ing space sys­tems; oth­ers are dou­ble stars, con­tract­ing or dis­ap­pear­ing plan­e­tary sys­tems. The stars of space ex­ist in no less than a thou­sand dif­fer­ent states and stages. You are fa­mil­iar with suns that emit light ac­com­pa­nied by heat; but there are also suns which shine with­out heat.

15:6.9The tril­lions upon tril­lions of years that an or­di­nary sun will con­tinue to give out heat and light well il­lus­trates the vast store of en­ergy which each unit of mat­ter con­tains. The ac­tual en­ergy stored in these in­vis­i­ble par­ti­cles of phys­i­cal mat­ter is well-nigh unimag­in­able. And this en­ergy be­comes al­most wholly avail­able as light when sub­jected to the tremen­dous heat pres­sure and the as­so­ci­ated en­ergy ac­tiv­i­ties which pre­vail in the in­te­rior of the blaz­ing suns. Still other con­di­tions en­able these suns to trans­form and send forth much of the en­ergy of space which comes their way in the es­tab­lished space cir­cuits. Many phases of phys­i­cal en­ergy and all forms of mat­ter are at­tracted to, and sub­se­quently dis­tributed by, the so­lar dy­namos. In this way the suns serve as lo­cal ac­cel­er­a­tors of en­ergy cir­cu­la­tion, act­ing as au­to­matic power-con­trol sta­tions.

15:6.10The super­uni­verse of Or­von­ton is il­lu­mi­nated and warmed by more than ten tril­lion blaz­ing suns. These suns are the stars of your ob­serv­able as­tro­nomic sys­tem. More than two tril­lion are too dis­tant and too small ever to be seen from Uran­tia. But in the mas­ter uni­verse there are as many suns as there are glasses of wa­ter in the oceans of your world.

15:6.11The Dark Is­lands of Space. These are the dead suns and other large ag­gre­ga­tions of mat­ter de­void of light and heat. The dark is­lands are some­times enor­mous in mass and ex­ert a pow­er­ful in­flu­ence in uni­verse equi­lib­rium and en­ergy ma­nip­u­la­tion. The den­sity of some of these large masses is well-nigh un­be­liev­able. And this great con­cen­tra­tion of mass en­ables these dark is­lands to func­tion as pow­er­ful bal­ance wheels, hold­ing large neigh­bor­ing sys­tems in ef­fec­tive leash. They hold the grav­ity bal­ance of power in many con­stel­la­tions; many phys­i­cal sys­tems which would oth­er­wise speed­ily dive to de­struc­tion in near-by suns are held se­curely in the grav­ity grasp of these guard­ian dark is­lands. It is be­cause of this func­tion that we can lo­cate them ac­cu­rately. We have mea­sured the grav­ity pull of the lu­mi­nous bod­ies, and we can there­fore cal­cu­late the ex­act size and lo­ca­tion of the dark is­lands of space which so ef­fec­tively func­tion to hold a given sys­tem steady in its course.

15:6.12Mi­nor Space Bod­ies. The me­te­ors and other small par­ti­cles of mat­ter cir­cu­lat­ing and evolv­ing in space con­sti­tute an enor­mous ag­gre­gate of en­ergy and ma­te­rial sub­stance.

15:6.13Many comets are un­estab­lished wild off­spring of the so­lar mother wheels, which are be­ing grad­u­ally brought un­der con­trol of the cen­tral gov­ern­ing sun. Comets also have nu­mer­ous other ori­gins. A comet’s tail points away from the at­tract­ing body or sun be­cause of the elec­tri­cal re­ac­tion of its highly ex­panded gases and be­cause of the ac­tual pres­sure of light and other en­er­gies em­a­nat­ing from the sun. This phe­nom­e­non con­sti­tutes one of the pos­i­tive proofs of the re­al­ity of light and its as­so­ci­ated en­er­gies; it demon­strates that light has weight. Light is a real sub­stance, not sim­ply waves of hy­po­thet­i­cal ether.

15:6.14The Plan­ets. These are the larger ag­gre­ga­tions of mat­ter which fol­low an or­bit around a sun or some other space body; they range in size from plan­etes­i­mals to enor­mous gaseous, liq­uid, or solid spheres. The cold worlds which have been built up by the as­sem­blage of float­ing space ma­te­rial, when they hap­pen to be in proper re­la­tion to a near-by sun, are the more ideal plan­ets to har­bor in­tel­li­gent in­hab­i­tants. The dead suns are not, as a rule, suited to life; they are usu­ally too far away from a liv­ing, blaz­ing sun, and fur­ther, they are al­to­gether too mas­sive; grav­ity is tremen­dous at the sur­face.

15:6.15In your super­uni­verse not one cool planet in forty is hab­it­able by be­ings of your or­der. And, of course, the super­heated suns and the frigid out­ly­ing worlds are un­fit to har­bor higher life. In your so­lar sys­tem only three plan­ets are at pres­ent suited to har­bor life. Uran­tia, in size, den­sity, and lo­ca­tion, is in many re­spects ideal for hu­man habi­ta­tion.

15:6.16The laws of phys­i­cal-en­ergy be­hav­ior are ba­si­cally uni­ver­sal, but lo­cal in­flu­ences have much to do with the phys­i­cal con­di­tions which pre­vail on in­di­vid­ual plan­ets and in lo­cal sys­tems. An al­most end­less va­ri­ety of crea­ture life and other liv­ing man­i­fes­ta­tions char­ac­ter­izes the count­less worlds of space. There are, how­ever, cer­tain points of sim­i­lar­ity in a group of worlds as­so­ci­ated in a given sys­tem, while there also is a uni­verse pat­tern of in­tel­li­gent life. There are phys­i­cal re­la­tion­ships among those plan­e­tary sys­tems which be­long to the same phys­i­cal cir­cuit, and which closely fol­low each other in the end­less swing around the cir­cle of uni­verses.