dark islands of space

41:2.2Sa­ta­nia it­self is com­posed of over seven thou­sand as­tro­nom­i­cal groups, or phys­i­cal sys­tems, few of which had an ori­gin sim­i­lar to that of your so­lar sys­tem. The as­tro­nomic cen­ter of Sa­ta­nia is an enor­mous dark is­land of space which, with its at­ten­dant spheres, is sit­u­ated not far from the head­quar­ters of the sys­tem gov­ern­ment.

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.

15:8.6When mass be­comes over­ag­gre­gated and threat­ens to un­bal­ance en­ergy, to de­plete the phys­i­cal power cir­cuits, the phys­i­cal con­trol­lers in­ter­vene un­less grav­ity’s own fur­ther ten­dency to over­ma­te­ri­al­ize en­ergy is de­feated by the oc­cur­rence of a col­li­sion among the dead gi­ants of space, thus in an in­stant com­pletely dis­si­pat­ing the cu­mu­la­tive col­lec­tions of grav­ity. In these col­li­sional episodes enor­mous masses of mat­ter are sud­denly con­verted into the rarest form of en­ergy, and the strug­gle for uni­ver­sal equi­lib­rium is be­gun anew. Even­tu­ally the larger phys­i­cal sys­tems be­come sta­bi­lized, be­come phys­i­cally set­tled, and are swung into the bal­anced and es­tab­lished cir­cuits of the super­uni­verses. Sub­se­quent to this event no more col­li­sions or other dev­as­tat­ing catas­tro­phes will oc­cur in such es­tab­lished sys­tems.

42:4.9The blaz­ing suns can trans­form mat­ter into var­i­ous forms of en­ergy, but the dark worlds and all outer space can slow down elec­tronic and ul­ti­ma­tonic ac­tiv­ity to the point of con­vert­ing these en­er­gies into the mat­ter of the realms. Cer­tain elec­tronic as­so­ci­a­tions of a close na­ture, as well as many of the ba­sic as­so­ci­a­tions of nu­clear mat­ter, are formed in the ex­ceed­ingly low tem­per­a­tures of open space, be­ing later aug­mented by as­so­ci­a­tion with larger ac­cre­tions of ma­te­ri­al­iz­ing en­ergy.

15:8.5Given a suf­fi­cient du­ra­tion of re­tard­ing in­flu­ence, grav­ity would even­tu­ally con­vert all en­ergy into mat­ter were it not for two fac­tors: First, be­cause of the anti­grav­ity in­flu­ences of the en­ergy con­trol­lers, and sec­ond, be­cause or­ga­nized mat­ter tends to dis­in­te­grate un­der cer­tain con­di­tions found in very hot stars and un­der cer­tain pe­cu­liar con­di­tions in space near highly en­er­gized cold bod­ies of con­densed mat­ter.

15:6.11The Dark Is­lands of Space. These are the dead suns and other large ag­gre­ga­tions of mat­ter de­void of light and heat. The dark is­lands are some­times enor­mous in mass and ex­ert a pow­er­ful in­flu­ence in uni­verse equi­lib­rium and en­ergy ma­nip­u­la­tion. The den­sity of some of these large masses is well-nigh un­be­liev­able. And this great con­cen­tra­tion of mass en­ables these dark is­lands to func­tion as pow­er­ful bal­ance wheels, hold­ing large neigh­bor­ing sys­tems in ef­fec­tive leash. They hold the grav­ity bal­ance of power in many con­stel­la­tions; many phys­i­cal sys­tems which would oth­er­wise speed­ily dive to de­struc­tion in near-by suns are held se­curely in the grav­ity grasp of these guard­ian dark is­lands. It is be­cause of this func­tion that we can lo­cate them ac­cu­rately. We have mea­sured the grav­ity pull of the lu­mi­nous bod­ies, and we can there­fore cal­cu­late the ex­act size and lo­ca­tion of the dark is­lands of space which so ef­fec­tively func­tion to hold a given sys­tem steady in its course.

15:5.53. Grav­ity-ex­plo­sion Plan­ets. When a sun is born of a spi­ral or of a barred neb­ula, not in­fre­quently it is thrown out a con­sid­er­able dis­tance. Such a sun is highly gaseous, and sub­se­quently, af­ter it has some­what cooled and con­densed, it may chance to swing near some enor­mous mass of mat­ter, a gi­gan­tic sun or a dark is­land of space. Such an ap­proach may not be near enough to re­sult in col­li­sion but still near enough to al­low the grav­ity pull of the greater body to start tidal con­vul­sions in the lesser, thus ini­ti­at­ing a se­ries of tidal up­heavals which oc­cur si­mul­ta­ne­ously on op­po­site sides of the con­vulsed sun. At their height these ex­plo­sive erup­tions pro­duce a se­ries of vary­ing-sized ag­gre­ga­tions of mat­ter which may be pro­jected be­yond the grav­ity-recla­ma­tion zone of the erupt­ing sun, thus be­com­ing sta­bi­lized in or­bits of their own around one of the two bod­ies con­cerned in this episode. Later on the larger col­lec­tions of mat­ter unite and grad­u­ally draw the smaller bod­ies to them­selves. In this way many of the solid plan­ets of the lesser sys­tems are brought into ex­is­tence. Your own so­lar sys­tem had just such an ori­gin.

15:5.10Some of the dense dark is­lands are the di­rect re­sult of the ac­cre­tions of trans­mut­ing en­ergy in space. An­other group of these dark is­lands have come into be­ing by the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of enor­mous quan­ti­ties of cold mat­ter, mere frag­ments and me­te­ors, cir­cu­lat­ing through space. Such ag­gre­ga­tions of mat­ter have never been hot and, ex­cept for den­sity, are in com­po­si­tion very sim­i­lar to Uran­tia.

15:5.118. Burned-out Suns. Some of the dark is­lands of space are burned-out iso­lated suns, all avail­able space-en­ergy hav­ing been emit­ted. The or­ga­nized units of mat­ter ap­prox­i­mate full con­den­sa­tion, vir­tual com­plete con­sol­i­da­tion; and it re­quires ages upon ages for such enor­mous masses of highly con­densed mat­ter to be recharged in the cir­cuits of space and thus to be pre­pared for new cy­cles of uni­verse func­tion fol­low­ing a col­li­sion or some equally re­viv­i­fy­ing cos­mic hap­pen­ing.

41:1.5One Su­preme Power Cen­ter of the sixth or­der is sta­tioned at the ex­act grav­ity fo­cus of each lo­cal sys­tem. In the sys­tem of Sa­ta­nia the as­signed power cen­ter oc­cu­pies a dark is­land of space lo­cated at the as­tro­nomic cen­ter of the sys­tem. Many of these dark is­lands are vast dy­namos which mo­bi­lize and di­rec­tion­ize cer­tain space-en­er­gies, and these nat­u­ral cir­cum­stances are ef­fec­tively uti­lized by the Sa­ta­nia Power Cen­ter, whose liv­ing mass func­tions as a li­ai­son with the higher cen­ters, di­rect­ing the streams of more ma­te­ri­al­ized power to the Mas­ter Phys­i­cal Con­trol­lers on the evo­lu­tion­ary plan­ets of space.

41:3.1There are up­ward of two thou­sand bril­liant suns pour­ing forth light and en­ergy in Sa­ta­nia, and your own sun is an av­er­age blaz­ing orb. Of the thirty suns near­est yours, only three are brighter. The Uni­verse Power Di­rec­tors ini­ti­ate the spe­cial­ized cur­rents of en­ergy which play be­tween the in­di­vid­ual stars and their re­spec­tive sys­tems. These so­lar fur­naces, to­gether with the dark gi­ants of space, serve the power cen­ters and phys­i­cal con­trol­lers as way sta­tions for the ef­fec­tive con­cen­trat­ing and di­rec­tion­iz­ing of the en­ergy cir­cuits of the ma­te­rial cre­ations.