velocities

• reliability of our astronomic estimates

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.

12:4.15But the great­est of all such dis­tor­tions arises be­cause the vast uni­verses of outer space, in the realms next to the do­mains of the seven super­uni­verses, seem to be re­volv­ing in a di­rec­tion op­po­site to that of the grand uni­verse. That is, these myr­i­ads of neb­u­lae and their ac­com­pa­ny­ing suns and spheres are at the pres­ent time re­volv­ing clock­wise about the cen­tral cre­ation. The seven super­uni­verses re­volve about Par­a­dise in a coun­ter­clock­wise di­rec­tion. It ap­pears that the sec­ond outer uni­verse of galax­ies, like the seven super­uni­verses, re­volves coun­ter­clock­wise about Par­a­dise. And the as­tro­nomic ob­servers of Uversa think they de­tect ev­i­dence of rev­o­lu­tion­ary move­ments in a third outer belt of far-dis­tant space which are be­gin­ning to ex­hibit di­rec­tional ten­den­cies of a clock­wise na­ture.

• Divine Counselor required 109 days to travel 200,000 light-years

19:7.5Through these same av­enues we are en­abled to in­ter­com­mu­ni­cate in­stan­ta­neously. Our en­tire or­der of cre­ation finds it­self in touch with ev­ery in­di­vid­ual em­braced within ev­ery di­vi­sion of the chil­dren of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity save only the In­spired Spir­its.

• top speed › for seraphim is 558,840 miles/second

23:2.226. Am­bas­sadors and Emis­saries of Spe­cial As­sign­ment. Lo­cal uni­verses sit­u­ated within the same super­uni­verse cus­tom­ar­ily ex­change am­bas­sadors se­lected from their na­tive or­ders of son­ship. But to avoid de­lay, Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers are fre­quently asked to go as am­bas­sadors from one lo­cal cre­ation to an­other, to rep­re­sent and in­ter­pret one realm to an­other. For ex­am­ple: When a newly in­hab­ited realm is dis­cov­ered, it may prove to be so re­mote in space that a long time will pass be­fore an en­ser­a­phimed am­bas­sador can reach this far-dis­tant uni­verse. An en­ser­a­phimed be­ing can­not pos­si­bly ex­ceed the ve­loc­ity of 558,840 Uran­tia miles in one sec­ond of your time. Mas­sive stars, cross­cur­rents, and de­tours, as well as at­trac­tion tan­gents, will all tend to re­tard such speed so that on a long jour­ney the ve­loc­ity will av­er­age about 550,000 miles per sec­ond.

• top speed › for midwayers is 372,560 miles/second
• top speed › for nonenseraphimed beings is 186,280 miles/second
• top speed › for seraphim is 558,840 miles/second
• top speed › gravity traversers move instantaneously

23:3.2The uni­verse is well sup­plied with spir­its who uti­lize grav­ity for pur­poses of tran­sit; they can go any­where any time—in­stan­ter—but they are not per­sons. Cer­tain other grav­ity tra­versers are per­sonal be­ings, such as Grav­ity Mes­sen­gers and Tran­scen­den­tal Re­cord­ers, but they are not avail­able to the su­per- and the lo­cal uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tors. The worlds teem with an­gels and men and other highly per­sonal be­ings, but they are hand­i­capped by time and space: The limit of ve­loc­ity for most nonenseraphimed be­ings is 186,280 miles of your world per sec­ond of your time; the mid­way crea­tures and cer­tain oth­ers can, of­ten do, at­tain dou­ble ve­loc­ity—372,560 miles per sec­ond—while the ser­a­phim and oth­ers can tra­verse space at triple ve­loc­ity, about 558,840 miles per sec­ond. There are, how­ever, no tran­sit or mes­sen­ger per­son­al­i­ties who func­tion be­tween the in­stan­ta­neous ve­loc­i­ties of the grav­ity tra­versers and the com­par­a­tively slow speeds of the ser­a­phim, ex­cept the Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers.

• top speed › for Solitary Messengers is 840 billion miles/second

23:3.3Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers are, there­fore, gen­er­ally used for dis­patch and ser­vice in those sit­u­a­tions where per­son­al­ity is es­sen­tial to the achieve­ment of the as­sign­ment, and where it is de­sired to avoid the loss of time which would be oc­ca­sioned by the send­ing of any other read­ily avail­able type of per­sonal mes­sen­ger. They are the only def­i­nitely per­son­al­ized be­ings who can syn­chro­nize with the com­bined uni­ver­sal cur­rents of the grand uni­verse. Their ve­loc­ity in travers­ing space is vari­able, de­pend­ing on a great va­ri­ety of in­ter­fer­ing in­flu­ences, but the rec­ord shows that on the jour­ney to ful­fill this mis­sion my as­so­ciate mes­sen­ger pro­ceeded at the rate of 841,621,642,000 of your miles per sec­ond of your time.

• Divine Counselor required 109 days to travel 200,000 light-years

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.

• 3 universally distributed lines of energy each have velocity of 186,280 miles/second
• of seraphic transports
• top speed › for seraphim is 558,840 miles/second

39:3.9These tran­sit per­son­al­i­ties are so or­ga­nized that they can si­mul­ta­ne­ously uti­lize all three of the uni­ver­sally dis­tributed lines of en­ergy, each hav­ing a clear space ve­loc­ity of 186,280 miles per sec­ond. These trans­port­ers are thus able to super­im­pose ve­loc­ity of en­ergy upon ve­loc­ity of power un­til they at­tain an av­er­age speed on their long jour­neys vary­ing any­where from 555,000 to al­most 559,000 of your miles per sec­ond of your time. The ve­loc­ity is af­fected by the mass and prox­im­ity of neigh­bor­ing mat­ter and by the strength and di­rec­tion of the near-by main cir­cuits of uni­verse power. There are nu­mer­ous types of be­ings, sim­i­lar to the ser­a­phim, who are able to tra­verse space, and who also are able to trans­port other be­ings who have been prop­erly pre­pared.

• top speed › for Jerusem transport birds is 100 mph
• top speed › for Jerusem transport vehicles is 500 mph

46:2.4The trans­porta­tion sys­tem is al­lied with the cir­cu­la­tory streams of en­ergy move­ment, these main en­ergy cur­rents be­ing lo­cated at ten-mile in­ter­vals. By ad­just­ment of phys­i­cal mech­a­nisms the ma­te­rial be­ings of the planet can pro­ceed at a pace vary­ing from two to five hun­dred miles per hour. The trans­port birds fly at about one hun­dred miles an hour. The air mech­a­nisms of the Ma­te­rial Sons travel around five hun­dred miles per hour. Ma­te­rial and early mor­ontia be­ings must uti­lize these me­chan­i­cal means of trans­port, but spirit per­son­al­i­ties pro­ceed by li­ai­son with the su­pe­rior forces and spirit sources of en­ergy.

• impossible accurately to simultaneously determine exact location and velocity of moving object

65:6.1It is im­pos­si­ble ac­cu­rately to de­ter­mine, si­mul­ta­ne­ously, the ex­act lo­ca­tion and the ve­loc­ity of a mov­ing ob­ject; any at­tempt at mea­sure­ment of ei­ther in­evitably in­volves change in the other. The same sort of a para­dox con­fronts mor­tal man when he un­der­takes the chem­i­cal anal­y­sis of pro­to­plasm. The chemist can elu­ci­date the chem­istry of dead pro­to­plasm, but he can­not dis­cern ei­ther the phys­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tion or the dy­namic per­for­mance of liv­ing pro­to­plasm. Ever will the sci­en­tist come nearer and nearer the se­crets of life, but never will he find them and for no other rea­son than that he must kill pro­to­plasm in or­der to an­a­lyze it. Dead pro­to­plasm weighs the same as liv­ing pro­to­plasm, but it is not the same.

• Adjuster transit time from Divinington

108:1.9When once the Ad­justers are ac­tu­ally dis­patched from Di­vin­ing­ton, prac­ti­cally no time in­ter­venes be­tween that mo­ment and the hour of their ap­pear­ance in the minds of their cho­sen sub­jects. The av­er­age tran­sit time of an Ad­juster from Di­vin­ing­ton to Uran­tia is 117 hours, 42 min­utes, and 7 sec­onds. Vir­tu­ally all of this time is oc­cu­pied with reg­is­tra­tion on Uversa.