The Origin of Urantia

57:5.15,000,000,000 years ago your sun was a com­par­a­tively iso­lated blaz­ing orb, hav­ing gath­ered to it­self most of the near-by cir­cu­lat­ing mat­ter of space, rem­nants of the re­cent up­heaval which at­tended its own birth.

57:5.2To­day, your sun has achieved rel­a­tive sta­bil­ity, but its eleven and one-half year sun­spot cy­cles be­tray that it was a vari­able star in its youth. In the early days of your sun the con­tin­ued con­trac­tion and con­se­quent grad­ual in­crease of tem­per­a­ture ini­ti­ated tremen­dous con­vul­sions on its sur­face. These ti­tanic heaves re­quired three and one-half days to com­plete a cy­cle of vary­ing bright­ness. This vari­able state, this pe­ri­odic pul­sa­tion, ren­dered your sun highly re­spon­sive to cer­tain out­side in­flu­ences which were to be shortly en­coun­tered.

57:5.3Thus was the stage of lo­cal space set for the unique ori­gin of Mon­ma­tia, that be­ing the name of your sun’s plan­e­tary fam­ily, the so­lar sys­tem to which your world be­longs. Less than one per cent of the plan­e­tary sys­tems of Or­von­ton have had a sim­i­lar ori­gin.

57:5.44,500,000,000 years ago the enor­mous An­gona sys­tem be­gan its ap­proach to the neigh­bor­hood of this soli­tary sun. The cen­ter of this great sys­tem was a dark gi­ant of space, solid, highly charged, and pos­sess­ing tremen­dous grav­ity pull.

57:5.5As An­gona more closely ap­proached the sun, at mo­ments of max­i­mum ex­pan­sion dur­ing so­lar pul­sa­tions, streams of gaseous ma­te­rial were shot out into space as gi­gan­tic so­lar tongues. At first these flam­ing gas tongues would in­vari­ably fall back into the sun, but as An­gona drew nearer and nearer, the grav­ity pull of the gi­gan­tic vis­i­tor be­came so great that these tongues of gas would break off at cer­tain points, the roots falling back into the sun while the outer sec­tions would be­come de­tached to form in­de­pen­dent bod­ies of mat­ter, so­lar me­te­orites, which im­me­di­ately started to re­volve about the sun in el­lip­ti­cal or­bits of their own.

57:5.6As the An­gona sys­tem drew nearer, the so­lar ex­tru­sions grew larger and larger; more and more mat­ter was drawn from the sun to be­come in­de­pen­dent cir­cu­lat­ing bod­ies in sur­round­ing space. This sit­u­a­tion de­vel­oped for about five hun­dred thou­sand years un­til An­gona made its clos­est ap­proach to the sun; where­upon the sun, in con­junc­tion with one of its pe­ri­odic in­ter­nal con­vul­sions, ex­pe­ri­enced a par­tial dis­rup­tion; from op­po­site sides and si­mul­ta­ne­ously, enor­mous vol­umes of mat­ter were dis­gorged. From the An­gona side there was drawn out a vast col­umn of so­lar gases, rather pointed at both ends and markedly bulging at the cen­ter, which be­came per­ma­nently de­tached from the im­me­di­ate grav­ity con­trol of the sun.

57:5.7This great col­umn of so­lar gases which was thus sep­a­rated from the sun sub­se­quently evolved into the twelve plan­ets of the so­lar sys­tem. The reper­cus­sional ejec­tion of gas from the op­po­site side of the sun in tidal sym­pa­thy with the ex­tru­sion of this gi­gan­tic so­lar sys­tem an­ces­tor, has since con­densed into the me­te­ors and space dust of the so­lar sys­tem, al­though much, very much, of this mat­ter was sub­se­quently re­cap­tured by so­lar grav­ity as the An­gona sys­tem re­ceded into re­mote space.

57:5.8Al­though An­gona suc­ceeded in draw­ing away the an­ces­tral ma­te­rial of the so­lar sys­tem plan­ets and the enor­mous vol­ume of mat­ter now cir­cu­lat­ing about the sun as as­ter­oids and me­te­ors, it did not se­cure for it­self any of this so­lar mat­ter. The vis­it­ing sys­tem did not come quite close enough to ac­tu­ally steal any of the sun’s sub­stance, but it did swing suf­fi­ciently close to draw off into the in­ter­ven­ing space all of the ma­te­rial com­pris­ing the pres­ent-day so­lar sys­tem.

57:5.9The five in­ner and five outer plan­ets soon formed in minia­ture from the cool­ing and con­dens­ing nu­cle­uses in the less mas­sive and ta­per­ing ends of the gi­gan­tic grav­ity bulge which An­gona had suc­ceeded in de­tach­ing from the sun, while Sat­urn and Jupiter were formed from the more mas­sive and bulging cen­tral por­tions. The pow­er­ful grav­ity pull of Jupiter and Sat­urn early cap­tured most of the ma­te­rial stolen from An­gona as the ret­ro­grade mo­tion of cer­tain of their satel­lites bears wit­ness.

57:5.10Jupiter and Sat­urn, be­ing de­rived from the very cen­ter of the enor­mous col­umn of super­heated so­lar gases, con­tained so much highly heated sun ma­te­rial that they shone with a bril­liant light and emit­ted enor­mous vol­umes of heat; they were in re­al­ity sec­ondary suns for a short pe­riod af­ter their for­ma­tion as sep­a­rate space bod­ies. These two largest of the so­lar sys­tem plan­ets have re­mained largely gaseous to this day, not even yet hav­ing cooled off to the point of com­plete con­den­sa­tion or so­lid­i­fi­ca­tion.

57:5.11The gas-con­trac­tion nu­cle­uses of the other ten plan­ets soon reached the stage of so­lid­i­fi­ca­tion and so be­gan to draw to them­selves in­creas­ing quan­ti­ties of the me­te­oric mat­ter cir­cu­lat­ing in near-by space. The worlds of the so­lar sys­tem thus had a dou­ble ori­gin: nu­cle­uses of gas con­den­sa­tion later on aug­mented by the cap­ture of enor­mous quan­ti­ties of me­te­ors. In­deed they still con­tinue to cap­ture me­te­ors, but in greatly less­ened num­bers.

57:5.12The plan­ets do not swing around the sun in the equa­to­rial plane of their so­lar mother, which they would do if they had been thrown off by so­lar rev­o­lu­tion. Rather, they travel in the plane of the An­gona so­lar ex­tru­sion, which ex­isted at a con­sid­er­able an­gle to the plane of the sun’s equa­tor.

57:5.13While An­gona was un­able to cap­ture any of the so­lar mass, your sun did add to its meta­mor­phos­ing plan­e­tary fam­ily some of the cir­cu­lat­ing space ma­te­rial of the vis­it­ing sys­tem. Due to the in­tense grav­ity field of An­gona, its trib­u­tary plan­e­tary fam­ily pur­sued or­bits of con­sid­er­able dis­tance from the dark gi­ant; and shortly af­ter the ex­tru­sion of the so­lar sys­tem an­ces­tral mass and while An­gona was yet in the vicin­ity of the sun, three of the ma­jor plan­ets of the An­gona sys­tem swung so near to the mas­sive so­lar sys­tem an­ces­tor that its grav­i­ta­tional pull, aug­mented by that of the sun, was suf­fi­cient to over­bal­ance the grav­ity grasp of An­gona and to per­ma­nently de­tach these three trib­u­taries of the ce­les­tial wan­derer.

57:5.14All of the so­lar sys­tem ma­te­rial de­rived from the sun was orig­i­nally en­dowed with a ho­mo­ge­neous di­rec­tion of or­bital swing, and had it not been for the in­tru­sion of these three for­eign space bod­ies, all so­lar sys­tem ma­te­rial would still main­tain the same di­rec­tion of or­bital move­ment. As it was, the im­pact of the three An­gona trib­u­taries in­jected new and for­eign di­rec­tional forces into the emerg­ing so­lar sys­tem with the re­sul­tant ap­pear­ance of ret­ro­grade mo­tion. Ret­ro­grade mo­tion in any as­tro­nomic sys­tem is al­ways ac­ci­den­tal and al­ways ap­pears as a re­sult of the col­li­sional im­pact of for­eign space bod­ies. Such col­li­sions may not al­ways pro­duce ret­ro­grade mo­tion, but no ret­ro­grade ever ap­pears ex­cept in a sys­tem con­tain­ing masses which have di­verse ori­gins.