This is indeed a strange topic for our "Favorite Places" segment. But if you have the stamina, read on and discover the reality of a revelation.

"Evolving energy has substance; it has weight, although weight is always relative, depending on revolutionary velocity, mass, and antigravity. Mass in matter tends to retard velocity in energy; and the anywhere-present velocity of energy represents: the initial endowment of velocity, minus retardation by mass encountered in transit, plus the regulatory function of the living energy controllers of the superuniverse and the physical influence of near-by highly heated or heavily charged bodies….

"Given 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.

"When 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.

"During the times of plus energy there are power disturbances and heat fluctuations accompanied by electrical manifestations. During times of minus energy there are increased tendencies for matter to aggregate, condense, and to get out of control in the more delicately balanced circuits, with resultant tidal or collisional adjustments which quickly restore the balance between circulating energy and more literally stabilized matter. To forecast and otherwise to understand such likely behavior of the blazing suns and the dark islands of space is one of the tasks of the celestial star observers….

"The superuniverse of Orvonton is apparently now running down; the outer universes seem to be winding up for unparalleled future activities; the central Havona universe is eternally stabilized. Gravity and absence of heat (cold) organize and hold matter together; heat and antigravity disrupt matter and dissipate energy. The living power directors and force organizers are the secret of the special control and intelligent direction of the endless metamorphoses of universe making, unmaking, and remaking. Nebulae may disperse, suns burn out, systems vanish, and planets perish, but the universes do not run down." (176)

Commentary.

To include a Section, primarily on physics, as a "Favorite Place," probably seems extraordinary to most readers. But this Section, as well as many others like it, is capable of exciting true wonderment if we are old enough or knowledgeable enough to be familiar with the historical background.

In 1955, this Urantia Book Section could appear to be a fanciful extract from a science fiction novel. For one thing, antigravity was considered to be nonsense by most of the physics fraternity. Only recently has it attained a degree of respectability. And despite Einstein's E = mc², very few people believed that energy could be converted to matter or that the weight of an object could be affected by its rate of rotation.

Nowadays we might not be surprised to read something like: "Bottomonium, for example, is what you get by putting together a bottom quark and its antiquark. They can come together to form a number of different mesons, depending on how they move relative to one another. The simplest is the "upsilon." It has the lowest energy--and the smallest mass--because the bottom quark and its antiquark rotate about one another as slowly as possible. Set these quarks rotating more vigorously, and you get other mesons with larger masses."

More science fiction? No, it comes from a serious 1998 discussion on lattice quantum chromodynamics computations. For more information ask a physicist.

"Highly energized cold bodies of condensed matter" from the Urantia Paper quotation could only mean black holes to the modern day physicist. Pre-1960's, condensed matter was known to exist in white dwarf stars but these could have a surface temperature in the order of 3000 degrees. The then hypothetical neutron star was even more condensed but both the neutron star and black holes remained undiscovered.

A respectability status for black holes is a very recent acquirement. In 1939, after Oppenheimer and co-workers demonstrated (via a highly simplified mathematical model) that black holes could be a possibility, Einstein and Eddington both vigorously rejected that concept. At the time, Einstein had a God-like status among physicists while Eddington had a similar status among astronomers, possibly attributable to his claim that only two people in the world understood relativity and Einstein was the other. To go against either of these demigods was akin to denying God himself.

Is a black hole devoid of heat? Nobody knows the answer. Matter entering black holes is accelerating under the influence of enormous gravitational forces and is assumed to carry on to a Schwarzchild singularity, a dimensionless point at the hole's center where the laws of physics are assumed to breakdown. However, all agree that heat cannot escape from a blackhole, so even a pinpoint-size black hole could not be used to heat the household hearth. Actually it would extract heat from the home so, for all practical purposes, we can consider black holes to be dead cold.

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That brings us to "collisions among the dead giants of space"--colliding black holes? If it were not for quasars, we would not know that such was a realistic possibility. Quasar stands for "quasistellar radio source." The original quasar was an extremely powerful radiosource discovered in Australia in 1962. After plotting its position, details were sent to the Mount Palomar Observatory where its optical spectrum revealed only a hydrogen spectrum and a location about 2 billion light-years from earth. "Quasar" was a misnomer as these bodies radiate over the full range of the spectrum and now are more often known as quasar stellar objects--QSO's.

Since the repair job on the Hubble telescope, new work  has revealed that a "typical" QSO is embedded in a host galaxy which, in turn, is surrounded by a fuzzy halo and about three quarters of them are either colliding with or swallowing other galaxies. The most likely explanation for the observations is that a very high proportion of galaxies have a black hole at their center. The QSO characteristics are due to the black hole swallowing stars that then provide for their enormous energy output.

A recent survey of nearby galaxies indicates that 11 of 27 may harbor a black hole. It would seem, at least to me, that if both partners of colliding galaxies have black holes then, sooner or later, in some collisions the gravitational fields of the two black holes would overlap to the point that their collision became inevitable, perhaps with fusion, a doubling of mass and a rain of in-falling stars consequent upon the increased gravitational field--a hyperquasar maybe!!

Many quasars shoot out jets in opposite directions that may extend for more than a million light years. One explanation for the jets is that a giant spinning black hole accumulates a spinning accretion disk in its equatorial plane from materials being drawn towards it by gravity. Friction and gravity supply the energy necessary to heat the disk to the point where a gas plasma forms and slides inwards along magnetic fields lines later to be hurled out by centrifugal forces as two jets in opposite directions.

The accretion disk is the major source of radiation--X-rays at its hot, innermost regions, and ultra-violet, visible, and infra-red radiation further out.  Radio frequency emitting lobes may form where a quasar's jets terminate. Geoffrey Burbidge calculated that these lobes may have as much magnetic and kinetic energy as would be obtained by converting all the mass of ten million suns into pure energy.

Burbidge's calculation demonstrates that The Urantia Book's statement, "in these collisional episodes enormous masses of matter are suddenly converted into the rarest form of energy" is not just the wild imagination it would have appeared to be at the time of the printing of the book..

Some might argue that colliding black holes would simply result in bigger black holes. But perhaps a critical situation is reached when temperature and pressure conditions cause matter to disrupt yielding the constituent ultimatons  (which, we are told, do not respond to linear gravity). Such an event might then convert gravitational implosion to rebound explosion. Once the fireworks are over, the revelators tell us that such devastating collisions become a thing of the past. Incidentally, the measured frequency of quasars in our vicinity is one in a million galaxies. Hence quasar activity may be mainly an outer space phenomenon.

Isn't it nice to know that the power directors and force organizers have these catastrophic collision things under control? And that it's all just part of a routine universal recycling program!

And is it not also nice to know that the running down of our universes is apparent and not real. Science rightly uses what it conceives to be the simplest explanation for known data. It sees an expanding universe and so assumes a beginning calculated by extrapolating backwards from the expansion rate. Rightly, it also assumes the universality of its observed laws of conservation of energy, from which it sees an eventual running down. Continuous  creation and controlled energy flow are not measurable--not yet anyhow--and it is good science to stick with the observable.

It was in about 1955 that the New York Times carried a headline report that the size and age of the universe had just doubled. The reason for the report was a new estimate of the rate of expansion of the universe which also increased the estimate of its age from 2 billion to 4 billion years, about 10 billion years short of current estimates. And, at about the same time, The Urantia Book appeared on the bookshelves speaking of colliding black holes and continuous creation!!

In 1998, it all seems plausible. One reason that Section 8 of Paper 15 makes it among my "Favorite Places" is that I am old enough to remember the 1930-1960 period and, as with my elderly brother and sister Alzheimer and dementia patients, can comfortably drop back mentally to earlier times. And in this mental state, I can look at Section 8 of Paper 15 in utter awe, wonderment, and gratitude.

References:

Davies, Christine, "Let's Play Quantum Chess." New Scientist 158 (2137) 1998

Disney, M. "A New Look at Quasars." Scientific American, 278 (6) 1998

Thorne, K. "Black Holes and Time Warps." (W.W. Norton, London, 1994)