Monmatia

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.

15:6.15In your super­uni­verse not one cool planet in forty is hab­it­able by be­ings of your or­der. And, of course, the super­heated suns and the frigid out­ly­ing worlds are un­fit to har­bor higher life. In your so­lar sys­tem only three plan­ets are at pres­ent suited to har­bor life. Uran­tia, in size, den­sity, and lo­ca­tion, is in many re­spects ideal for hu­man habi­ta­tion.

57:6.5Shoot­ing stars oc­cur in swarms be­cause they are the frag­ments of larger bod­ies of mat­ter which have been dis­rupted by tidal grav­ity ex­erted by near-by and still larger space bod­ies. Sat­urn’s rings are the frag­ments of a dis­rupted satel­lite. One of the moons of Jupiter is now ap­proach­ing dan­ger­ously near the crit­i­cal zone of tidal dis­rup­tion and, within a few mil­lion years, will ei­ther be claimed by the planet or will un­dergo grav­ity-tidal dis­rup­tion. The fifth planet of the so­lar sys­tem of long, long ago tra­versed an ir­reg­u­lar or­bit, pe­ri­od­i­cally mak­ing closer and closer ap­proach to Jupiter un­til it en­tered the crit­i­cal zone of grav­ity-tidal dis­rup­tion, was swiftly frag­men­tized, and be­came the pres­ent-day clus­ter of as­ter­oids.

15:5.86. Con­trac­tural Stars. In the smaller sys­tems the largest outer planet some­times draws to it­self its neigh­bor­ing worlds, while those plan­ets near the sun be­gin their ter­mi­nal plunge. With your so­lar sys­tem, such an end would mean that the four in­ner plan­ets would be claimed by the sun, while the ma­jor planet, Jupiter, would be greatly en­larged by cap­tur­ing the re­main­ing worlds. Such an end of a so­lar sys­tem would re­sult in the pro­duc­tion of two ad­ja­cent but un­equal suns, one type of dou­ble star for­ma­tion. Such catas­tro­phes are in­fre­quent ex­cept out on the fringe of the super­uni­verse starry ag­gre­ga­tions.

15:3.6The nu­cleus of the phys­i­cal sys­tem to which your sun and its as­so­ci­ated plan­ets be­long is the cen­ter of the one­time And­ro­no­ver neb­ula. This for­mer spi­ral neb­ula was slightly dis­torted by the grav­ity dis­rup­tions as­so­ci­ated with the events which were at­ten­dant upon the birth of your so­lar sys­tem, and which were oc­ca­sioned by the near ap­proach of a large neigh­bor­ing neb­ula. This near col­li­sion changed And­ro­no­ver into a some­what glob­u­lar ag­gre­ga­tion but did not wholly de­stroy the two-way pro­ces­sion of the suns and their as­so­ci­ated phys­i­cal groups. Your so­lar sys­tem now oc­cu­pies a fairly cen­tral po­si­tion in one of the arms of this dis­torted spi­ral, sit­u­ated about half­way from the cen­ter out to­wards the edge of the star stream.

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.

41:10.1Some of the vari­able stars, in or near the state of max­i­mum pul­sa­tion, are in pro­cess of giv­ing ori­gin to sub­sidiary sys­tems, many of which will even­tu­ally be much like your own sun and its re­volv­ing plan­ets. Your sun was in just such a state of mighty pul­sa­tion when the mas­sive An­gona sys­tem swung into near ap­proach, and the outer sur­face of the sun be­gan to erupt ver­i­ta­ble streams—con­tin­u­ous sheets—of mat­ter. This kept up with ever-in­creas­ing vi­o­lence un­til near­est ap­po­si­tion, when the lim­its of so­lar co­he­sion were reached and a vast pin­na­cle of mat­ter, the an­ces­tor of the so­lar sys­tem, was dis­gorged. In sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances the clos­est ap­proach of the at­tract­ing body some­times draws off whole plan­ets, even a quar­ter or third of a sun. These ma­jor ex­tru­sions form cer­tain pe­cu­liar cloud-bound types of worlds, spheres much like Jupiter and Sat­urn.

57:6.64,000,000,000 years ago wit­nessed the or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Jupiter and Sat­urn sys­tems much as ob­served to­day ex­cept for their moons, which con­tin­ued to in­crease in size for sev­eral bil­lions of years. In fact, all of the plan­ets and satel­lites of the so­lar sys­tem are still grow­ing as the re­sult of con­tin­ued me­te­oric cap­tures.

57:6.73,500,000,000 years ago the con­den­sa­tion nu­cle­uses of the other ten plan­ets were well formed, and the cores of most of the moons were in­tact, though some of the smaller satel­lites later united to make the pres­ent-day larger moons. This age may be re­garded as the era of plan­e­tary as­sem­bly.

57:6.83,000,000,000 years ago the so­lar sys­tem was func­tion­ing much as it does to­day. Its mem­bers con­tin­ued to grow in size as space me­te­ors con­tin­ued to pour in upon the plan­ets and their satel­lites at a prodi­gious rate.

57:6.9About this time your so­lar sys­tem was placed on the phys­i­cal reg­istry of Neb­a­don and given its name, Mon­ma­tia.

57:6.102,500,000,000 years ago the plan­ets had grown im­mensely in size. Uran­tia was a well-de­vel­oped sphere about one tenth its pres­ent mass and was still grow­ing rapidly by me­te­oric ac­cre­tion.

15:3.7The Sagit­tar­ius sec­tor and all other sec­tors and di­vi­sions of Or­von­ton are in ro­ta­tion around Uversa, and some of the con­fu­sion of Uran­tian star ob­servers arises out of the il­lu­sions and rel­a­tive dis­tor­tions pro­duced by the fol­low­ing mul­ti­ple rev­o­lu­tion­ary move­ments:

15:3.81. The rev­o­lu­tion of Uran­tia around its sun.

15:3.92. The cir­cuit of your so­lar sys­tem about the nu­cleus of the for­mer And­ro­no­ver neb­ula.

57:2.1All evo­lu­tion­ary ma­te­rial cre­ations are born of cir­cu­lar and gaseous neb­u­lae, and all such pri­mary neb­u­lae are cir­cu­lar through­out the early part of their gaseous ex­is­tence. As they grow older, they usu­ally be­come spi­ral, and when their func­tion of sun for­ma­tion has run its course, they of­ten ter­mi­nate as clus­ters of stars or as enor­mous suns sur­rounded by a vary­ing num­ber of plan­ets, satel­lites, and smaller groups of mat­ter in many ways re­sem­bling your own diminu­tive so­lar sys­tem.