space bodies

15:6.1Ir­re­spec­tive of ori­gin, the var­i­ous spheres of space are clas­si­fi­able into the fol­low­ing ma­jor di­vi­sions:

15:6.21. The suns—the stars of space.

15:6.32. The dark is­lands of space.

15:6.43. Mi­nor space bod­ies—comets, me­te­ors, and plan­etes­i­mals.

15:6.54. The plan­ets, in­clud­ing the in­hab­ited worlds.

15:6.65. Ar­chi­tec­tural spheres—worlds made to or­der.

15:6.7With the ex­cep­tion of the ar­chi­tec­tural spheres, all space bod­ies have had an evo­lu­tion­ary ori­gin, evo­lu­tion­ary in the sense that they have not been brought into be­ing by fiat of De­ity, evo­lu­tion­ary in the sense that the cre­ative acts of God have un­folded by a time-space tech­nique through the op­er­a­tion of many of the cre­ated and even­tu­ated in­tel­li­gences of De­ity.

15:6.8The Suns. These are the stars of space in all their var­i­ous stages of ex­is­tence. Some are soli­tary evolv­ing space sys­tems; oth­ers are dou­ble stars, con­tract­ing or dis­ap­pear­ing plan­e­tary sys­tems. The stars of space ex­ist in no less than a thou­sand dif­fer­ent states and stages. You are fa­mil­iar with suns that emit light ac­com­pa­nied by heat; but there are also suns which shine with­out heat.

15:6.9The tril­lions upon tril­lions of years that an or­di­nary sun will con­tinue to give out heat and light well il­lus­trates the vast store of en­ergy which each unit of mat­ter con­tains. The ac­tual en­ergy stored in these in­vis­i­ble par­ti­cles of phys­i­cal mat­ter is well-nigh unimag­in­able. And this en­ergy be­comes al­most wholly avail­able as light when sub­jected to the tremen­dous heat pres­sure and the as­so­ci­ated en­ergy ac­tiv­i­ties which pre­vail in the in­te­rior of the blaz­ing suns. Still other con­di­tions en­able these suns to trans­form and send forth much of the en­ergy of space which comes their way in the es­tab­lished space cir­cuits. Many phases of phys­i­cal en­ergy and all forms of mat­ter are at­tracted to, and sub­se­quently dis­tributed by, the so­lar dy­namos. In this way the suns serve as lo­cal ac­cel­er­a­tors of en­ergy cir­cu­la­tion, act­ing as au­to­matic power-con­trol sta­tions.

15:6.10The super­uni­verse of Or­von­ton is il­lu­mi­nated and warmed by more than ten tril­lion blaz­ing suns. These suns are the stars of your ob­serv­able as­tro­nomic sys­tem. More than two tril­lion are too dis­tant and too small ever to be seen from Uran­tia. But in the mas­ter uni­verse there are as many suns as there are glasses of wa­ter in the oceans of your world.

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.

15:6.12Mi­nor Space Bod­ies. The me­te­ors and other small par­ti­cles of mat­ter cir­cu­lat­ing and evolv­ing in space con­sti­tute an enor­mous ag­gre­gate of en­ergy and ma­te­rial sub­stance.

15:6.13Many comets are un­estab­lished wild off­spring of the so­lar mother wheels, which are be­ing grad­u­ally brought un­der con­trol of the cen­tral gov­ern­ing sun. Comets also have nu­mer­ous other ori­gins. A comet’s tail points away from the at­tract­ing body or sun be­cause of the elec­tri­cal re­ac­tion of its highly ex­panded gases and be­cause of the ac­tual pres­sure of light and other en­er­gies em­a­nat­ing from the sun. This phe­nom­e­non con­sti­tutes one of the pos­i­tive proofs of the re­al­ity of light and its as­so­ci­ated en­er­gies; it demon­strates that light has weight. Light is a real sub­stance, not sim­ply waves of hy­po­thet­i­cal ether.

15:6.14The Plan­ets. These are the larger ag­gre­ga­tions of mat­ter which fol­low an or­bit around a sun or some other space body; they range in size from plan­etes­i­mals to enor­mous gaseous, liq­uid, or solid spheres. The cold worlds which have been built up by the as­sem­blage of float­ing space ma­te­rial, when they hap­pen to be in proper re­la­tion to a near-by sun, are the more ideal plan­ets to har­bor in­tel­li­gent in­hab­i­tants. The dead suns are not, as a rule, suited to life; they are usu­ally too far away from a liv­ing, blaz­ing sun, and fur­ther, they are al­to­gether too mas­sive; grav­ity is tremen­dous at the sur­face.

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.

15:6.16The laws of phys­i­cal-en­ergy be­hav­ior are ba­si­cally uni­ver­sal, but lo­cal in­flu­ences have much to do with the phys­i­cal con­di­tions which pre­vail on in­di­vid­ual plan­ets and in lo­cal sys­tems. An al­most end­less va­ri­ety of crea­ture life and other liv­ing man­i­fes­ta­tions char­ac­ter­izes the count­less worlds of space. There are, how­ever, cer­tain points of sim­i­lar­ity in a group of worlds as­so­ci­ated in a given sys­tem, while there also is a uni­verse pat­tern of in­tel­li­gent life. There are phys­i­cal re­la­tion­ships among those plan­e­tary sys­tems which be­long to the same phys­i­cal cir­cuit, and which closely fol­low each other in the end­less swing around the cir­cle of uni­verses.

12:4.1All units of cos­mic en­ergy are in pri­mary rev­o­lu­tion, are en­gaged in the ex­e­cu­tion of their mis­sion, while swing­ing around the uni­ver­sal or­bit. The uni­verses of space and their com­po­nent sys­tems and worlds are all re­volv­ing spheres, mov­ing along the end­less cir­cuits of the mas­ter uni­verse space lev­els. Ab­so­lutely noth­ing is sta­tion­ary in all the mas­ter uni­verse ex­cept the very cen­ter of Ha­vona, the eter­nal Isle of Par­a­dise, the cen­ter of grav­ity.

41:0.2While the ad­min­is­tra­tive or­ga­ni­za­tion of the grand uni­verse dis­closes a clear-cut di­vi­sion be­tween the gov­ern­ments of the cen­tral, su­per-, and lo­cal uni­verses, and while these di­vi­sions are as­tro­nom­i­cally par­al­leled in the space sep­a­ra­tion of Ha­vona and the seven super­uni­verses, no such clear lines of phys­i­cal de­mar­ca­tion set off the lo­cal cre­ations. Even the ma­jor and mi­nor sec­tors of Or­von­ton are (to us) clearly dis­tin­guish­able, but it is not so easy to iden­tify the phys­i­cal bound­aries of the lo­cal uni­verses. This is be­cause these lo­cal cre­ations are ad­min­is­tra­tively or­ga­nized in ac­cor­dance with cer­tain cre­ative prin­ci­ples gov­ern­ing the seg­men­ta­tion of the to­tal en­ergy charge of a super­uni­verse, whereas their phys­i­cal com­po­nents, the spheres of space—suns, dark is­lands, plan­ets, etc.—take ori­gin pri­mar­ily from neb­u­lae, and these make their as­tro­nom­i­cal ap­pear­ance in ac­cor­dance with cer­tain precre­ative (tran­scen­den­tal) plans of the Ar­chi­tects of the Mas­ter Uni­verse.

57:6.4If space bod­ies are sim­i­lar in size and den­sity, col­li­sions may oc­cur. But if two space bod­ies of sim­i­lar den­sity are rel­a­tively un­equal in size, then, if the smaller pro­gres­sively ap­proaches the larger, the dis­rup­tion of the smaller body will oc­cur when the ra­dius of its or­bit be­comes less than two and one-half times the ra­dius of the larger body. Col­li­sions among the gi­ants of space are rare in­deed, but these grav­ity-tidal ex­plo­sions of lesser bod­ies are quite com­mon.

15:5.129. Col­li­sional Spheres. In those re­gions of thicker clus­ter­ing, col­li­sions are not un­com­mon. Such an as­tro­nomic read­just­ment is ac­com­pa­nied by tremen­dous en­ergy changes and mat­ter trans­mu­ta­tions. Col­li­sions in­volv­ing dead suns are pe­cu­liarly in­flu­en­tial in cre­at­ing wide­spread en­ergy fluc­tu­a­tions. Col­li­sional de­bris of­ten con­sti­tutes the ma­te­rial nu­cle­uses for the sub­se­quent for­ma­tion of plan­e­tary bod­ies adapted to mor­tal habi­ta­tion.

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.

1:5.3God is not hid­ing from any of his crea­tures. He is un­ap­proach­able to so many or­ders of be­ings only be­cause he “dwells in a light which no ma­te­rial crea­ture can ap­proach.” The im­men­sity and grandeur of the di­vine per­son­al­ity is be­yond the grasp of the un­per­fected mind of evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tals. He “mea­sures the wa­ters in the hol­low of his hand, mea­sures a uni­verse with the span of his hand. It is he who sits on the cir­cle of the earth, who stretches out the heav­ens as a cur­tain and spreads them out as a uni­verse to dwell in.” “Lift up your eyes on high and be­hold who has cre­ated all these things, who brings out their worlds by num­ber and calls them all by their names”; and so it is true that “the in­vis­i­ble things of God are par­tially un­der­stood by the things which are made.” To­day, and as you are, you must dis­cern the in­vis­i­ble Maker through his man­i­fold and di­verse cre­ation, as well as through the rev­e­la­tion and min­is­tra­tion of his Sons and their nu­mer­ous sub­or­di­nates.

3:3.1“God knows all things.” The di­vine mind is con­scious of, and con­ver­sant with, the thought of all cre­ation. His knowl­edge of events is uni­ver­sal and per­fect. The di­vine en­ti­ties go­ing out from him are a part of him; he who “bal­ances the clouds” is also “per­fect in knowl­edge.” “The eyes of the Lord are in ev­ery place.” Said your great teacher of the in­signif­i­cant spar­row, “One of them shall not fall to the ground with­out my Fa­ther’s knowl­edge,” and also, “The very hairs of your head are num­bered.” “He tells the num­ber of the stars; he calls them all by their names.”

3:3.2The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is the only per­son­al­ity in all the uni­verse who does ac­tu­ally know the num­ber of the stars and plan­ets of space. All the worlds of ev­ery uni­verse are con­stantly within the con­scious­ness of God. He also says: “I have surely seen the af­flic­tion of my peo­ple, I have heard their cry, and I know their sor­rows.” For “the Lord looks from heaven; he be­holds all the sons of men; from the place of his habi­ta­tion he looks upon all the in­hab­i­tants of the earth.” Ev­ery crea­ture child may truly say: “He knows the way I take, and when he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” “God knows our down­sit­tings and our up­ris­ings; he un­der­stands our thoughts afar off and is ac­quainted with all our ways.” “All things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” And it should be a real com­fort to ev­ery hu­man be­ing to un­der­stand that “he knows your frame; he re­mem­bers that you are dust.” Je­sus, speak­ing of the liv­ing God, said, “Your Fa­ther knows what you have need of even be­fore you ask him.”

15:5.31. Con­cen­tric Con­trac­tion Rings. Not all neb­u­lae are spi­ral. Many an im­mense neb­ula, in­stead of split­ting into a dou­ble star sys­tem or evolv­ing as a spi­ral, un­der­goes con­den­sa­tion by mul­ti­ple-ring for­ma­tion. For long pe­ri­ods such a neb­ula ap­pears as an enor­mous cen­tral sun sur­rounded by nu­mer­ous gi­gan­tic clouds of en­cir­cling, ring-ap­pear­ing for­ma­tions of mat­ter.

15:5.42. The Whirled Stars em­brace those suns which are thrown off the great mother wheels of highly heated gases. They are not thrown off as rings but in right- and left-handed pro­ces­sions. Whirled stars are also of ori­gin in other-than-spi­ral neb­u­lae.

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.

15:5.64. Cen­trifu­gal Plan­e­tary Daugh­ters. Enor­mous suns, when in cer­tain stages of de­vel­op­ment, and if their rev­o­lu­tion­ary rate greatly ac­cel­er­ates, be­gin to throw off large quan­ti­ties of mat­ter which may sub­se­quently be as­sem­bled to form small worlds that con­tinue to en­cir­cle the par­ent sun.

15:5.75. Grav­ity-de­fi­ciency Spheres. There is a crit­i­cal limit to the size of in­di­vid­ual stars. When a sun reaches this limit, un­less it slows down in rev­o­lu­tion­ary rate, it is doomed to split; sun fis­sion oc­curs, and a new dou­ble star of this va­ri­ety is born. Nu­mer­ous small plan­ets may be sub­se­quently formed as a by-prod­uct of this gi­gan­tic dis­rup­tion.

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.

15:5.97. Cu­mu­la­tive Spheres. From the vast quan­tity of mat­ter cir­cu­lat­ing in space, small plan­ets may slowly ac­cu­mu­late. They grow by me­te­oric ac­cre­tion and by mi­nor col­li­sions. In cer­tain sec­tors of space, con­di­tions fa­vor such forms of plan­e­tary birth. Many an in­hab­ited world has had 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.

15:5.1310. Ar­chi­tec­tural Worlds. These are the worlds which are built ac­cord­ing to plans and spec­i­fi­ca­tions for some spe­cial pur­pose, such as Sal­ving­ton, the head­quar­ters of your lo­cal uni­verse, and Uversa, the seat of gov­ern­ment of our super­uni­verse.

15:5.14There are nu­mer­ous other tech­niques for evolv­ing suns and seg­re­gat­ing plan­ets, but the fore­go­ing pro­ce­dures sug­gest the meth­ods whereby the vast ma­jor­ity of stel­lar sys­tems and plan­e­tary fam­i­lies are brought into ex­is­tence. To un­der­take to de­scribe all the var­i­ous tech­niques in­volved in stel­lar meta­mor­pho­sis and plan­e­tary evo­lu­tion would re­quire the nar­ra­tion of al­most one hun­dred dif­fer­ent modes of sun for­ma­tion and plan­e­tary ori­gin. As your star stu­dents scan the heav­ens, they will ob­serve phe­nom­ena in­dica­tive of all these modes of stel­lar evo­lu­tion, but they will sel­dom de­tect ev­i­dence of the for­ma­tion of those small, non­lu­mi­nous col­lec­tions of mat­ter which serve as in­hab­ited plan­ets, the most im­por­tant of the vast ma­te­rial cre­ations.