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Hi Nigel,Mara, George and tas William Wentworth here. I’m coming in a bit late with a couple of questions. With regard to the co-planar nature of your discussion, have you taken account of the fact that “space thickens, and it thickens somewhat faster than does the plane of creation, the universes.” P125.0. This suggests that each space level, including the superuniverse space level gets thicker as it recedes from Paradise–ie that its cross section is pear shaped. Would this affect what may or may not be discernible from a point near the outer edge, such as Urantia?
With regard to Nigel’s theory of the position and shape of the superuniverse space level, although it satisfies the description of length, breadth and thickness given on P167.18, nevertheless it would appear that this can never be verified, since there is no way of observing it. There is something deeply unsatisfying about this state of affairs. Is there no way around it?
wentworth wrote: With regard to the co-planar nature of your discussion, have you taken account of the fact that “space thickens, and it thickens somewhat faster than does the plane of creation, the universes.” P125.0.In attempting to visualize the overall shape of the grand universe, I am seeing a bow-tie shape where the center (Paradise) is thin so as to be invisible. From this so-called plane of creation emerges the Havona plane of one billion perfect worlds in seven concentric circles (ellipses?), a plane that is one world thick, as suggested by Nigel. The bows of the bow-tie represent the universes of time and space where space thickens or bulges. That might explain Nigel’s graphic of the teardrop shape of the superuniverses as they “point” toward Havona and Paradise.Mara wrote:
“That might explain Nigel’s graphic… “
Hi Mara – I’ll be explaining those graphics over the next few weeks
William wrote:
“With regard to Nigel’s theory of the position and shape of the superuniverse space level, although it satisfies the description of length, breadth and thickness given on P167.18, nevertheless it would appear that this can never be verified, since there is no way of observing it. There is something deeply unsatisfying about this state of affairs. Is there no way around it?”
William, this tickles the roots of my motivation: regarding those things the modern mind really needs to know, if something is not discoverable (without help) by humans, do those “limitations of revelation” apply? If not, this may explain why the authors were free to say so much about the grand universe, and ultimatons.
PS: Regarding my proposed “line of avoidance”, last year I had a series of emails with the ESO team driving the Paranal telescopes. I asked their outreach folks if there was a kind of “line of avoidance”, a band where stars are so thickly packed they literally block the infrared view (comparable to the optical “zone of avoidance”). They scratched their heads and put me onto one of the guys managing the surveys. He said, “The view is obscured not so much by the stars (which are effectively ‘point sources’), but by a wall of gas glowing at infrared frequencies. So no, there is no real “wall of stars”, but our view just above and below the mid-plane is effectively blocked by that wall of infrared gas.”
To get a feel for the problem, have a look here: Chromoscope.net
Once the default (optical) view of the Milky Way downloads, select other views e.g. [far infrared] from menu on the right.
Nigel
Hi Nigel,
What a great link. Chromoscope presents some amazing pictures. A couple of questions, if I might:
Chromoscope makes your point about a concentration of mass in the region of the plane of the Milky Way. According to the data note for Far-Infrared, IRAS identified 350,000 new objects. Is it possible to calculate the distance to these objects? That is, can we tell how many of the objects along the “line of avoidance” are part of the Milky Way proper and how many, if any, are outside the borders of the Milky Way galaxy?
In your May 31 post (#15175) your diagram has the Milky Way at the far left of Orvonton, and the other major sectors spread out to the right in a tear drop shape. I’m finding this hard to imagine, since there are several statements which unambiguously place Uversa (and the Milky Way) at (near) the physical center of the “ten trillion blazing suns” in Orvonton. The major sectors rotate around Uversa, which means they are in gravitational revolution about it; that is, Uversa is at the gravitational center of mass for all ten major sectors. I’m having trouble reconciling this simple gravitational dynamic with your diagram, which shows the Milky Way on the periphery of Orvonton, instead of at its center.
George
Nigel
Thanks. That explains it.
Another thing; refer to your first diagram of Splandon (Milky Way) and other major sectors within Orvonton.
I contend that the shape of the superuniverse space level requires that the outer edge where Splandon is shown should be much thicker than the inner edge which is closer to Paradise. So Splandon should extend above and below the obscured zone–or at least more so than those major sectors at the inner (Paradise) end. As Splandon revolves around Uversa, and comes closer to Paradise, that thickness will decrease, and there will be “increased superimposition, layer upon layer” P168.12.
Is this in conformity with your theory? If so, does it alter what might be visible from Urantia?
William.
In your May 31 post (#15175) your diagram has the Milky Way at the far left of Orvonton, and the other major sectors spread out to the right in a tear drop shape. I’m finding this hard to imagine, since there are several statements which unambiguously place Uversa (and the Milky Way) at (near) the physical center of the “ten trillion blazing suns” in Orvonton. The major sectors rotate around Uversa, which means they are in gravitational revolution about it; that is, Uversa is at the gravitational center of mass for all ten major sectors.
Hi George and others,
Are you familiar with this research from last year?:
http://phys.org/news/2014-03-astronomers-earth-universe-council-giants.html
“The Milky Way and Andromeda are encircled by twelve large galaxies arranged in a ring about 24-million light years across – this ‘Council of Giants’ stands in gravitational judgment of the Local Group by restricting its range of influence.”
“McCall says twelve of the fourteen giants in the Local Sheet, including the Milky Way and Andromeda, are “spiral galaxies” which have highly flattened disks in which stars are forming. The remaining two are more puffy “elliptical galaxies”, whose stellar bulks were laid down long ago. Intriguingly, the two ellipticals sit on opposite sides of the Council.”
tas
Thanks for the link, tas. I enjoyed it. On the video McCall shows the Milky Way, Andromeda and neighboring flattened disc galaxies within a 24 mly range of the Milky Way, and the Milky Way is depicted as a reference point near the center of that chunk of space. Each galaxy is depicted as an orb and is marked with a color – orange, red, yellow, or blue. The video is very short, maybe 30 seconds, but in it McCall briefly depicts the galaxies as flattened mini-milky-ways. I noticed the differences among the plane of each of the flattened galaxies relative to the others. On appearance the plane of each galaxy seems oddly arranged relative to its neighbors. And this caused me to wonder about the rotational centers of these galaxies and where the centers might be in the scheme of things?
Hi tas,
Thanks for the note. I did hear about the Council of Giants just recently. I was initially intrigued, since the Milky Way is near the center of these galaxies. However, it does not appear to be possible for the other galaxies in this Council to rotate about the Milky Way, because they are not gravitationally bound to it. We know this because these other galaxies are subject to the universal expansion of space, and this only occurs when things are not bound together by gravity with enough force.
Our galaxy and Andromeda are part of a gravitationally bound structure called the Local Group. Because of this gravitational binding it is possible, though not yet demonstrated, that the galaxies in the Local Group could be rotating about Uversa, which is (relatively) near the Milky Way. Since there is no space expansion between the members of this group, they travel along together as a single coherent unit. This is a necessary requirement for whatever cosmic structure finally turns out to be Orvonton; our superuniverse orbits Paradise as a single coherent and enduring unit, as it follows the elliptical path of the superuniverse space level.
George
tas, thanks for pointing out this interesting data, Council of Giants.
Let’s see if we can turn it into a smoking gun
George, you wrote,
“I was initially intrigued, since the Milky Way is near the center of these galaxies. However, it does not appear to be possible for the other galaxies in this Council to rotate about the Milky Way, because they are not gravitationally bound to it. We know this because…”
On page 7 of McCall’s preprint ( abstract – Council Of Giants ) he writes:
“The Council appears to be in radial equilibrium with respect to the Local Group,”
His paper goes on to explain how unusual this arrangement is. But even more interesting is how McCall concludes the paper’s abstract:
“It appears that the development of the giants of the Local Sheet was guided by a pre-existing flattened framework of matter.”
With this as timely motivation, I’ve sketched out a UB version of what may be going on at the center of this “Council of Giants”. I’ll try to add this over the next few days.
Nigel
Hi Nigel,
McCall’s observation that the galaxies in the Local Sheet are in “radial equilibrium with respect to the Local Group, because after correction for the Group’s translation, the mean of radially projected velocities is only −1 km/s” is consistent with previous studies. The Local Group is embedded near the center of the Local Sheet, which is 5 Mly thick and 46 Mly in diameter. In a 2008 paper R. Brent Tully found that all of the galaxies in the Local Sheet have a common “peculiar motion” away from what he calls the Local Void, which borders the Local Sheet. (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008ApJ…676..184T) Peculiar motion is motion through space, as opposed to proper motion, which is the motion of space due to space expansion.
McCall begins his vector analysis of peculiar motions relative to the Local Sheet by first removing their proper motions due to the expansion of space.
“For galaxies beyond the Local Group, the heliocentric velocity was corrected for local expansion using a value for the Hubble constant founded upon infrared observations of Cepheids and a period-luminosity relation anchored to the distance of M106.”
Galaxies beyond the Local Group have proper motions away from the Local Group because of space expansion. McCall uses 71.6 km/s/Mpc for the Hubble constant or 22 km/s for every million light-years. The closest galaxy in McCall’s list is NGC 5102, which is 10 Mly away. Space expansion gives it a proper motion of 220 km/s away from us. In a billion years, NGC 5102 will be about 10% further away than it is now, according to modern theory. This is not that long a time, since the Milky Way completes just 4 revolutions in a billion years. Because of the proper motion between the Local Group and the other galaxies in the Local Sheet, it does not seem possible for the Council of Giants to be in rotation about the Local Group or to persist as a single enduring whole over billions of years. But I could be missing something and would appreciate any thoughts you may have on this.
George
George, thanks for adding some rigour to my speculations!
Currently polishing up a set of graphics for the parallel discussion at UBRON
Hope to add more here over the next 24 hours.Nigel
As we all know,
“within a few short years many of our statements regarding the physical sciences will stand in need of revision” (1109.3, 101:4.2)
I’m keen to get on with this revision. But if we’re going to revise the UB story, first we need to work out what that story is. Below is my attempt to describe what I understand this story to be, at least with regard to the seven superuniverses. Once we get this in place, we’ll have a target at which to start shooting holes.
But first, if you’re not familiar with what native astronomers have actually discovered, please begin by visiting these two links: (1) Chromoscope.net and (2) Council of Giants.
The “Chromoscope” link shows our current best views of our own back yard (the Milky Way) at all wavelengths. The “Council of Giants” link points to a recent preprint by Marshall L. McCall about a surprising distribution embedded in our local sheet. On page 7 of McCall’s paper, he writes:
[MM] “The Council appears to be in radial equilibrium with respect to the Local Group,”
His paper goes on to explain how unusual this arrangement is. But even more interesting for us is how McCall concludes the paper’s abstract:
[MM] “It appears that the development of the giants of the Local Sheet was guided by a pre-existing flattened framework of matter.”
This “pre-existing flattened framework of matter” is something I believe the UB predicts. But the introduction I sketch below is not so much concerned with this flattened annular belt (within which McCall’s 14 giant galaxies formed), but with the mysterious tiny kernel lurking at their gravitational center, about 1 million light years away from us, through Sagittarius.
( continued … )
Nigel
( continued from previous post )
Apart from the existence of Paradise, the bestowal of space, etc., UB cosmology includes three factors not yet fully accounted for by native astronomers:
(1) the organized motion of emergent energies along space paths of lessened resistance to motion;
(2) the effect of the ( absolute ) mass of vast pools of ultimata that form within these flows of emergent energies;
(3) the phenomenon of a linear attraction between associations of clusters of ultimatons.
The combined effect of (#1) and (#2) may be responsible for what cosmologists now call “the cosmic web”, the apparent tendency of superclusters to form along sheets and shells of pre-existing over-densities of emergent energies (dark mass).
The second (#2) may explain the effect approximated by Einstein’s gravity, while (#3) becomes that component of total gravity (absolute + linear) that keeps researchers interested in modified Newtonian schemes. Let’s keep these factors in mind as we consider what the UB calls “the seven superuniverses”.
To paraphrase UB (215.3, 19:1.6), to understand the reality that science is beginning to measure requires that we understand the origin, history, and destiny of the material creation. So let’s go way back. Back before any galaxies had formed, back before those 21 “Ancients of Days” stepped out from Havona, right back to when the motions of space were defined, and those space paths of “lessened resistance to motion” were set up.
In particular, the superuniverse space level:
[See figure 1: http://www.ubron.org/groupphotos/Weyl_01.jpg%5D
[See figure 2: http://www.ubron.org/groupphotos/Weyl_02.jpg%5D
To cosmologists, a preferred direction in space (e.g. Isle of Paradise) implies Weyl curvature which, given time, distorts spherical distributions into ellipsoidal shapes. I suggest that given (i) Paradise, (ii) a co-planar, annular, grand universe distribution of ultimata, and (iii) a trillion years or so, something like figure 3 is what relativistic physics would predict. I’d have to dust off the textbooks to model this correctly, but you get the idea:
[See figure 3: http://www.ubron.org/groupphotos/Weyl_03.jpg%5D
Given the above precursors, I’ve modeled the (relatively tiny) grand universe set of “superuniverses” as flattened and perturbed ellipsoids, what someone called a teardrop shape:
[See figure 4: http://www.ubron.org/groupphotos/Weyl_04.jpg%5D
Notice how the UB story starts at the hypothetical beginning of finite activation, with vast flows of emergent energies, perturbed by superfluid vortices and the rotational movement of “mighty-tensioned” masses of ultimata, eventually leading to the appearance of measurable atomic matter.
On the other hand, native cosmology by necessity has to work backwards: given a distribution of atoms, stars and galaxies, we try to fit gravitational models to the data, then build a cosmology consistent with those ideas about gravitational interaction. But if those ideas about gravitational interaction are wrong, or if we leave out underlying motions of space and motions through space, how can we expect native science to come up with a valid cosmology?
I hope this prequel helps to explain those mysterious pics in this earlier post (15175).
Please point out errors and inconsistencies, and ask about what doesn’t make sense.
Personally, I think the next step is to consider what such a “superuniverse space level” would look like when viewed from our “3rd rock from the Sun”.
What do you think?
Nigel
PS: given that fundamental research has hit a brick wall (see Crisis at the Edge of Physics), this sort of UB speculation seems far less bizarre that what the mainstream is already prepared to tolerate.
NN
Hi Nigel,
You give us quite a theoretically sophisticated model. Clearly, you have put a lot of thought into it. Your short description of the origin and history of the grand universe is persuasive. Your point about the inadequacy of our current understanding of gravity is undeniable. Ever since the 1970s no one has been able to come up with a satisfying gravitational theory capable of explaining the “rotation curves” of galaxies. Physicists know there is something wrong with the inverse square law of gravitational attraction, but no one has yet come up with a better one. Hence, the hypothesis of an unobservable dark matter which would add the needed mass to galaxies to explain their “rotation curves” in terms of Newton’s law. Modern physics does not even suspect the existence of absolute gravity, a completely new law of gravity revealed in The Urantia Book.
If I understand your model correctly, the Milky Way is one of ten major sectors in Orvonton. The other 9 major sectors in Orvonton are planar structures, similar to the Milky Way, and they are co-planar with the Milky Way. Because of this arrangement, these other 9 sectors are concealed behind the stars and dust in the plane of the Milky Way, which forms a “line of obscuration.” My initial question is about the observability of these other major sectors in Orvonton.
If these other 9 sectors are unobservable, because they are hidden behind the wall of stars formed by the plane of the Milky Way, why are we told that 8 of them were already identified in 1934?
“Of the ten major divisions of Orvonton, eight have been roughly identified by Urantian astronomers. The other two are difficult of separate recognition because you are obliged to view these phenomena from the inside.” (15:3.4)
“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.” (41:3.10)
We are cautioned more than once not to treat these teachings as infallible. We are explicitly told that its cosmology is not inspired. However, saying that 8 major sectors were “roughly identified” by astronomers in 1934 is a simple statement of historical fact. It is either true or false. Accepting it as true means that these 8 major sectors were actually observed and catalogued in the 1930s. From 1917 to 1948 the 100-inch telescope at Mount Wilson (where Hubble worked) was the most powerful in the world. Since it was limited to the visible spectrum of light and it could observe these other major sectors, they cannot be located behind the blazing suns forming the plane of the Milky Way.
I have found instances before where my interpretations of two different statements in the Book about the same thing appear to conflict. Besides the citations you have given, are there any other statements in the Book which lead you to conclude that the 9 other major sectors in Orvonton are hidden by the “line of obscuration?”
George
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