Physical Aspects of the Local Universe

41:7.1The in­ter­nal tem­per­a­ture of many of the suns, even your own, is much higher than is com­monly be­lieved. In the in­te­rior of a sun prac­ti­cally no whole atoms ex­ist; they are all more or less shat­tered by the in­ten­sive X-ray bom­bard­ment which is in­dige­nous to such high tem­per­a­tures. Re­gard­less of what ma­te­rial el­e­ments may ap­pear in the outer lay­ers of a sun, those in the in­te­rior are ren­dered very sim­i­lar by the dis­so­cia­tive ac­tion of the dis­rup­tive X rays. X ray is the great lev­eler of atomic ex­is­tence.

41:7.2The sur­face tem­per­a­ture of your sun is al­most 6,000 de­grees, but it rapidly in­creases as the in­te­rior is pen­e­trated un­til it at­tains the un­be­liev­able height of about 35,000,000 de­grees in the cen­tral re­gions. (All of these tem­per­a­tures re­fer to your Fahren­heit scale.)

41:7.3All of these phe­nom­ena are in­dica­tive of enor­mous en­ergy ex­pen­di­ture, and the sources of so­lar en­ergy, named in the or­der of their im­por­tance, are:

41:7.41. An­ni­hi­la­tion of atoms and, even­tu­ally, of elec­trons.

41:7.52. Trans­mu­ta­tion of el­e­ments, in­clud­ing the ra­dioac­tive group of en­er­gies thus lib­er­ated.

41:7.63. The ac­cu­mu­la­tion and trans­mis­sion of cer­tain uni­ver­sal space-en­er­gies.

41:7.74. Space mat­ter and me­te­ors which are in­ces­santly div­ing into the blaz­ing suns.

41:7.85. So­lar con­trac­tion; the cool­ing and con­se­quent con­trac­tion of a sun yields en­ergy and heat some­times greater than that sup­plied by space mat­ter.

41:7.96. Grav­ity ac­tion at high tem­per­a­tures trans­forms cer­tain cir­cuitized power into ra­dia­tive en­er­gies.

41:7.107. Re­cap­tive light and other mat­ter which are drawn back into the sun af­ter hav­ing left it, to­gether with other en­er­gies hav­ing ex­tra­so­lar ori­gin.

41:7.11There ex­ists a reg­u­lat­ing blan­ket of hot gases (some­times mil­lions of de­grees in tem­per­a­ture) which en­velops the suns, and which acts to sta­bi­lize heat loss and oth­er­wise pre­vent haz­ardous fluc­tu­a­tions of heat dis­si­pa­tion. Dur­ing the ac­tive life of a sun the in­ter­nal tem­per­a­ture of 35,000,000 de­grees re­mains about the same quite re­gard­less of the pro­gres­sive fall of the ex­ter­nal tem­per­a­ture.

41:7.12You might try to vi­su­al­ize 35,000,000 de­grees of heat, in as­so­ci­a­tion with cer­tain grav­ity pres­sures, as the elec­tronic boil­ing point. Un­der such pres­sure and at such tem­per­a­ture all atoms are de­graded and bro­ken up into their elec­tronic and other an­ces­tral com­po­nents; even the elec­trons and other as­so­ci­a­tions of ul­ti­ma­tons may be bro­ken up, but the suns are not able to de­grade the ul­ti­ma­tons.

41:7.13These so­lar tem­per­a­tures op­er­ate to enor­mously speed up the ul­ti­ma­tons and the elec­trons, at least such of the lat­ter as con­tinue to main­tain their ex­is­tence un­der these con­di­tions. You will re­al­ize what high tem­per­a­ture means by way of the ac­cel­er­a­tion of ul­ti­ma­tonic and elec­tronic ac­tiv­i­ties when you pause to con­sider that one drop of or­di­nary wa­ter con­tains over one bil­lion tril­lions of atoms. This is the en­ergy of more than one hun­dred horse­power ex­erted con­tin­u­ously for two years. The to­tal heat now given out by the so­lar sys­tem sun each sec­ond is suf­fi­cient to boil all the wa­ter in all the oceans on Uran­tia in just one sec­ond of time.

41:7.14Only those suns which func­tion in the di­rect chan­nels of the main streams of uni­verse en­ergy can shine on for­ever. Such so­lar fur­naces blaze on in­def­i­nitely, be­ing able to re­plen­ish their ma­te­rial losses by the in­take of space-force and anal­o­gous cir­cu­lat­ing en­ergy. But stars far re­moved from these chief chan­nels of recharg­ing are des­tined to un­dergo en­ergy de­ple­tion—grad­u­ally cool off and even­tu­ally burn out.

41:7.15Such dead or dy­ing suns can be re­ju­ve­nated by col­li­sional im­pact or can be recharged by cer­tain non­lu­mi­nous en­ergy is­lands of space or through grav­ity-rob­bery of near-by smaller suns or sys­tems. The ma­jor­ity of dead suns will ex­pe­ri­ence re­viv­i­fi­ca­tion by these or other evo­lu­tion­ary tech­niques. Those which are not thus even­tu­ally recharged are des­tined to un­dergo dis­rup­tion by mass ex­plo­sion when the grav­ity con­den­sa­tion at­tains the crit­i­cal level of ul­ti­ma­tonic con­den­sa­tion of en­ergy pres­sure. Such dis­ap­pear­ing suns thus be­come en­ergy of the rarest form, ad­mirably adapted to en­er­gize other more fa­vor­ably sit­u­ated suns.