Life Establishment on Urantia

58:2.1The plan­e­tary at­mo­sphere fil­ters through to the earth about one two-bil­lionth of the sun’s to­tal light em­a­na­tion. If the light falling upon North Amer­ica were paid for at the rate of two cents per kilo­watt-hour, the an­nual light bill would be up­ward of 800 quadrillion dol­lars. Chicago’s bill for sun­shine would amount to con­sid­er­ably over 100 mil­lion dol­lars a day. And it should be re­mem­bered that you re­ceive from the sun other forms of en­ergy—light is not the only so­lar con­tri­bu­tion reach­ing your at­mo­sphere. Vast so­lar en­er­gies pour in upon Uran­tia em­brac­ing wave lengths rang­ing both above and be­low the rec­og­ni­tion range of hu­man vi­sion.

58:2.2The earth’s at­mo­sphere is all but opaque to much of the so­lar ra­di­a­tion at the ex­treme ul­tra­vi­o­let end of the spec­trum. Most of these short wave lengths are ab­sorbed by a layer of ozone which ex­ists through­out a level about ten miles above the sur­face of the earth, and which ex­tends space­ward for an­other ten miles. The ozone per­me­at­ing this re­gion, at con­di­tions pre­vail­ing on the earth’s sur­face, would make a layer only one tenth of an inch thick; nev­er­the­less, this rel­a­tively small and ap­par­ently in­signif­i­cant amount of ozone pro­tects Uran­tia in­hab­i­tants from the ex­cess of these dan­ger­ous and de­struc­tive ul­tra­vi­o­let ra­di­a­tions pres­ent in sun­light. But were this ozone layer just a tri­fle thicker, you would be de­prived of the highly im­por­tant and health-giv­ing ul­tra­vi­o­let rays which now reach the earth’s sur­face, and which are an­ces­tral to one of the most es­sen­tial of your vi­ta­mins.

58:2.3And yet some of the less imag­i­na­tive of your mor­tal mech­a­nists in­sist on view­ing ma­te­rial cre­ation and hu­man evo­lu­tion as an ac­ci­dent. The Uran­tia mid­way­ers have as­sem­bled over fifty thou­sand facts of physics and chem­istry which they deem to be in­com­pat­i­ble with the laws of ac­ci­den­tal chance, and which they con­tend un­mis­tak­ably demon­strate the pres­ence of in­tel­li­gent pur­pose in the ma­te­rial cre­ation. And all of this takes no ac­count of their cat­a­logue of more than one hun­dred thou­sand find­ings out­side the do­main of physics and chem­istry which they main­tain prove the pres­ence of mind in the plan­ning, cre­ation, and main­te­nance of the ma­te­rial cos­mos.

58:2.4Your sun pours forth a ver­i­ta­ble flood of death-deal­ing rays, and your pleas­ant life on Uran­tia is due to the “for­tu­itous” in­flu­ence of more than two-score ap­par­ently ac­ci­den­tal pro­tec­tive op­er­a­tions sim­i­lar to the ac­tion of this unique ozone layer.

58:2.5Were it not for the “blan­ket­ing” ef­fect of the at­mo­sphere at night, heat would be lost by ra­di­a­tion so rapidly that life would be im­pos­si­ble of main­te­nance ex­cept by ar­ti­fi­cial pro­vi­sion.

58:2.6The lower five or six miles of the earth’s at­mo­sphere is the tro­po­sphere; this is the re­gion of winds and air cur­rents which pro­vide weather phe­nom­ena. Above this re­gion is the in­ner iono­sphere and next above is the strato­sphere. As­cend­ing from the sur­face of the earth, the tem­per­a­ture steadily falls for six or eight miles, at which height it reg­is­ters around 70 de­grees be­low zero F. This tem­per­a­ture range of from 65 to 70 de­grees be­low zero F. is un­changed in the fur­ther as­cent for forty miles; this realm of con­stant tem­per­a­ture is the strato­sphere. At a height of forty-five or fifty miles, the tem­per­a­ture be­gins to rise, and this in­crease con­tin­ues un­til, at the level of the au­ro­ral dis­plays, a tem­per­a­ture of 1200° F. is at­tained, and it is this in­tense heat that ion­izes the oxy­gen. But tem­per­a­ture in such a rar­efied at­mo­sphere is hardly com­pa­ra­ble with heat reck­on­ing at the sur­face of the earth. Bear in mind that one half of all your at­mo­sphere is to be found in the first three miles. The height of the earth’s at­mo­sphere is in­di­cated by the high­est au­ro­ral stream­ers—about four hun­dred miles.

58:2.7Au­ro­ral phe­nom­ena are di­rectly re­lated to sun­spots, those so­lar cy­clones which whirl in op­po­site di­rec­tions above and be­low the so­lar equa­tor, even as do the ter­res­trial trop­i­cal hur­ri­canes. Such at­mo­spheric dis­tur­bances whirl in op­po­site di­rec­tions when oc­cur­ring above or be­low the equa­tor.

58:2.8The power of sun­spots to al­ter light fre­quen­cies shows that these so­lar storm cen­ters func­tion as enor­mous mag­nets. Such mag­netic fields are able to hurl charged par­ti­cles from the sun­spot craters out through space to the earth’s outer at­mo­sphere, where their ion­iz­ing in­flu­ence pro­duces such spec­tac­u­lar au­ro­ral dis­plays. There­fore do you have the great­est au­ro­ral phe­nom­ena when sun­spots are at their height—or soon there­after—at which time the spots are more gen­er­ally equa­to­ri­ally sit­u­ated.

58:2.9Even the com­pass nee­dle is re­spon­sive to this so­lar in­flu­ence since it turns slightly to the east as the sun rises and slightly to the west as the sun nears set­ting. This hap­pens ev­ery day, but dur­ing the height of sun­spot cy­cles this vari­a­tion of the com­pass is twice as great. These di­ur­nal wan­der­ings of the com­pass are in re­sponse to the in­creased ion­iza­tion of the up­per at­mo­sphere, which is pro­duced by the sun­light.

58:2.10It is the pres­ence of two dif­fer­ent lev­els of elec­tri­fied con­duct­ing re­gions in the super­strat­o­sphere that ac­counts for the long-dis­tance trans­mis­sion of your long- and short-wave ra­dio­broad­casts. Your broad­cast­ing is some­times dis­turbed by the ter­rific storms which oc­ca­sion­ally rage in the realms of these outer iono­spheres.