*Astronomy and the Superuniverse
A galaxy is an enormous group of stars, planets, nebulae, and other celestial bodies traveling as a unit through the realms of space. The URANTIA Book has a lot to say about the structure of our galaxy, not all of it in agreement with the current teachings of astronomy. Since the writing of The URANTIA Book, almost fifty years ago, science has come into agreement on some originally contested points.
The URANTIA Book teaches that in the creation there are exactly seven inhabited galaxies, to which it refers as superuniverses. The seven superuniverses swing one after another around the Isle of Paradise, the center of all things, in a great ellipse lying in the plane of creation. Surrounding the superuniverse space level, farther out but still in the plane of creation, are the outer space levels, four concentric rings of evolving energy: future universes in the making (1).
Galactic outlines
Science describes the galaxy as: 1) a central, bulging nucleus of undetermined radius surrounded by 2) a flat, elliptical galactic plane about fifty thousand light years in radius and several hundred light years thick, which in turn is surrounded by 3) a spherical halo of fifteen-thousand-light-year radius consisting of a light sprinkling of luminous bodies. Turning to The URANTIA Book, the galaxy is described as a vast plane, an elongated-circular grouping of bodies whose number decreases away from the chief plane of our material universe (2), a description that could accommodate science's current but ever-changing picture. Most of the luminous bodies visible to the naked eye are in our galaxy, say both astronomy and The URANTIA Book (3).
The first disagreement involves the Milky Way, a vast disk of stars seen edgewise in the night sky as a thick, white line. To astronomers, the Milky Way is the galaxy; to The URANTIA Book, the Milky Way is the central nucleus of the galaxy (4). The galaxy rotates about its center, say astronomy and The URANTIA Book. Astronomy places this center some thirty thousand light years away in the central galactic bulge, in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. According to The URANTIA Book, it's two hundred thousand light years from us (from our system capital), somewhere in the central plane of the Milky Way (5).
Fifty thousand light years is the distance from the center of the galaxy to its outermost edge, say the astronomers. Actually, says The URANTIA Book, the distance is two hundred fifty thousand light years (it could be even more) (6). This is the distance from the galactic center to the outermost system of inhabited worlds, a distance The URANTIA Book says will increase as creation continues: the galaxy is growing larger (7).
Sagittarius checkpoint
Ten huge physical systems called major sectors whirling about the galactic center--a great sun cluster--constitute the galaxy, according to The URANTIA Book. (It would seem, in view of the flatness of the galaxy, that these orbits would be parallel to the galactic plane.) Each major sector consists of one hundred minor sectors orbiting the respective major sector center, a minor sector consisting of exactly one hundred local universes--star clouds, offspring of one or more nebulae--orbiting the minor sector center (8). Above the local universe level, administrative units coincide with physical systems; at the local universe level and below, a single administrative unit can encompass several physical systems (9). Administratively, a local universe has one hundred constellations, a constellation one hundred local systems, a local system up to one thousand inhabited or inhabitable planets not counting planets settled in light and life (10).
Physically, our planet lies halfway out in one of the arms of the former nebula that gave it birth. Working upward in physical concept, our PLANET orbits the SUN, which orbits the FORMER NEBULAR CENTER, which orbits the LOCAL UNIVERSE CENTER, which orbits the MINOR SECTOR CENTER, which orbits the MAJOR SECTOR CENTER, which orbits PARADISE, which is the CENTER OF ALL THINGS (11). These multiple motions, says The URANTIA Book, are a source of confusion for our planet-bound astronomers (12).
The constellation Sagittarius contains an important astronomical center point, according to both astronomy and The URANTIA Book, but one far different in the two teachings. Astronomy teaches that the entire galaxy is centered, and rotates about, a point located 30,000 light years from Urantia in the direction of Sagittarius. The URANTIA Book, however, teaches that the center in Sagittarius is our minor sector center, orbital point of the one hundred local universes in our minor sector (13). (As previously mentioned, The URANTIA Book places the galaxy's center some 200,000 light years from Urantia). Misinterpretation of the significance of the rotation point in Sagittarius must be a source of profound distortion in astronomy's picture of the galaxy. Theoretically, both views could agree, in terms of direction only, if the galactic center and minor sector center should happen to be in temporary alignment with respect to our current observational position.
Measuring distances
The four methods in use today for measuring astronomical distances are parallax observation of the proper motion of nearby objects, comparison of apparent luminosity and spectral type, observation of Cepheid variables, and observation of the Doppler frequency shift to deduce radial velocity.
The Cepheid variables method is accurate, says The URANTIA Book, but only up to about a million light years (14). Used primarily to measure distances to distant galaxies, this method must be introducing errors into astronomical measurements and theories. Astronomy might not be realizing the potential accuracy of this method even at smaller distances. Using the method of Cepheid variables, astronomers calculate the distance to the galaxy Andromeda as 2.7 million light years, where The URANTIA Book teaches that light from this galaxy takes almost a million years to reach us--another way (to our current understanding) of saying that Andromeda is just under one million light years away (15). A major difficulty in comparing astronomical figures from The URANTIA Book with those from astronomy is the impossibility of obtaining final figures from astronomy. On earth, a distance measured as a mile will likely remain at least approximately a mile. But astronomy has calculated the distance to Andromeda, for example, as follows: in 1907 as 19 light years (16) by stellar parallax--in 1911 as a minimum of 1600 light years (17) by observation of novae--in the mid-1920's as 800,000 light years (18) by Cepheid variables--and in the mid-1950's as 2.7 million light years (19) by changing the Cepheid variables scale to suit the expectations of astronomers. Tomorrow's figures are yet to come.
The Doppler technique, which determines the radial velocity of a luminous object by the apparent shift of its color due to motion (more violet for approaching objects, redder for receding objects), receives good grades from The URANTIA Book, but only when used on objects in the superuniverse space level. The URANTIA Book teaches that this method is greatly in error when applied to objects in the outer space regions for several reasons, the most important being the rotation of the outer space rings (in alternate directions between successive rings), which can cause the mistaken impression that bodies in the outer space levels are traveling through space at fantastically high speeds (20). No further explanation is given, but it would seem from this that the rotating space in the outer space levels carries the bodies in the outer space levels with it, making it appear that these bodies are traveling through space, at tremendously high velocities, instead of with space (see reference to de Sitter's concepts of space below). The URANTIA Book refers to space as a positive reality; particular nascent forces, from which energy and matter are woven (21).
Through the red shift, astronomers have observed these apparent (and primarily receding) velocities of objects in the outer space levels. This has led some to the idea of The Big Bang, a primordial explosion that supposedly occurred when all the matter (or pre-matter) in existence was in a tiny ball. The results of that explosion, according to the theory of The Big Bang, are the galaxies, in headlong flight away from each other and the site of the explosion. Some astronomers have gone further, to visualize a future slowing down of the expanding cosmos, its reversal of direction and picking up of speed toward the point of the original explosion, and the final compacting together again of the entire creation into a basketball-sized tombstone of reality, all the worlds, all the hopes, dreams, and possibilities of all the living creatures of all space and time--squashed. This is wrong, according to The URANTIA Book, which teaches space respiration, a gentle expansion and contraction of space itself in a two-billion-year cycle of moderate motion not interfering with the continuation of life or the development of the universe (22). The idea that space itself is expanding was suggested in 1917 by Dutch astronomer Willem de Sitter in a dynamic version of Einstein's static universe of curved space. In de Sitter's universe, the curvature of space is constantly decreasing (light would travel in an expanding spiral), resulting in an expansion of space and the apparent moving apart of objects at rest in space--in effect, movement with space but not through space (23) (see discussion on red shift above).
Developments
Doctor Bart J. Bok, an authority on the Milky Way, has recently described a new view of the Milky Way, where the Milky Way includes a new component, the corona, an unseen domain of matter--perhaps dust and gas--and is far more extensive than the previously accepted radius of fifty thousand light years (24). This concept begins in some ways to approach the URANTIA Book description of the galaxy; but it also redefines the term Milky Way always to designate the entire galaxy, a possible source of future confusion for readers of The URANTIA Book, which teaches that the Milky Way (old definition) is only the nucleus of the galaxy. URANTIA Book readers might do well to replace this newly ambiguous term with two terms in future discussions: for example, Visual Milky Way or Original Milky Way (old meaning, as used in The URANTIA Book) in contrast to Milky Way Galaxy (new meaning, now becoming accepted by science).
At the writing of The URANTIA Book, in 1934, the URANTIA Revelators said that improved observing devices would soon reveal many new objects to us and expand our ideas of the size of the galaxy (25). This is happening now. They also taught that objects then considered outside the galaxy would subsequently be recognized as inside the galaxy (26). They flatly contradicted then-contemporary astronomy by saying that the Magellanic Cloud is a part of our galaxy (using their now-familiar device of wording the improvement over contemporary scientific knowledge in language artfully crafted to be acceptable both before and after the newer scientific discoveries) (27). It wasn't until 1974 that astronomers began to wonder if the galaxy might be larger than previously thought (28) and Einasto, of Estonia, put forward the idea that the Large and Small Clouds of Magellan are a part of our galaxy (29).
ABOVE RIGHT: THE LARGE MAGELLANIC CLOUD,
ABOVE LEFT: THE CONSTELLATION SAGITTARIUS,
looking toward the supposed center of the Milky Way Galaxy.
only recently recognized by science as a part of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Now, almost fifty years after The URANTIA Book was written, Doctor Bok writes of astronomy's new view of the galaxy (as first put forth by einasto) that the galaxy includes:
"the two small nearby galaxies called the Large and Small Clouds of Magellan and a number of dwarf spheroidal galaxies, of which seven are now known."
One of the dwarf spheroidal galaxies of which he writes lies some 450,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way. Another, the dwarf galaxy Carina, is thought to be 325,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way (30). This is a dramatic change from the fifty-thousand-mile radius that astronomy would have used to judge The URANTIA Book at the time when it was written.
(NOTE: Could the seven dwarf spheroidal galaxies mentioned above be connected with the ten major sectors of the galaxy? The URANTIA Book teaches that at the time of its writing our astronomers had roughly identified eight of the galaxy's ten major sectors (31), but does not indicate whether or not they were recognized as being within our galaxy--a remote possibility in view of the then underestimation of the size of the galaxy. We were told that the major sectors would be recognized as huge and reasonably symmetrical star clusters) (32).
About differences
The URANTIA Book is a spiritual revelation, whose spiritual teachings and presentations of history and destiny will never be found to be in error (33). Its scientific statements, however, are in terms of the knowledge of the people originally receiving them. As scientific knowledge advances, these statements will be seen to be in error (34). But not every disagreement between science and The URANTIA Book is automatically such an instance. For example: In the few months between the writing of this article and its pre-publication review, the local library replaced its fourth edition (copyright 1977) of the encyclopedia used as the primary source volume of the article (35) with a fifth edition of the same publication (copyright this year--1982). So much confusion resulted in the review that a fourth edition had to be located. Just under "Galaxy," for example, the fifth edition had: 1) added the galactic corona to the galaxy; 2) disowned the 50,000 light year radius of the galaxy published in the fourth edition and replaced it with a radius of at least 325,000 light years, the difference between disagreement or agreement with The URANTIA Book; and 3) inserted a 5000-light-year-radius by 3000-light-year-thickness figure for the central galactic bulge where the fourth edition had written that no figure was available. Under "Star Cloud," the fifth edition read exactly the same as the fourth, except that it omitted one sentence: a statement that the Large and Small Clouds of Magellan are not in our galaxy--again, the difference between disagreement or agreement with The URANTIA Book.
It would seem wise to hesitate before condemning scientific statements in The URANTIA Book solely on the basis of apparent disagreement with the current but changing views of science. Science is a tool. Like other tools, it can be used erroneously, especially if its limitations are not recognized by those who use it. The fact that science often expresses its findings in numbers commands an air of exactness, even though its numbers are often wrong. Doctor Lewis Thomas, Chancellor of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, has addressed this problem of the inability of scientists and laymen to appreciate the true nature of science, in the following words:
"The endeavor is not, as is sometimes thought, a way of building up a solid, indestructible body of immutable truth, fact laid precisely upon fact in the manner of twigs in an ant hill. Science is not like this at all: it keeps changing, shifting, revising, discovering that it was wrong and then heaving itself explosively apart to redesign everything . . . . Ordinarily scientists do not talk this way about their trade, because there is always in the air the feeling that this time we have it right, this time we are about to come into possession of a finished science knowing almost everything about everything" (36).
Doctor Thomas' observation is borne out, and URANTIA Book readers supported in delaying judgement on discrepancies between the astronomical teachings of science and The URANTIA Book, in the experience of astronomer Doctor Bart Bok (and his colleagues), who writes:
"I remember the mid-1970's as a time when I and my fellow watchers were notably self-assured. The broad outlines of the galaxy seemed reasonably well established . . . . We did not suspect it would soon be necessary to revise the radius of the Milky Way upward by a factor of three or more and to increase its mass by as much as a factor of 10 . . . " (37).
* The photo at the top of the page is of the Andromeda Nebula. (ok)
