The Origin of Urantia

57:3.1The enor­mous neb­ula now be­gan grad­u­ally to as­sume the spi­ral form and to be­come clearly vis­i­ble to the as­tron­o­mers of even dis­tant uni­verses. This is the nat­u­ral his­tory of most neb­u­lae; be­fore they be­gin to throw off suns and start upon the work of uni­verse build­ing, these sec­ondary space neb­u­lae are usu­ally ob­served as spi­ral phe­nom­ena.

57:3.2The near-by star stu­dents of that far­away era, as they ob­served this meta­mor­pho­sis of the And­ro­no­ver neb­ula, saw ex­actly what twen­ti­eth-cen­tury as­tron­o­mers see when they turn their tele­scopes space­ward and view the pres­ent-age spi­ral neb­u­lae of ad­ja­cent outer space.

57:3.3About the time of the at­tain­ment of the max­i­mum of mass, the grav­ity con­trol of the gaseous con­tent com­menced to weaken, and there en­sued the stage of gas es­cape­ment, the gas stream­ing forth as two gi­gan­tic and dis­tinct arms, which took ori­gin on op­po­site sides of the mother mass. The rapid rev­o­lu­tions of this enor­mous cen­tral core soon im­parted a spi­ral ap­pear­ance to these two pro­ject­ing gas streams. The cool­ing and sub­se­quent con­den­sa­tion of por­tions of these pro­trud­ing arms even­tu­ally pro­duced their knot­ted ap­pear­ance. These denser por­tions were vast sys­tems and sub­sys­tems of phys­i­cal mat­ter whirling through space in the midst of the gaseous cloud of the neb­ula while be­ing held se­curely within the grav­ity grasp of the mother wheel.

57:3.4But the neb­ula had be­gun to con­tract, and the in­crease in the rate of rev­o­lu­tion fur­ther less­ened grav­ity con­trol; and ere­long, the outer gaseous re­gions be­gan ac­tu­ally to es­cape from the im­me­di­ate em­brace of the neb­u­lar nu­cleus, pass­ing out into space on cir­cuits of ir­reg­u­lar out­line, re­turn­ing to the nu­clear re­gions to com­plete their cir­cuits, and so on. But this was only a tem­po­rary stage of neb­u­lar pro­gres­sion. The ever-in­creas­ing rate of whirling was soon to throw enor­mous suns off into space on in­de­pen­dent cir­cuits.

57:3.5And this is what hap­pened in And­ro­no­ver ages upon ages ago. The en­ergy wheel grew and grew un­til it at­tained its max­i­mum of ex­pan­sion, and then, when con­trac­tion set in, it whirled on faster and faster un­til, even­tu­ally, the crit­i­cal cen­trifu­gal stage was reached and the great breakup be­gan.

57:3.6500,000,000,000 years ago the first And­ro­no­ver sun was born. This blaz­ing streak broke away from the mother grav­ity grasp and tore out into space on an in­de­pen­dent ad­ven­ture in the cos­mos of cre­ation. Its or­bit was de­ter­mined by its path of es­cape. Such young suns quickly be­come spher­i­cal and start out on their long and event­ful ca­reers as the stars of space. Ex­cept­ing ter­mi­nal neb­u­lar nu­cle­uses, the vast ma­jor­ity of Or­von­ton suns have had an anal­o­gous birth. These es­cap­ing suns pass through var­ied pe­ri­ods of evo­lu­tion and sub­se­quent uni­verse ser­vice.

57:3.7400,000,000,000 years ago be­gan the re­cap­tive pe­riod of the And­ro­no­ver neb­ula. Many of the near-by and smaller suns were re­cap­tured as a re­sult of the grad­ual en­large­ment and fur­ther con­den­sa­tion of the mother nu­cleus. Very soon there was in­au­gu­rated the ter­mi­nal phase of neb­u­lar con­den­sa­tion, the pe­riod which al­ways pre­cedes the fi­nal seg­re­ga­tion of these im­mense space ag­gre­ga­tions of en­ergy and mat­ter.

57:3.8It was scarcely a mil­lion years sub­se­quent to this epoch that Mi­chael of Neb­a­don, a Cre­ator Son of Par­a­dise, se­lected this dis­in­te­grat­ing neb­ula as the site of his ad­ven­ture in uni­verse build­ing. Al­most im­me­di­ately the ar­chi­tec­tural worlds of Sal­ving­ton and the one hun­dred con­stel­la­tion head­quar­ters groups of plan­ets were be­gun. It re­quired al­most one mil­lion years to com­plete these clus­ters of spe­cially cre­ated worlds. The lo­cal sys­tem head­quar­ters plan­ets were con­structed over a pe­riod ex­tend­ing from that time to about five bil­lion years ago.

57:3.9300,000,000,000 years ago the And­ro­no­ver so­lar cir­cuits were well es­tab­lished, and the neb­u­lar sys­tem was pass­ing through a tran­sient pe­riod of rel­a­tive phys­i­cal sta­bil­ity. About this time the staff of Mi­chael ar­rived on Sal­ving­ton, and the Uversa gov­ern­ment of Or­von­ton ex­tended phys­i­cal rec­og­ni­tion to the lo­cal uni­verse of Neb­a­don.

57:3.10200,000,000,000 years ago wit­nessed the pro­gres­sion of con­trac­tion and con­den­sa­tion with enor­mous heat gen­er­a­tion in the And­ro­no­ver cen­tral clus­ter, or nu­clear mass. Rel­a­tive space ap­peared even in the re­gions near the cen­tral mother-sun wheel. The outer re­gions were be­com­ing more sta­bi­lized and bet­ter or­ga­nized; some plan­ets re­volv­ing around the new­born suns had cooled suf­fi­ciently to be suit­able for life im­plan­ta­tion. The old­est in­hab­ited plan­ets of Neb­a­don date from these times.

57:3.11Now the com­pleted uni­verse mech­a­nism of Neb­a­don first be­gins to func­tion, and Mi­chael’s cre­ation is reg­is­tered on Uversa as a uni­verse of in­hab­i­ta­tion and pro­gres­sive mor­tal as­cen­sion.

57:3.12100,000,000,000 years ago the neb­u­lar apex of con­den­sa­tion ten­sion was reached; the point of max­i­mum heat ten­sion was at­tained. This crit­i­cal stage of grav­ity-heat con­tention some­times lasts for ages, but sooner or later, heat wins the strug­gle with grav­ity, and the spec­tac­u­lar pe­riod of sun dis­per­sion be­gins. And this marks the end of the sec­ondary ca­reer of a space neb­ula.