light-years

15:4.7Not all spi­ral neb­u­lae are en­gaged in sun mak­ing. Some have re­tained con­trol of many of their seg­re­gated stel­lar off­spring, and their spi­ral ap­pear­ance is oc­ca­sioned by the fact that their suns pass out of the neb­u­lar arm in close for­ma­tion but re­turn by di­verse routes, thus mak­ing it easy to ob­serve them at one point but more dif­fi­cult to see them when widely scat­tered on their dif­fer­ent re­turn­ing routes far­ther out and away from the arm of the neb­ula. There are not many sun-form­ing neb­u­lae ac­tive in Or­von­ton at the pres­ent time, though An­dromeda, which is out­side the in­hab­ited super­uni­verse, is very ac­tive. This far-dis­tant neb­ula is vis­i­ble to the naked eye, and when you view it, pause to con­sider that the light you be­hold left those dis­tant suns al­most one mil­lion years ago.

32:2.11The Sa­ta­nia sys­tem of in­hab­ited worlds is far re­moved from Uversa and that great sun clus­ter which func­tions as the phys­i­cal or as­tro­nomic cen­ter of the sev­enth super­uni­verse. From Je­ru­sem, the head­quar­ters of Sa­ta­nia, it is over two hun­dred thou­sand light-years to the phys­i­cal cen­ter of the super­uni­verse of Or­von­ton, far, far away in the dense di­am­e­ter of the Milky Way. Sa­ta­nia is on the pe­riph­ery of the lo­cal uni­verse, and Neb­a­don is now well out to­wards the edge of Or­von­ton. From the out­er­most sys­tem of in­hab­ited worlds to the cen­ter of the super­uni­verse is a tri­fle less than two hun­dred and fifty thou­sand light-years.

12:1.14The Outer Space Lev­els. Far out in space, at an enor­mous dis­tance from the seven in­hab­ited super­uni­verses, there are as­sem­bling vast and un­be­liev­ably stu­pen­dous cir­cuits of force and ma­te­ri­al­iz­ing en­er­gies. Be­tween the en­ergy cir­cuits of the seven super­uni­verses and this gi­gan­tic outer belt of force ac­tiv­ity, there is a space zone of com­par­a­tive quiet, which varies in width but av­er­ages about four hun­dred thou­sand light-years. These space zones are free from star dust—cos­mic fog. Our stu­dents of these phe­nom­ena are in doubt as to the ex­act sta­tus of the space-forces ex­ist­ing in this zone of rel­a­tive quiet which en­cir­cles the seven super­uni­verses. But about one-half mil­lion light-years be­yond the pe­riph­ery of the pres­ent grand uni­verse we ob­serve the be­gin­nings of a zone of an un­be­liev­able en­ergy ac­tion which in­creases in vol­ume and in­ten­sity for over twenty-five mil­lion light-years. These tremen­dous wheels of en­er­giz­ing forces are sit­u­ated in the first outer space level, a con­tin­u­ous belt of cos­mic ac­tiv­ity en­cir­cling the whole of the known, or­ga­nized, and in­hab­ited cre­ation.

12:1.15Still greater ac­tiv­i­ties are tak­ing place be­yond these re­gions, for the Uversa physi­cists have de­tected early ev­i­dence of force man­i­fes­ta­tions more than fifty mil­lion light-years be­yond the out­er­most ranges of the phe­nom­ena in the first outer space level. These ac­tiv­i­ties un­doubt­edly presage the or­ga­ni­za­tion of the ma­te­rial cre­ations of the sec­ond outer space level of the mas­ter uni­verse.

41:3.10In one group of vari­able stars the pe­riod of light fluc­tu­a­tion is di­rectly de­pen­dent on lu­mi­nos­ity, and knowl­edge of this fact en­ables as­tron­o­mers to uti­lize such suns as uni­verse light­houses or ac­cu­rate mea­sur­ing points for the fur­ther ex­plo­ration of dis­tant star clus­ters. By this tech­nique it is pos­si­ble to mea­sure stel­lar dis­tances most pre­cisely up to more than one mil­lion light-years. Bet­ter meth­ods of space mea­sure­ment and im­proved tele­scopic tech­nique will some­time more fully dis­close the ten grand di­vi­sions of the super­uni­verse of Or­von­ton; you will at least rec­og­nize eight of these im­mense sec­tors as enor­mous and fairly sym­met­ri­cal star clus­ters.

12:4.14Al­though your spec­tro­scopic es­ti­ma­tions of as­tro­nomic ve­loc­i­ties are fairly re­li­able when ap­plied to the starry realms be­long­ing to your super­uni­verse and its as­so­ciate super­uni­verses, such reck­on­ings with ref­er­ence to the realms of outer space are wholly un­re­li­able. Spec­tral lines are dis­placed from the nor­mal to­wards the vi­o­let by an ap­proach­ing star; like­wise these lines are dis­placed to­wards the red by a re­ced­ing star. Many in­flu­ences in­ter­pose to make it ap­pear that the re­ces­sional ve­loc­ity of the ex­ter­nal uni­verses in­creases at the rate of more than one hun­dred miles a sec­ond for ev­ery mil­lion light-years in­crease in dis­tance. By this method of reck­on­ing, sub­se­quent to the per­fec­tion of more pow­er­ful tele­scopes, it will ap­pear that these far-dis­tant sys­tems are in flight from this part of the uni­verse at the un­be­liev­able rate of more than thirty thou­sand miles a sec­ond. But this ap­par­ent speed of re­ces­sion is not real; it re­sults from nu­mer­ous fac­tors of er­ror em­brac­ing an­gles of ob­ser­va­tion and other time-space dis­tor­tions.

23:3.5The Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers are able to func­tion as emer­gency lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion through­out re­mote space re­gions, realms not em­braced within the es­tab­lished cir­cuits of the grand uni­verse. It de­vel­ops that one mes­sen­ger, when so func­tion­ing, can trans­mit a mes­sage or send an im­pulse through space to a fel­low mes­sen­ger about one hun­dred light-years away as Uran­tia as­tron­o­mers es­ti­mate stel­lar dis­tances.