Physical Aspects of the Local Universe

41:10.1Some 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.

41:10.2The 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.

41:10.3The 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.

41:10.4Dur­ing 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.

41:10.5Uran­tia 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.]