suns

15:5.1The bulk of the mass con­tained in the suns and plan­ets of a super­uni­verse orig­i­nates in the neb­u­lar wheels; very lit­tle of super­uni­verse mass is or­ga­nized by the di­rect ac­tion of the power di­rec­tors (as in the con­struc­tion of ar­chi­tec­tural spheres), al­though a con­stantly vary­ing quan­tity of mat­ter orig­i­nates in open space.

15:5.2As to ori­gin, the ma­jor­ity of the suns, plan­ets, and other spheres can be clas­si­fied in one of the fol­low­ing ten groups:

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.

15:5.129. 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.

15:5.1310. 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.

• suns

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.

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.

41:3.2The suns of Neb­a­don are not un­like those of other uni­verses. The ma­te­rial com­po­si­tion of all suns, dark is­lands, plan­ets, and satel­lites, even me­te­ors, is quite iden­ti­cal. These suns have an av­er­age di­am­e­ter of about one mil­lion miles, that of your own so­lar orb be­ing slightly less. The largest star in the uni­verse, the stel­lar cloud Antares, is four hun­dred and fifty times the di­am­e­ter of your sun and is sixty mil­lion times its vol­ume. But there is abun­dant space to ac­com­mo­date all of these enor­mous suns. They have just as much com­par­a­tive el­bow room in space as one dozen or­anges would have if they were cir­cu­lat­ing about through­out the in­te­rior of Uran­tia, and were the planet a hol­low globe.

41:3.3When suns that are too large are thrown off a neb­u­lar mother wheel, they soon break up or form dou­ble stars. All suns are orig­i­nally truly gaseous, though they may later tran­siently ex­ist in a semiliq­uid state. When your sun at­tained this quasi-liq­uid state of super­gas pres­sure, it was not suf­fi­ciently large to split equa­to­ri­ally, this be­ing one type of dou­ble star for­ma­tion.

41:3.4When less than one tenth the size of your sun, these fiery spheres rapidly con­tract, con­dense, and cool. When up­wards of thirty times its size—rather thirty times the gross con­tent of ac­tual ma­te­rial—suns read­ily split into two sep­a­rate bod­ies, ei­ther be­com­ing the cen­ters of new sys­tems or else re­main­ing in each other’s grav­ity grasp and re­volv­ing about a com­mon cen­ter as one type of dou­ble star.

41:3.5The most re­cent of the ma­jor cos­mic erup­tions in Or­von­ton was the ex­traor­di­nary dou­ble star ex­plo­sion, the light of which reached Uran­tia in A.D. 1572. This con­fla­gra­tion was so in­tense that the ex­plo­sion was clearly vis­i­ble in broad day­light.

41:3.6Not all stars are solid, but many of the older ones are. Some of the red­dish, faintly glim­mer­ing stars have ac­quired a den­sity at the cen­ter of their enor­mous masses which would be ex­pressed by say­ing that one cu­bic inch of such a star, if on Uran­tia, would weigh six thou­sand pounds. The enor­mous pres­sure, ac­com­pa­nied by loss of heat and cir­cu­lat­ing en­ergy, has re­sulted in bring­ing the or­bits of the ba­sic ma­te­rial units closer and closer to­gether un­til they now closely ap­proach the sta­tus of elec­tronic con­den­sa­tion. This pro­cess of cool­ing and con­trac­tion may con­tinue to the lim­it­ing and crit­i­cal ex­plo­sion point of ul­ti­ma­tonic con­den­sa­tion.

41:3.7Most of the gi­ant suns are rel­a­tively young; most of the dwarf stars are old, but not all. The col­li­sional dwarfs may be very young and may glow with an in­tense white light, never hav­ing known an ini­tial red stage of youth­ful shin­ing. Both very young and very old suns usu­ally shine with a red­dish glow. The yel­low tinge in­di­cates mod­er­ate youth or ap­proach­ing old age, but the bril­liant white light sig­ni­fies ro­bust and ex­tended adult life.

41:3.8While all ado­les­cent suns do not pass through a pul­sat­ing stage, at least not vis­i­bly, when look­ing out into space you may ob­serve many of these younger stars whose gi­gan­tic res­pi­ra­tory heaves re­quire from two to seven days to com­plete a cy­cle. Your own sun still car­ries a di­min­ish­ing legacy of the mighty up­swellings of its younger days, but the pe­riod has length­ened from the for­mer three and one-half day pul­sa­tions to the pres­ent eleven and one-half year sun­spot cy­cles.

41:3.9Stel­lar vari­ables have nu­mer­ous ori­gins. In some dou­ble stars the tides caused by rapidly chang­ing dis­tances as the two bod­ies swing around their or­bits also oc­ca­sion pe­ri­odic fluc­tu­a­tions of light. These grav­ity vari­a­tions pro­duce reg­u­lar and re­cur­rent flares, just as the cap­ture of me­te­ors by the ac­cre­tion of en­ergy-ma­te­rial at the sur­face would re­sult in a com­par­a­tively sud­den flash of light which would speed­ily re­cede to nor­mal bright­ness for that sun. Some­times a sun will cap­ture a stream of me­te­ors in a line of less­ened grav­ity op­po­si­tion, and oc­ca­sion­ally col­li­sions cause stel­lar flare-ups, but the ma­jor­ity of such phe­nom­ena are wholly due to in­ter­nal fluc­tu­a­tions.

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.

41:4.1The mass of your sun is slightly greater than the es­ti­mate of your physi­cists, who have reck­oned it as about two oc­til­lion (2×10²⁷) tons. It now ex­ists about half­way be­tween the most dense and the most dif­fuse stars, hav­ing about one and one-half times the den­sity of wa­ter. But your sun is nei­ther a liq­uid nor a solid—it is gaseous—and this is true not­with­stand­ing the dif­fi­culty of ex­plain­ing how gaseous mat­ter can at­tain this and even much greater den­si­ties.

41:4.2Gaseous, liq­uid, and solid states are mat­ters of atomic-molec­u­lar re­la­tion­ships, but den­sity is a re­la­tion­ship of space and mass. Den­sity varies di­rectly with the quan­tity of mass in space and in­versely with the amount of space in mass, the space be­tween the cen­tral cores of mat­ter and the par­ti­cles which whirl around these cen­ters as well as the space within such ma­te­rial par­ti­cles.

41:4.3Cool­ing stars can be phys­i­cally gaseous and tremen­dously dense at the same time. You are not fa­mil­iar with the so­lar super­gases, but these and other un­usual forms of mat­ter ex­plain how even non­solid suns can at­tain a den­sity equal to iron—about the same as Uran­tia—and yet be in a highly heated gaseous state and con­tinue to func­tion as suns. The atoms in these dense super­gases are ex­cep­tion­ally small; they con­tain few elec­trons. Such suns have also largely lost their free ul­ti­ma­tonic stores of en­ergy.

41:4.4One of your near-by suns, which started life with about the same mass as yours, has now con­tracted al­most to the size of Uran­tia, hav­ing be­come forty thou­sand times as dense as your sun. The weight of this hot-cold gaseous-solid is about one ton per cu­bic inch. And still this sun shines with a faint red­dish glow, the se­nile glim­mer of a dy­ing monarch of light.

41:4.5Most of the suns, how­ever, are not so dense. One of your nearer neigh­bors has a den­sity ex­actly equal to that of your at­mo­sphere at sea level. If you were in the in­te­rior of this sun, you would be un­able to dis­cern any­thing. And tem­per­a­ture per­mit­ting, you could pen­e­trate the ma­jor­ity of the suns which twin­kle in the night sky and no­tice no more mat­ter than you per­ceive in the air of your earthly liv­ing rooms.

41:4.6The mas­sive sun of Velun­tia, one of the largest in Or­von­ton, has a den­sity only one one-thou­sandth that of Uran­tia’s at­mo­sphere. Were it in com­po­si­tion sim­i­lar to your at­mo­sphere and not super­heated, it would be such a vac­uum that hu­man be­ings would speed­ily suf­fo­cate if they were in or on it.

41:4.7An­other of the Or­von­ton gi­ants now has a sur­face tem­per­a­ture a tri­fle un­der three thou­sand de­grees. Its di­am­e­ter is over three hun­dred mil­lion miles—am­ple room to ac­com­mo­date your sun and the pres­ent or­bit of the earth. And yet, for all this enor­mous size, over forty mil­lion times that of your sun, its mass is only about thirty times greater. These enor­mous suns have an ex­tend­ing fringe that reaches al­most from one to the other.

41:5.1That the suns of space are not very dense is proved by the steady streams of es­cap­ing light-en­er­gies. Too great a den­sity would re­tain light by opac­ity un­til the light-en­ergy pres­sure reached the ex­plo­sion point. There is a tremen­dous light or gas pres­sure within a sun to cause it to shoot forth such a stream of en­ergy as to pen­e­trate space for mil­lions upon mil­lions of miles to en­er­gize, light, and heat the dis­tant plan­ets. Fif­teen feet of sur­face of the den­sity of Uran­tia would ef­fec­tu­ally pre­vent the es­cape of all X rays and light-en­er­gies from a sun un­til the ris­ing in­ter­nal pres­sure of ac­cu­mu­lat­ing en­er­gies re­sult­ing from atomic dis­mem­ber­ment over­came grav­ity with a tremen­dous out­ward ex­plo­sion.

41:5.2Light, in the pres­ence of the propul­sive gases, is highly ex­plo­sive when con­fined at high tem­per­a­tures by opaque re­tain­ing walls. Light is real. As you value en­ergy and power on your world, sun­light would be eco­nom­i­cal at a mil­lion dol­lars a pound.

41:5.3The in­te­rior of your sun is a vast X-ray gen­er­a­tor. The suns are sup­ported from within by the in­ces­sant bom­bard­ment of these mighty em­a­na­tions.

41:5.4It re­quires more than one-half mil­lion years for an X-ray-stim­u­lated elec­tron to work its way from the very cen­ter of an av­er­age sun up to the so­lar sur­face, whence it starts out on its space ad­ven­ture, maybe to warm an in­hab­ited planet, to be cap­tured by a me­teor, to par­tic­i­pate in the birth of an atom, to be at­tracted by a highly charged dark is­land of space, or to find its space flight ter­mi­nated by a fi­nal plunge into the sur­face of a sun sim­i­lar to the one of its ori­gin.

41:5.5The X rays of a sun’s in­te­rior charge the highly heated and ag­i­tated elec­trons with suf­fi­cient en­ergy to carry them out through space, past the hosts of de­tain­ing in­flu­ences of in­ter­ven­ing mat­ter and, in spite of di­ver­gent grav­ity at­trac­tions, on to the dis­tant spheres of the re­mote sys­tems. The great en­ergy of ve­loc­ity re­quired to es­cape the grav­ity clutch of a sun is suf­fi­cient to in­sure that the sun­beam will travel on with un­abated ve­loc­ity un­til it en­coun­ters con­sid­er­able masses of mat­ter; where­upon it is quickly trans­formed into heat with the lib­er­a­tion of other en­er­gies.

41:5.6En­ergy, whether as light or in other forms, in its flight through space moves straight for­ward. The ac­tual par­ti­cles of ma­te­rial ex­is­tence tra­verse space like a fusil­lade. They go in a straight and un­bro­ken line or pro­ces­sion ex­cept as they are acted on by su­pe­rior forces, and ex­cept as they ever obey the lin­ear-grav­ity pull in­her­ent in ma­te­rial mass and the cir­cu­lar-grav­ity pres­ence of the Isle of Par­a­dise.

41:5.7So­lar en­ergy may seem to be pro­pelled in waves, but that is due to the ac­tion of co­ex­is­tent and di­verse in­flu­ences. A given form of or­ga­nized en­ergy does not pro­ceed in waves but in di­rect lines. The pres­ence of a sec­ond or a third form of force-en­ergy may cause the stream un­der ob­ser­va­tion to ap­pear to travel in wavy for­ma­tion, just as, in a blind­ing rain­storm ac­com­pa­nied by a heavy wind, the wa­ter some­times ap­pears to fall in sheets or to de­scend in waves. The rain­drops are com­ing down in a di­rect line of un­bro­ken pro­ces­sion, but the ac­tion of the wind is such as to give the vis­i­ble ap­pear­ance of sheets of wa­ter and waves of rain­drops.

41:5.8The ac­tion of cer­tain sec­ondary and other undis­cov­ered en­er­gies pres­ent in the space re­gions of your lo­cal uni­verse is such that so­lar-light em­a­na­tions ap­pear to ex­e­cute cer­tain wavy phe­nom­ena as well as to be chopped up into in­finites­i­mal por­tions of def­i­nite length and weight. And, prac­ti­cally con­sid­ered, that is ex­actly what hap­pens. You can hardly hope to ar­rive at a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the be­hav­ior of light un­til such a time as you ac­quire a clearer con­cept of the in­ter­ac­tion and in­ter­re­la­tion­ship of the var­i­ous space-forces and so­lar en­er­gies op­er­at­ing in the space re­gions of Neb­a­don. Your pres­ent con­fu­sion is also due to your in­com­plete grasp of this prob­lem as it in­volves the in­teras­so­ci­ated ac­tiv­i­ties of the per­sonal and non­per­sonal con­trol of the mas­ter uni­verse—the pres­ences, the per­for­mances, and the co-or­di­na­tion of the Con­joint Ac­tor and the Un­qual­i­fied Ab­so­lute.

41:6.1In de­ci­pher­ing spec­tral phe­nom­ena, it should be re­mem­bered that space is not empty; that light, in travers­ing space, is some­times slightly mod­i­fied by the var­i­ous forms of en­ergy and mat­ter which cir­cu­late in all or­ga­nized space. Some of the lines in­di­cat­ing un­known mat­ter which ap­pear in the spec­tra of your sun are due to mod­i­fi­ca­tions of well-known el­e­ments which are float­ing through­out space in shat­tered form, the atomic ca­su­al­ties of the fierce en­coun­ters of the so­lar el­e­men­tal bat­tles. Space is per­vaded by these wan­der­ing dere­licts, es­pe­cially sodium and cal­cium.

41:6.2Cal­cium is, in fact, the chief el­e­ment of the mat­ter-per­me­ation of space through­out Or­von­ton. Our whole super­uni­verse is sprin­kled with minutely pul­ver­ized stone. Stone is lit­er­ally the ba­sic build­ing mat­ter for the plan­ets and spheres of space. The cos­mic cloud, the great space blan­ket, con­sists for the most part of the mod­i­fied atoms of cal­cium. The stone atom is one of the most preva­lent and per­sis­tent of the el­e­ments. It not only en­dures so­lar ion­iza­tion—split­ting—but per­sists in an as­so­cia­tive iden­tity even af­ter it has been bat­tered by the de­struc­tive X rays and shat­tered by the high so­lar tem­per­a­tures. Cal­cium pos­sesses an in­di­vid­u­al­ity and a longevity ex­celling all of the more com­mon forms of mat­ter.

41:6.3As your physi­cists have sus­pected, these mu­ti­lated rem­nants of so­lar cal­cium lit­er­ally ride the light beams for var­ied dis­tances, and thus their wide­spread dis­sem­i­na­tion through­out space is tremen­dously fa­cil­i­tated. The sodium atom, un­der cer­tain mod­i­fi­ca­tions, is also ca­pa­ble of light and en­ergy lo­co­mo­tion. The cal­cium feat is all the more re­mark­able since this el­e­ment has al­most twice the mass of sodium. Lo­cal space-per­me­ation by cal­cium is due to the fact that it es­capes from the so­lar pho­to­sphere, in mod­i­fied form, by lit­er­ally rid­ing the out­go­ing sun­beams. Of all the so­lar el­e­ments, cal­cium, not­with­stand­ing its com­par­a­tive bulk—con­tain­ing as it does twenty re­volv­ing elec­trons—is the most suc­cess­ful in es­cap­ing from the so­lar in­te­rior to the realms of space. This ex­plains why there is a cal­cium layer, a gaseous stone sur­face, on the sun six thou­sand miles thick; and this de­spite the fact that nine­teen lighter el­e­ments, and nu­mer­ous heav­ier ones, are un­der­neath.

41:6.4Cal­cium is an ac­tive and ver­sa­tile el­e­ment at so­lar tem­per­a­tures. The stone atom has two ag­ile and loosely at­tached elec­trons in the two outer elec­tronic cir­cuits, which are very close to­gether. Early in the atomic strug­gle it loses its outer elec­tron; where­upon it en­gages in a mas­ter­ful act of jug­gling the nine­teenth elec­tron back and forth be­tween the nine­teenth and twen­ti­eth cir­cuits of elec­tronic rev­o­lu­tion. By toss­ing this nine­teenth elec­tron back and forth be­tween its own or­bit and that of its lost com­pan­ion more than twenty-five thou­sand times a sec­ond, a mu­ti­lated stone atom is able par­tially to defy grav­ity and thus suc­cess­fully to ride the emerg­ing streams of light and en­ergy, the sun­beams, to lib­erty and ad­ven­ture. This cal­cium atom moves out­ward by al­ter­nate jerks of for­ward propul­sion, grasp­ing and let­ting go the sun­beam about twenty-five thou­sand times each sec­ond. And this is why stone is the chief com­po­nent of the worlds of space. Cal­cium is the most ex­pert so­lar-prison es­ca­per.

41:6.5The agility of this ac­ro­batic cal­cium elec­tron is in­di­cated by the fact that, when tossed by the tem­per­a­ture-X-ray so­lar forces to the cir­cle of the higher or­bit, it only re­mains in that or­bit for about one one-mil­lionth of a sec­ond; but be­fore the elec­tric-grav­ity power of the atomic nu­cleus pulls it back into its old or­bit, it is able to com­plete one mil­lion rev­o­lu­tions about the atomic cen­ter.

41:6.6Your sun has parted with an enor­mous quan­tity of its cal­cium, hav­ing lost tremen­dous amounts dur­ing the times of its con­vul­sive erup­tions in con­nec­tion with the for­ma­tion of the so­lar sys­tem. Much of the so­lar cal­cium is now in the outer crust of the sun.

41:6.7It should be re­mem­bered that spec­tral anal­y­ses show only sun-sur­face com­po­si­tions. For ex­am­ple: So­lar spec­tra ex­hibit many iron lines, but iron is not the chief el­e­ment in the sun. This phe­nom­e­non is al­most wholly due to the pres­ent tem­per­a­ture of the sun’s sur­face, a lit­tle less than 6,000 de­grees, this tem­per­a­ture be­ing very fa­vor­able to the reg­istry of the iron spec­trum.

41:7.1The in­ter­nal tem­per­a­ture of many of the suns, even your own, is much higher than is com­monly be­lieved. In the in­te­rior of a sun prac­ti­cally no whole atoms ex­ist; they are all more or less shat­tered by the in­ten­sive X-ray bom­bard­ment which is in­dige­nous to such high tem­per­a­tures. Re­gard­less of what ma­te­rial el­e­ments may ap­pear in the outer lay­ers of a sun, those in the in­te­rior are ren­dered very sim­i­lar by the dis­so­cia­tive ac­tion of the dis­rup­tive X rays. X ray is the great lev­eler of atomic ex­is­tence.

41:7.2The sur­face tem­per­a­ture of your sun is al­most 6,000 de­grees, but it rapidly in­creases as the in­te­rior is pen­e­trated un­til it at­tains the un­be­liev­able height of about 35,000,000 de­grees in the cen­tral re­gions. (All of these tem­per­a­tures re­fer to your Fahren­heit scale.)

41:7.3All of these phe­nom­ena are in­dica­tive of enor­mous en­ergy ex­pen­di­ture, and the sources of so­lar en­ergy, named in the or­der of their im­por­tance, are:

41:7.41. An­ni­hi­la­tion of atoms and, even­tu­ally, of elec­trons.

41:7.52. Trans­mu­ta­tion of el­e­ments, in­clud­ing the ra­dioac­tive group of en­er­gies thus lib­er­ated.

41:7.63. The ac­cu­mu­la­tion and trans­mis­sion of cer­tain uni­ver­sal space-en­er­gies.

41:7.74. Space mat­ter and me­te­ors which are in­ces­santly div­ing into the blaz­ing suns.

41:7.85. So­lar con­trac­tion; the cool­ing and con­se­quent con­trac­tion of a sun yields en­ergy and heat some­times greater than that sup­plied by space mat­ter.

41:7.96. Grav­ity ac­tion at high tem­per­a­tures trans­forms cer­tain cir­cuitized power into ra­dia­tive en­er­gies.

41:7.107. Re­cap­tive light and other mat­ter which are drawn back into the sun af­ter hav­ing left it, to­gether with other en­er­gies hav­ing ex­tra­so­lar ori­gin.

41:7.11There ex­ists a reg­u­lat­ing blan­ket of hot gases (some­times mil­lions of de­grees in tem­per­a­ture) which en­velops the suns, and which acts to sta­bi­lize heat loss and oth­er­wise pre­vent haz­ardous fluc­tu­a­tions of heat dis­si­pa­tion. Dur­ing the ac­tive life of a sun the in­ter­nal tem­per­a­ture of 35,000,000 de­grees re­mains about the same quite re­gard­less of the pro­gres­sive fall of the ex­ter­nal tem­per­a­ture.

41:7.12You might try to vi­su­al­ize 35,000,000 de­grees of heat, in as­so­ci­a­tion with cer­tain grav­ity pres­sures, as the elec­tronic boil­ing point. Un­der such pres­sure and at such tem­per­a­ture all atoms are de­graded and bro­ken up into their elec­tronic and other an­ces­tral com­po­nents; even the elec­trons and other as­so­ci­a­tions of ul­ti­ma­tons may be bro­ken up, but the suns are not able to de­grade the ul­ti­ma­tons.

41:7.13These so­lar tem­per­a­tures op­er­ate to enor­mously speed up the ul­ti­ma­tons and the elec­trons, at least such of the lat­ter as con­tinue to main­tain their ex­is­tence un­der these con­di­tions. You will re­al­ize what high tem­per­a­ture means by way of the ac­cel­er­a­tion of ul­ti­ma­tonic and elec­tronic ac­tiv­i­ties when you pause to con­sider that one drop of or­di­nary wa­ter con­tains over one bil­lion tril­lions of atoms. This is the en­ergy of more than one hun­dred horse­power ex­erted con­tin­u­ously for two years. The to­tal heat now given out by the so­lar sys­tem sun each sec­ond is suf­fi­cient to boil all the wa­ter in all the oceans on Uran­tia in just one sec­ond of time.

41:7.14Only those suns which func­tion in the di­rect chan­nels of the main streams of uni­verse en­ergy can shine on for­ever. Such so­lar fur­naces blaze on in­def­i­nitely, be­ing able to re­plen­ish their ma­te­rial losses by the in­take of space-force and anal­o­gous cir­cu­lat­ing en­ergy. But stars far re­moved from these chief chan­nels of recharg­ing are des­tined to un­dergo en­ergy de­ple­tion—grad­u­ally cool off and even­tu­ally burn out.

41:7.15Such dead or dy­ing suns can be re­ju­ve­nated by col­li­sional im­pact or can be recharged by cer­tain non­lu­mi­nous en­ergy is­lands of space or through grav­ity-rob­bery of near-by smaller suns or sys­tems. The ma­jor­ity of dead suns will ex­pe­ri­ence re­viv­i­fi­ca­tion by these or other evo­lu­tion­ary tech­niques. Those which are not thus even­tu­ally recharged are des­tined to un­dergo dis­rup­tion by mass ex­plo­sion when the grav­ity con­den­sa­tion at­tains the crit­i­cal level of ul­ti­ma­tonic con­den­sa­tion of en­ergy pres­sure. Such dis­ap­pear­ing suns thus be­come en­ergy of the rarest form, ad­mirably adapted to en­er­gize other more fa­vor­ably sit­u­ated suns.

41:8.1In those suns which are en­cir­cuited in the space-en­ergy chan­nels, so­lar en­ergy is lib­er­ated by var­i­ous com­plex nu­clear-re­ac­tion chains, the most com­mon of which is the hy­dro­gen-car­bon-he­lium re­ac­tion. In this meta­mor­pho­sis, car­bon acts as an en­ergy cat­a­lyst since it is in no way ac­tu­ally changed by this pro­cess of con­vert­ing hy­dro­gen into he­lium. Un­der cer­tain con­di­tions of high tem­per­a­ture the hy­dro­gen pen­e­trates the car­bon nu­clei. Since the car­bon can­not hold more than four such pro­tons, when this sat­u­ra­tion state is at­tained, it be­gins to emit pro­tons as fast as new ones ar­rive. In this re­ac­tion the in­go­ing hy­dro­gen par­ti­cles come forth as a he­lium atom.

41:8.2Re­duc­tion of hy­dro­gen con­tent in­creases the lu­mi­nos­ity of a sun. In the suns des­tined to burn out, the height of lu­mi­nos­ity is at­tained at the point of hy­dro­gen ex­haus­tion. Sub­se­quent to this point, bril­liance is main­tained by the re­sul­tant pro­cess of grav­ity con­trac­tion. Even­tu­ally, such a star will be­come a so-called white dwarf, a highly con­densed sphere.

41:8.3In large suns—small cir­cu­lar neb­u­lae—when hy­dro­gen is ex­hausted and grav­ity con­trac­tion en­sues, if such a body is not suf­fi­ciently opaque to re­tain the in­ter­nal pres­sure of sup­port for the outer gas re­gions, then a sud­den col­lapse oc­curs. The grav­ity-elec­tric changes give ori­gin to vast quan­ti­ties of tiny par­ti­cles de­void of elec­tric po­ten­tial, and such par­ti­cles read­ily es­cape from the so­lar in­te­rior, thus bring­ing about the col­lapse of a gi­gan­tic sun within a few days. It was such an em­i­gra­tion of these “run­away par­ti­cles” that oc­ca­sioned the col­lapse of the gi­ant nova of the An­dromeda neb­ula about fifty years ago. This vast stel­lar body col­lapsed in forty min­utes of Uran­tia time.

41:8.4As a rule, the vast ex­tru­sion of mat­ter con­tin­ues to ex­ist about the resid­ual cool­ing sun as ex­ten­sive clouds of neb­u­lar gases. And all this ex­plains the ori­gin of many types of ir­reg­u­lar neb­u­lae, such as the Crab neb­ula, which had its ori­gin about nine hun­dred years ago, and which still ex­hibits the mother sphere as a lone star near the cen­ter of this ir­reg­u­lar neb­u­lar mass.

41:9.1The larger suns main­tain such a grav­ity con­trol over their elec­trons that light es­capes only with the aid of the pow­er­ful X rays. These helper rays pen­e­trate all space and are con­cerned in the main­te­nance of the ba­sic ul­ti­ma­tonic as­so­ci­a­tions of en­ergy. The great en­ergy losses in the early days of a sun, sub­se­quent to its at­tain­ment of max­i­mum tem­per­a­ture—up­wards of 35,000,000 de­grees—are not so much due to light es­cape as to ul­ti­ma­tonic leak­age. These ul­ti­ma­ton en­er­gies es­cape out into space, to en­gage in the ad­ven­ture of elec­tronic as­so­ci­a­tion and en­ergy ma­te­ri­al­iza­tion, as a ver­i­ta­ble en­ergy blast dur­ing ado­les­cent so­lar times.

41:9.2Atoms and elec­trons are sub­ject to grav­ity. The ul­ti­ma­tons are not sub­ject to lo­cal grav­ity, the in­ter­play of ma­te­rial at­trac­tion, but they are fully obe­di­ent to ab­so­lute or Par­a­dise grav­ity, to the trend, the swing, of the uni­ver­sal and eter­nal cir­cle of the uni­verse of uni­verses. Ul­ti­ma­tonic en­ergy does not obey the lin­ear or di­rect grav­ity at­trac­tion of near-by or re­mote ma­te­rial masses, but it does ever swing true to the cir­cuit of the great el­lipse of the far-flung cre­ation.

41:9.3Your own so­lar cen­ter ra­di­ates al­most one hun­dred bil­lion tons of ac­tual mat­ter an­nu­ally, while the gi­ant suns lose mat­ter at a prodi­gious rate dur­ing their ear­lier growth, the first bil­lion years. A sun’s life be­comes sta­ble af­ter the max­i­mum of in­ter­nal tem­per­a­ture is reached, and the sub­atomic en­er­gies be­gin to be re­leased. And it is just at this crit­i­cal point that the larger suns are given to con­vul­sive pul­sa­tions.

41:9.4Sun sta­bil­ity is wholly de­pen­dent on the equi­lib­rium be­tween grav­ity-heat con­ten­tion—tremen­dous pres­sures counter­balanced by unimag­ined tem­per­a­tures. The in­te­rior gas elas­tic­ity of the suns up­holds the over­ly­ing lay­ers of var­ied ma­te­ri­als, and when grav­ity and heat are in equi­lib­rium, the weight of the outer ma­te­ri­als ex­actly equals the tem­per­a­ture pres­sure of the un­der­ly­ing and in­te­rior gases. In many of the younger stars con­tin­ued grav­ity con­den­sa­tion pro­duces ever-height­en­ing in­ter­nal tem­per­a­tures, and as in­ter­nal heat in­creases, the in­te­rior X-ray pres­sure of super­gas winds be­comes so great that, in con­nec­tion with the cen­trifu­gal mo­tion, a sun be­gins to throw its ex­te­rior lay­ers off into space, thus re­dress­ing the im­bal­ance be­tween grav­ity and heat.

41:9.5Your own sun has long since at­tained rel­a­tive equi­lib­rium be­tween its ex­pan­sion and con­trac­tion cy­cles, those dis­tur­bances which pro­duce the gi­gan­tic pul­sa­tions of many of the younger stars. Your sun is now pass­ing out of its six bil­lionth year. At the pres­ent time it is func­tion­ing through the pe­riod of great­est econ­omy. It will shine on as of pres­ent ef­fi­ciency for more than twenty-five bil­lion years. It will prob­a­bly ex­pe­ri­ence a par­tially ef­fi­cient pe­riod of de­cline as long as the com­bined pe­ri­ods of its youth and sta­bi­lized func­tion.

42:4.8When sub­jected to the heat and pres­sure of cer­tain in­ter­nal so­lar states, all but the most prim­i­tive as­so­ci­a­tions of mat­ter may be bro­ken up. Heat can thus largely over­come grav­ity sta­bil­ity. But no known so­lar heat or pres­sure can con­vert ul­ti­ma­tons back into puis­sant en­ergy.

42:6.3Ul­ti­ma­tons func­tion by mu­tual at­trac­tion, re­spond­ing only to the cir­cu­lar Par­a­dise-grav­ity pull. With­out lin­ear-grav­ity re­sponse they are thus held in the uni­ver­sal space drift. Ul­ti­ma­tons are ca­pa­ble of ac­cel­er­at­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary ve­loc­ity to the point of par­tial anti­grav­ity be­hav­ior, but they can­not, in­de­pen­dent of force or­ga­niz­ers or power di­rec­tors, at­tain the crit­i­cal es­cape ve­loc­ity of dein­di­vid­u­a­tion, re­turn to the puis­sant-en­ergy stage. In na­ture, ul­ti­ma­tons es­cape the sta­tus of phys­i­cal ex­is­tence only when par­tic­i­pat­ing in the ter­mi­nal dis­rup­tion of a cooled-off and dy­ing sun.

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.

15:4.5Neb­u­lae vary greatly in size and in the re­sult­ing num­ber and ag­gre­gate mass of their stel­lar and plan­e­tary off­spring. A sun-form­ing neb­ula just north of the bor­ders of Or­von­ton, but within the super­uni­verse space level, has al­ready given ori­gin to ap­prox­i­mately forty thou­sand suns, and the mother wheel is still throw­ing off suns, the ma­jor­ity of which are many times the size of yours. Some of the larger neb­u­lae of outer space are giv­ing ori­gin to as many as one hun­dred mil­lion suns.

57:4.275,000,000,000 years ago this neb­ula had at­tained the height of its sun-fam­ily stage. This was the apex of the first pe­riod of sun losses. The ma­jor­ity of these suns have since pos­sessed them­selves of ex­ten­sive sys­tems of plan­ets, satel­lites, dark is­lands, comets, me­te­ors, and cos­mic dust clouds.

57:3.6500,000,000,000 years ago the first And­ro­no­ver sun was born. This blaz­ing streak broke away from the mother grav­ity grasp and tore out into space on an in­de­pen­dent ad­ven­ture in the cos­mos of cre­ation. Its or­bit was de­ter­mined by its path of es­cape. Such young suns quickly be­come spher­i­cal and start out on their long and event­ful ca­reers as the stars of space. Ex­cept­ing ter­mi­nal neb­u­lar nu­cle­uses, the vast ma­jor­ity of Or­von­ton suns have had an anal­o­gous birth. These es­cap­ing suns pass through var­ied pe­ri­ods of evo­lu­tion and sub­se­quent uni­verse ser­vice.

15:4.1While cre­ation and uni­verse or­ga­ni­za­tion re­main for­ever un­der the con­trol of the in­fi­nite Cre­ators and their as­so­ciates, the whole phe­nom­e­non pro­ceeds in ac­cor­dance with an or­dained tech­nique and in con­for­mity to the grav­ity laws of force, en­ergy, and mat­ter. But there is some­thing of mys­tery as­so­ci­ated with the uni­ver­sal force-charge of space; we quite un­der­stand the or­ga­ni­za­tion of the ma­te­rial cre­ations from the ul­ti­ma­tonic stage for­ward, but we do not fully com­pre­hend the cos­mic an­ces­try of the ul­ti­ma­tons. We are con­fi­dent that these an­ces­tral forces have a Par­a­dise ori­gin be­cause they for­ever swing through per­vaded space in the ex­act gi­gan­tic out­lines of Par­a­dise. Though non­re­spon­sive to Par­a­dise grav­ity, this force-charge of space, the an­ces­tor of all ma­te­ri­al­iza­tion, does al­ways re­spond to the pres­ence of nether Par­a­dise, be­ing ap­par­ently cir­cuited in and out of the nether Par­a­dise cen­ter.

15:4.2The Par­a­dise force or­ga­niz­ers trans­mute space po­tency into pri­mor­dial force and evolve this pre­ma­te­rial po­ten­tial into the pri­mary and sec­ondary en­ergy man­i­fes­ta­tions of phys­i­cal re­al­ity. When this en­ergy at­tains grav­ity-re­spond­ing lev­els, the power di­rec­tors and their as­so­ciates of the super­uni­verse regime ap­pear upon the scene and be­gin their never-end­ing ma­nip­u­la­tions de­signed to es­tab­lish the man­i­fold power cir­cuits and en­ergy chan­nels of the uni­verses of time and space. Thus does phys­i­cal mat­ter ap­pear in space, and so is the stage set for the in­au­gu­ra­tion of uni­verse or­ga­ni­za­tion.

15:4.3This seg­men­ta­tion of en­ergy is a phe­nom­e­non which has never been solved by the physi­cists of Neb­a­don. Their chief dif­fi­culty lies in the rel­a­tive in­ac­ces­si­bil­ity of the Par­a­dise force or­ga­niz­ers, for the liv­ing power di­rec­tors, though they are com­pe­tent to deal with space-en­ergy, do not have the least con­cep­tion of the ori­gin of the en­er­gies they so skill­fully and in­tel­li­gently ma­nip­u­late.

15:4.4Par­a­dise force or­ga­niz­ers are neb­u­lae orig­i­na­tors; they are able to ini­ti­ate about their space pres­ence the tremen­dous cy­clones of force which, when once started, can never be stopped or lim­ited un­til the all-per­vad­ing forces are mo­bi­lized for the even­tual ap­pear­ance of the ul­ti­ma­tonic units of uni­verse mat­ter. Thus are brought into be­ing the spi­ral and other neb­u­lae, the mother wheels of the di­rect-ori­gin suns and their var­ied sys­tems. In outer space there may be seen ten dif­fer­ent forms of neb­u­lae, phases of pri­mary uni­verse evo­lu­tion, and these vast en­ergy wheels had the same ori­gin as did those in the seven super­uni­verses.

15:4.6Neb­u­lae are not di­rectly re­lated to any of the ad­min­is­tra­tive units, such as mi­nor sec­tors or lo­cal uni­verses, al­though some lo­cal uni­verses have been or­ga­nized from the prod­ucts of a sin­gle neb­ula. Each lo­cal uni­verse em­braces ex­actly one one-hun­dred-thou­sandth part of the to­tal en­ergy charge of a super­uni­verse ir­re­spec­tive of neb­u­lar re­la­tion­ship, for en­ergy is not or­ga­nized by neb­u­lae—it is uni­ver­sally dis­tributed.

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.

15:4.8The Milky Way galaxy is com­posed of vast num­bers of for­mer spi­ral and other neb­u­lae, and many still re­tain their orig­i­nal con­fig­u­ra­tion. But as the re­sult of in­ter­nal catas­tro­phes and ex­ter­nal at­trac­tion, many have suf­fered such dis­tor­tion and re­ar­range­ment as to cause these enor­mous ag­gre­ga­tions to ap­pear as gi­gan­tic lu­mi­nous masses of blaz­ing suns, like the Mag­el­lanic Cloud. The glob­u­lar type of star clus­ters pre­dom­i­nates near the outer mar­gins of Or­von­ton.

15:4.9The vast star clouds of Or­von­ton should be re­garded as in­di­vid­ual ag­gre­ga­tions of mat­ter com­pa­ra­ble to the sep­a­rate neb­u­lae ob­serv­able in the space re­gions ex­ter­nal to the Milky Way galaxy. Many of the so-called star clouds of space, how­ever, con­sist of gaseous ma­te­rial only. The en­ergy po­ten­tial of these stel­lar gas clouds is un­be­liev­ably enor­mous, and some of it is taken up by near-by suns and re­dis­patched in space as so­lar em­a­na­tions.

42:5.1In the super­uni­verse of Or­von­ton there are one hun­dred oc­taves of wave en­ergy. Of these one hun­dred groups of en­ergy man­i­fes­ta­tions, sixty-four are wholly or par­tially rec­og­nized on Uran­tia. The sun’s rays con­sti­tute four oc­taves in the super­uni­verse scale, the vis­i­ble rays em­brac­ing a sin­gle oc­tave, num­ber forty-six in this se­ries. The ul­tra­vi­o­let group comes next, while ten oc­taves up are the X rays, fol­lowed by the gamma rays of ra­dium. Thirty-two oc­taves above the vis­i­ble light of the sun are the outer-space en­ergy rays so fre­quently com­min­gled with their as­so­ci­ated highly en­er­gized minute par­ti­cles of mat­ter. Next down­ward from vis­i­ble sun­light ap­pear the in­frared rays, and thirty oc­taves be­low are the ra­dio trans­mis­sion group.

42:3.75. Shat­tered atoms—found in the cool­ing suns and through­out space.

42:3.42. Sub­elec­tronic mat­ter—the ex­plo­sive and re­pel­lent stage of the so­lar super­gases.

42:3.64. Sub­atomic mat­ter—mat­ter ex­ist­ing ex­ten­sively in the in­te­rior of the hot suns.

• octave of wave energy

42:5.108. The white light—the whole vis­i­ble light of the suns.

• power centers not concerned with

41:1.2One hun­dred Su­preme Power Cen­ters of the fourth or­der are per­ma­nently as­signed to our lo­cal uni­verse. These be­ings re­ceive the in­com­ing lines of power from the third-or­der cen­ters of Uversa and re­lay the down-stepped and mod­i­fied cir­cuits to the power cen­ters of our con­stel­la­tions and sys­tems. These power cen­ters, in as­so­ci­a­tion, func­tion to pro­duce the liv­ing sys­tem of con­trol and equal­iza­tion which op­er­ates to main­tain the bal­ance and dis­tri­bu­tion of oth­er­wise fluc­tu­at­ing and vari­able en­er­gies. Power cen­ters are not, how­ever, con­cerned with tran­sient and lo­cal en­ergy up­heavals, such as sun spots and sys­tem elec­tric dis­tur­bances; light and elec­tric­ity are not the ba­sic en­er­gies of space; they are sec­ondary and sub­sidiary man­i­fes­ta­tions.

• found in once-variable stars

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.

• function as enormous magnets

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.

• dead s. not suited for life

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.

• s. that shine without heat

15:7.1While each super­uni­verse gov­ern­ment pre­sides near the cen­ter of the evo­lu­tion­ary uni­verses of its space seg­ment, it oc­cu­pies a world made to or­der and is peo­pled by ac­cred­ited per­son­al­i­ties. These head­quar­ters worlds are ar­chi­tec­tural spheres, space bod­ies specif­i­cally con­structed for their spe­cial pur­pose. While shar­ing the light of near-by suns, these spheres are in­de­pen­dently lighted and heated. Each has a sun which gives forth light with­out heat, like the satel­lites of Par­a­dise, while each is sup­plied with heat by the cir­cu­la­tion of cer­tain en­ergy cur­rents near the sur­face of the sphere. These head­quar­ters worlds be­long to one of the greater sys­tems sit­u­ated near the as­tro­nom­i­cal cen­ter of their re­spec­tive super­uni­verses.

• great binary s. frequently overlap

58:3.4The vast hy­dro­gen clouds are ver­i­ta­ble cos­mic chem­i­cal lab­o­ra­to­ries, har­bor­ing all phases of evolv­ing en­ergy and meta­mor­phos­ing mat­ter. Great en­ergy ac­tions also oc­cur in the marginal gases of the great bi­nary stars which so fre­quently over­lap and hence ex­ten­sively com­min­gle. But none of these tremen­dous and far-flung en­ergy ac­tiv­i­ties of space ex­erts the least in­flu­ence upon the phe­nom­ena of or­ga­nized life—the germ plasm of liv­ing things and be­ings. These en­ergy con­di­tions of space are ger­mane to the es­sen­tial en­vi­ron­ment of life es­tab­lish­ment, but they are not ef­fec­tive in the sub­se­quent mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the in­her­i­tance fac­tors of the germ plasm as are some of the longer rays of ra­di­ant en­ergy. The im­planted life of the Life Car­ri­ers is fully re­sis­tant to all of this amaz­ing flood of the short space rays of uni­verse en­ergy.

4:1.5God up­holds “all things by the word of his power.” And when new worlds are born, he “sends forth his Sons and they are cre­ated.” God not only cre­ates, but he “pre­serves them all.” God con­stantly up­holds all things ma­te­rial and all be­ings spir­i­tual. The uni­verses are eter­nally sta­ble. There is sta­bil­ity in the midst of ap­par­ent in­sta­bil­ity. There is an un­der­ly­ing or­der and se­cu­rity in the midst of the en­ergy up­heavals and the phys­i­cal cat­a­clysms of the starry realms.

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.