Scientific Convergence

[Majeston]

Year 2006 Update on the Coming Scientific Validation Of The Urantia Book

By Philip Calabrese, Ph.D., San Diego, CA

* * *
Phil Calabrese is an award-winning mathematician, and spent
forty years in teaching, both college level statistics and the first college
course for credit on The Urantia Book in 1971, in addition to presenting
the cosmological implications of the book at various conferences
over the years. In 1990, as a result of a paper he had published, he
was awarded a senior research associateship by the National Research
Council and subsequently won a 3-year prime contract with the US
Navy to provide “techniques for uncertain conditional information
processing.”
*************

One of the scientific ways to validate a purported divine
revelation, though not the only way, or necessarily the best way, is
to statistically test its associated cosmology. This may be the only
way to convince a scientist that The Urantia Book is worth reading
for the helpful albeit transitional science that it contains. In the
case of The Urantia Book, the associated cosmology is supposed to
be “of immense value” to us during this transient stage of Earth’s
scientific development compared to the ages to come.

Among the scientific positions taken and systematic statements
made by The Urantia Book let us focus on the population of
such statements that a) were minority positions before (and possibly
for a while after) the 1955 publication date, and b) are now
positions that have subsequently been definitely settled and established
by contemporary science.

Were The Urantia Book just in agreement with contemporary
science as often as it remains at odds with contemporary science,
then little statistical argument could be made for its scientific validation.
But in fact, for many scientific issues contemporary science
has quite often traveled a meandering path eventually converging
to positions long ago taken by The Urantia Book.

Each such example makes it still less plausible that The
Urantia Book was humanly written. If The Urantia Book was not
humanly written then it was superhumanly written.

Here are some examples from 2006:


DUST FROM THE WILD 2 COMET

One third of a milligram of dust was recovered this January
from the Wild 2 comet after a rendezvous with NASA’s Stardust
spacecraft, which collected the comet material in a collector and
then landed back on Earth.

According to Discover Magazine’s Jeffrey Winters,1 “Researchers
had anticipated that Wild 2 would contain material
formed in the icy reaches between the stars long before the solar
system was born, but what they found could have formed only in
the hottest part of the solar nebula. Perhaps gas, dust, and small
rocks from the inner part of the infant solar system were violently
ejected out beyond Neptune, where comets such as Wild 2 are
thought to have formed.”

The reason our scientists had anticipated that the Wild 2
material would be cold is because that is part of the condensation
model of the birth of a solar system, that there will be left over
material that hasn’t yet been captured by the hot interior of the
postulated solar nebula or by its larger satellites. However, The
Urantia Book says that our solar system did not form as a condensation
of old icy material that lit up when compressed beyond a
certain point, but rather by just such a violent expulsion of material
from the sun’s core. [57:5.6] (P. 656) Had our scientists found
older, icy star matter in the comet, that would have undermined
the case for the solar system and comets being mainly expelled
material from the hot solar interior. But instead of being discredited,
The Urantia Book has once again been corroborated by contemporary
science even though most scientists are still clinging
to a condensation model of the solar system’s origin but needing
“violent solar ejections” to account for the data. While The
Urantia Book says that such an origin is a very common method of
solar system formation, there are nine other ways solar systems are
formed. [15:5.2] (P. 170)

INVISIBILITY CLOAKING

The Urantia Book speaks of certain “dark gravity bodies”
that completely shroud the Central Universe of Havona:

On the outskirts of this vast central universe, far out beyond
the seventh belt of Havona worlds, there swirl an unbelievable
number of enormous dark gravity bodies. These multitudinous
dark masses are quite unlike other space bodies in many
particulars; even in form they are very different. These dark
gravity bodies neither reflect nor absorb light; they are nonreactive
to physical-energy light, and they so completely encircle and
enshroud Havona as to hide it from the view of even near-by
inhabited universes of time and space. [14:1.7] (P. 153)

This paragraph has always been difficult to interpret. After
all, what is left if a body neither reflects nor absorbs light? To
shroud, it must bend light around itself as though not there!

This seemingly fanciful idea was made a reality this year
when a team of scientists from Duke University and Imperial College
London headed by David Smith “designed radical new materials
that can bend microwaves around an object so that they
are neither absorbed nor scattered.”2 The scientists succeeded
in shrouding a metal cylinder two inches in diameter from microwaves,
which are just like light waves but have longer wavelengths.


That such materials exist is corroboration of another implausible
notion from The Urantia Book that now is reality. These
dark gravity bodies also provide gravity stability to the cosmos.



DARK MATTER AND DARK ENERGY

According to our scientists, “dark matter” is what keeps
the universes from flying apart given its rapid spinning. Scientists
have realized that matter such as galaxies must have ten to twenty
times the mass of their visible luminous bodies to prevent the galaxy
from flying apart due to centrifugal force. As expressed by
Alex Stone: “Because dark matter doesn’t interact with regular
matter, or with itself, it passes right through everything.”3

The Urantia Book speaks of more than one type of dark matter
including dark islands of space and the unrecognized gravity
presence of Paradise which the Uversa astronomers calculate is
exerting twenty times the gravity attraction necessary to maintain
the whole grand universe, the rest going into holding the outer
universes in orbit. Dark matter is a new and active area of research,
but the existence and functions of several types of dark
matter were already expressed in The Urantia Book in 1955.

Dark energy is what our scientists postulate is causing the
observed acceleration of universe expansion. Rather than the supposed
universe expansion slowing down, it is speeding up the further
out our scientists observe. That the universe might undergo
cycles of expansion and contraction with an implied periodic acceleration
presently occurring has not been seriously considered.
The observed acceleration has not yet been taken as evidence of
such a possibility of periodic motion. But The Urantia Book claims
that there are such two billion year cycles of acceleration and
slowing and reversal of direction of space itself:

The cycles of space respiration extend in each phase for a
little more than one billion Urantia years. During one phase the
universes expand; during the next they contract. Pervaded space
is now approaching the mid-point of the expanding phase, while
unpervaded space nears the mid-point of the contracting phase,
and we are informed that the outermost limits of both space extensions
are, theoretically, now approximately equidistant from
Paradise. [11:6.4] (PP. 123–124)

Since the expansion is nearing the midpoint of the expanding
phase it has therefore recently been accelerating and will presently
starting slowing after it reaches that midpoint. So in this
paragraph The Urantia Book may be providing an explanation for
the observed acceleration of space expansion.

As our scientists map the speed of apparent space expansion
at larger distances they should find a huge zone of deceleration
since light from the most distant objects was emitted more than
500 hundred million years ago, at a time, according to The Urantia
Book, when pervaded space was contracting. The further out from
there the faster the deceleration should be for another 500 hundred
million light years.

NEW “ELEMENT 118” FORMED.

(THREE ATOMS WITH LIFE SPAN < 0.001 SECONDS)

Russian and American scientists were able to smash an
atom of californium (with 98 protons) with an atom of calcium
(having 20 protons) to very briefly form a new atom for less than
a thousandth of a second. And it took 3 times 10 to the 19th collisions
to get just 3 atoms to stick together. The team expects to
find even heavier elements that will last a few hours.4 The Urantia
Book predicted that an atom would be very short lived when more
than 100 electrons are in orbit around it as would be the case for
an atom with 118 protons.

In Orvonton it has never been possible naturally to assemble
over one hundred orbital electrons in one atomic system.
When one hundred and one have been artificially introduced
into the orbital field, the result has always been the well-nigh
instantaneous disruption of the central proton with the wild
dispersion of the electrons and other liberated energies.7 [42:7.7]
(P.478)

AGE OF SIERRA MOUNTAIN RANGE

As another example of The Urantia Book’s uncanny ability
to avoid error and provide truth, geologists at Stanford University
were able to determine a minimum age for the Sierra Nevada
mountain range by examining rain that fell there 45 million years
ago that was captured in soaked gravel. They found that it fell at
similar altitudes as rain falling there now. (Rain falling at lower
altitudes contains a higher percentage of deuterium [heavy hydrogen]
than rain falling at high altitudes.) According to Discover
Magazine’s Kathy A. Svitil, this “settled a long-running dispute
over the age of the Sierra Nevada range” in which “most scientists
had put the Sierra’s age at under 5 million years old.”5

By contrast, the 1955 Urantia Book [60:3&4] (PP. 688–692)
[59:5.20] (P. 682) fully explains, and in great detail, the whole
mountain formation process (still largely unrecognized) including
how the Sierras were initially formed at the end of the Cretaceous
period (144 to 65 million years ago),6 during the western continental
crunch up against an obstruction on the floor of the Pacific
ocean which ended the westward drift of the North and South
American continents. The Sierras were subsequently worn down
and submerged but then re-elevated by on-going volcanic action.
The story is complicated.

25,000,000 years ago there was a slight land submergence
following the long epoch of land elevation. The Sierras were well
re-elevated; in fact, they have been rising ever since. [61:3.3] (P.
696)

Had the authors of the 1955 Urantia Book known no more
than most geologists living in 2006, they would likely have given
an erroneous account of how the Sierra Nevadas were formed less
than 5 million years ago.



ARCTIC ICE, PERMAFROST, GLOBAL WARMING AND THE ICE AGES

Finally a warning! Several events have made it clear that
for whatever reason we are experiencing global warming. The arctic
ice is melting faster than before, endangering polar bears; the
permafrost is releasing trapped carbon dioxide as it melts, which
accelerates the warming of the atmosphere. Weather seems more
extreme. We hear about it daily now. Well, if we need another
wake-up, consider this ominous comment by The Urantia Book:

100,000 years ago, during the retreat of the last glacier,
the vast polar ice sheets began to form, and the center of ice accumulation
moved considerably northward. And as long as the
polar regions continue to be covered with ice, it is hardly possible
for another glacial age to occur, regardless of future land elevations
or modification of ocean currents. [61:7.11] (P. 702)

The obvious question is what happens if those vast polar ice
sheets melt?

*******************
*******************

Toward A New Cosmology of Matter

Let us now try to more
vividly imagine the shadowy nature of physical matter as related to
Paradise realities. Think of Total Reality as the locus of an almost
infinite ellipse of reality whose finite foci move toward the eternity and
infinity of the non-spatial nucleus of each ultimaton while the other
foci move toward all-encompassing and transcending Infinity. Finally,
project the result back into the finite realm and we see spherical shells
of rotating space of quantifiable radius and thickness and rates of
revolutionary motion. And the nucleus of all these ultimatonic
revolutionary motions and also of their macroscopic motions in space
is the same Paradise.

4.1 Ultimatons. We are informed that energy is arranged by the
Transcendental Force Organizers as minute ultimate spheres called
ultimatons. Each ultimaton is held together by Paradise gravity (the
true strong force) and is configured (I think) as a set of three concentric rotating spherical shells of space of varying sizes and thickness and having perhaps three mutually perpendicular axes of rotation.
Paradise is the nucleus of each individual spherically shaped ultimaton,
the smallest measurable unit of matter. (See Figures 1 & 2.)

4.2 Mass. Now in contemporary science, the mass of a body of matter
is defined and measured in terms of the force necessary to produce a
unit of acceleration in that body. So mass is force per unit of
acceleration -intuitively, the amount of resistance to motion due to
inertia that the body has. The "mass" of an ultimate particle depends
upon the radius and shell thickness of each of its three component
spherical shells of potent space and also on the rate of rotation of
these shells. Since there is always a "plane perpendicular to the mass"
(126.5), mass can evidently be represented as a vector along the axis
of rotation with a magnitude (or length) representing the amount of
inertia in that direction. In this tri-concentric spherical shell configuration,
an ultimaton has inertia (mass) in any direction. Mass is angular
moment of inertia of rotating space. Space is not nothing; it has the
potency of the Unqualified Absolute.
This concept of mass allows a nice interpretation of the experimentally
verified phenomenon of a particle increasing in mass without bound as
the particle is speeded up toward the speed of light. The mass
(resistance to acceleration) of the particle increases apparently
because the linear force producing the acceleration goes into additional
rotational rates (mass) rather than into additional linear velocity
(kinetic energy). Thus mass-energy can be conserved according to
Einstein's famous law of conservation of mass and energy: •M = •E /
C2. "The increase of mass in matter is equal to the increase of energy
divided by the square of the velocity of light." (474.1)

4.3 The Constancy of the Speed of Light. One of Einstein's famous
thought experiments involved a train. It had earlier been determined
by the famous Michelson-Morley experiment, that the speed of light is
not affected by the motion of the object emitting the light. For
instance, the light shining forward from the front of a train that is
traveling away from a station travels no faster away from the station
than the light from a lamp resting at the station. The light emitted
from the moving train does not move away any faster than the light
emitted from the lamp at the station. And this is true no matter how
close to the speed of light the train is going! How can this be? Einstein
is credited with the solution to the problem.
But the Urantia Book suggests a different solution to me, that
Paradise -the motionless "Isle of Light" -is the source of all light
whenever light is emitted! That all light emanates from this nuclear
"Isle of Light". That is why the speed of light is a constant no matter
what the motion of the matter supposedly "emitting" the light. The
light doesn't actually come from the shadowy space matter; it comes
from the non-moving, non-spatial nuclear region existing in close
proximity to the moving particle. The light that appears to be emitted
from a moving particle actually comes from Paradise and is injected
into space at the present position of that moving particle, making it
seem to be coming from the fleeting space shadow itself. This is my
interpretation of why the speed of light is a constant with respect to
any two relatively moving reference frames supposedly emitting or
receiving light. In the context of Einstein's train, the light leaving the
front of the train does not carry the velocity of the train. Particles
that seem to emit light actually constitute "windows" into the "plane of
light" existing in close proximity to the space particle, at its eternal
center, roughly speaking, just "above" the space of the particle, or just
within.

4.4 Projections and Shadows. Let us further consider how the motions
of space can be considered as "fleeting shadows" of Paradise realities,
and how time can be considered the "moving image of eternity." With
Paradise existing at the "focus" of space (another optical term), its
inner realities can be projected from infinity as moving matter in
space, somewhat like shadows of a 3-dimensional object are projected
onto a 2-dimensional wall, or like a four dimensional sphere is projected
into 3 dimensions! (See Figure 3.) These constitute the space bodies
that we "see".


It has been shown by mathematicians that a 4-dimensional cube
projected into 3 dimensions looks like two concentric cubes. See

Figure 4.)

A 4-dimensional sphere could be projected as 2 concentric spheres.
But "two concentric spheres" is just another way to describe
a spherical shell of space! With a bit more imagination and a few more
dimensions we might be able to conceive of how to project down to 3dimensions and end up with three concentric spherical shells of
revolving space making up an ultimaton. An ultimaton has a three-fold
constitution -three concentric spherical shells of revolving space,
revolving, I think, on 3 different axes of rotation. In this way the
ultimaton would exhibit mass in all directions, perhaps not the same
mass, but it would have a total mass vector made up of three
"moments of inertia". When 100 concentrically configured ultimatons
go into making up one electron, the dynamic possibilities are wide open.

4.5 Time and Eternity. Concerning time, Jesus speaking at Carthage
says: "That which formerly appeared as a succession of events then
will be viewed as a whole and perfectly related cycle; in this way will
circular simultaneity increasingly displace the onetime consciousness
of the linear sequence of events." (1439.4)

http://urantiabook.org/archive/readers/FOG___Cosmology_of_UB.pdf

[Majeston]

Scientists Now Know: We're Not From Here!

Summary & comments by Dan Eden for Viewzone

Imagine the shock of growing up in a loving family with people you call "Mum" and "Dad" and then, suddenly, learning that you are actually adopted!

This same sense of shock came as scientists announced that the Sun, the Moon, our planet and its siblings, were not born into the familiar band of stars known as the Milky Way galaxy, but we actually belong to a strange formation with the unfamiliar name of the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy!

How can this be?

Using volumes of data from the Two-Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), a major project to survey the sky in infrared light led by the University of Massachusetts, the astronomers are answering questions that have baffled scientists for decades and proving that our own Milky Way is consuming one of its neighbors in a dramatic display of ongoing galactic cannibalism. The study published in the Astrophysical Journal, is the first to map the full extent of the Sagittarius galaxy and show in visually vivid detail how its debris wraps around and passes through our Milky Way. Sagittarius is 10,000 times smaller in mass than the Milky Way, so it is getting stretched out, torn apart and gobbled up by the bigger Milky Way.

Scientists Now Know: We're Not From Here!

Summary & comments by Dan Eden for Viewzone

Imagine the shock of growing up in a loving family with people you call "Mum" and "Dad" and then, suddenly, learning that you are actually adopted!

This same sense of shock came as scientists announced that the Sun, the Moon, our planet and its siblings, were not born into the familiar band of stars known as the Milky Way galaxy, but we actually belong to a strange formation with the unfamiliar name of the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy!

How can this be?

Using volumes of data from the Two-Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), a major project to survey the sky in infrared light led by the University of Massachusetts, the astronomers are answering questions that have baffled scientists for decades and proving that our own Milky Way is consuming one of its neighbors in a dramatic display of ongoing galactic cannibalism. The study published in the Astrophysical Journal, is the first to map the full extent of the Sagittarius galaxy and show in visually vivid detail how its debris wraps around and passes through our Milky Way. Sagittarius is 10,000 times smaller in mass than the Milky Way, so it is getting stretched out, torn apart and gobbled up by the bigger Milky Way.


A new infra red digital survey of the entire sky was made in 2003. Teams from the universities of Virginia and Massachusetts used a supercomputer to sort through half a billion stars to create a -- NEW STAR MAP showing our Solar System (yellow circle) to be at the exact nexus crossroads where two galaxies are actually joining.

"It's clear who's the bully in the interaction," said Steven Majewski, U.Va. professor of astronomy and lead author on the paper describing the results.

"If people had infrared-sensitive eyes, the entrails of Sagittarius would be a prominent fixture sweeping across our sky," Majewski said. "But at human, visual wavelengths, they become buried among countless intervening stars and obscuring dust. The great expanse of the Sagittarius system has been hidden from view."

Not any more. By using infrared maps, the astronomers filtered away millions of foreground stars to focus on a type of star called an M giant. These large, infrared-bright stars are populous in the Sagittarius galaxy but uncommon in the outer Milky Way. The 2MASS infrared map of M giant stars analyzed by Majewski and collaborators is the first to give a complete view of the Milky Way galexy's meal of Sagittarius stars, now wrapping like a spaghetti noodle around the Milky Way. Prior to this work, astronomers had detected only a few scattered pieces of the disrupted Sagittarius dwarf. Even the existence of Sagittarius was unknown until the heart of this nearest satellite galaxy of the Milky Way was discovered by a British team of astronomers in 1994.

Here's an animation of the "marriage".

The fact that the Milky Way is seen in the sky at an angle has always puzzled astronomers. If we originated from the Milky Way, we ought to be oriented to the galaxy's ecliptic, with the planets aligned around our Sun in much the same angle as our Sun aligns with the Milky Way. Instead, as first suggested by researcher Matthew Perkins Erwin, the odd angle suggests that our Sun is influenced by some other system. Together with data from the Two-Micron All Sky Survey we now know what it is. We actually belong to the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy.

"We sifted several thousand interesting stars from a catalog of half a billion," said co-author Michael Skrutskie, U.Va. professor of astronomy and principal investigator for the 2MASS project. "By tuning our maps of the sky to the 'right' kind of star, the Sagittarius system jumped into view."


We are from another galaxy in the process of joining with the Milky Way. The Milky Way is actually not our parent galaxy. The mystery of why the Milky Way has always been sideways in the night sky has never been answered -- until now.

"This first full-sky map of Sagittarius shows its extensive interaction with the Milky Way," Majewski said. "Both stars and star clusters now in the outer parts of the Milky Way have been 'stolen' from Sagittarius as the gravitational forces of the Milky Way nibbled away at its dwarf companion. This one vivid example shows that the Milky Way grows by eating its smaller neighbors."

The study's map of M giants depicts 2 billion years of Sagittarius stripping by the Milky Way, and suggests that Sagittarius has reached a critical phase in what had been a slow dance of death.

"After slow, continuous gnawing by the Milky Way, Sagittarius has been whittled down to the point that it cannot hold itself together much longer," said 2MASS Science Team member and study co-author Martin Weinberg of the University of Massachusetts. "We are seeing Sagittarius at the very end of its life as an intact system."

Does this mean we are at a unique moment in the life of our galaxy? Yes and no.

"Whenever possible, astronomers appeal to the principle that we are not at a special time or place in the universe," Majewski said. "Because over the 14 billion-year history of the Milky Way it is unlikely that we would just happen to catch a brief event like the death of Sagittarius, we infer that such events must be common in the life of big spiral galaxies like our own. The Milky Way probably dined on a number of dwarf galaxy snacks in the past."

On the other hand, Majewski and his colleagues have been surprised by the Earth's proximity to a portion of the Sagittarius debris.

"For only a few percent of its 240 million-year orbit around the Milky Way galaxy does our Solar System pass through the path of Sagittarius debris," Majewski said. "Remarkably, stars from Sagittarius are now raining down onto our present position in the Milky Way. Stars from an alien galaxy are relatively near us. We have to re-think our assumptions about the Milky Way galaxy to account for this contamination."

The new findings will help astronomers measure the total mass of the Milky Way and Sagittarius galaxies, and probe the quantity and distribution of the invisible dark matter in these systems.

"The shape of the Sagittarius debris trail shows us that the Milky Way's unseen dark matter is in a spherical distribution, a result that is quite unexpected," Weinberg said.

"The observations provide new insights into the nature of the mysterious dark matter," said Princeton's Spergel. "Either our galaxy is unusual or the dark matter has richer properties than postulated by conventional models."

Scientists Now Know: We're Not From Here!

Summary & comments by Dan Eden for Viewzone

Imagine the shock of growing up in a loving family with people you call "Mum" and "Dad" and then, suddenly, learning that you are actually adopted!

This same sense of shock came as scientists announced that the Sun, the Moon, our planet and its siblings, were not born into the familiar band of stars known as the Milky Way galaxy, but we actually belong to a strange formation with the unfamiliar name of the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy!

How can this be?

Using volumes of data from the Two-Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), a major project to survey the sky in infrared light led by the University of Massachusetts, the astronomers are answering questions that have baffled scientists for decades and proving that our own Milky Way is consuming one of its neighbors in a dramatic display of ongoing galactic cannibalism. The study published in the Astrophysical Journal, is the first to map the full extent of the Sagittarius galaxy and show in visually vivid detail how its debris wraps around and passes through our Milky Way. Sagittarius is 10,000 times smaller in mass than the Milky Way, so it is getting stretched out, torn apart and gobbled up by the bigger Milky Way.


A new infra red digital survey of the entire sky was made in 2003. Teams from the universities of Virginia and Massachusetts used a supercomputer to sort through half a billion stars to create a -- NEW STAR MAP showing our Solar System (yellow circle) to be at the exact nexus crossroads where two galaxies are actually joining.

"It's clear who's the bully in the interaction," said Steven Majewski, U.Va. professor of astronomy and lead author on the paper describing the results.

"If people had infrared-sensitive eyes, the entrails of Sagittarius would be a prominent fixture sweeping across our sky," Majewski said. "But at human, visual wavelengths, they become buried among countless intervening stars and obscuring dust. The great expanse of the Sagittarius system has been hidden from view."

Not any more. By using infrared maps, the astronomers filtered away millions of foreground stars to focus on a type of star called an M giant. These large, infrared-bright stars are populous in the Sagittarius galaxy but uncommon in the outer Milky Way. The 2MASS infrared map of M giant stars analyzed by Majewski and collaborators is the first to give a complete view of the Milky Way galexy's meal of Sagittarius stars, now wrapping like a spaghetti noodle around the Milky Way. Prior to this work, astronomers had detected only a few scattered pieces of the disrupted Sagittarius dwarf. Even the existence of Sagittarius was unknown until the heart of this nearest satellite galaxy of the Milky Way was discovered by a British team of astronomers in 1994.

Here's an animation of the "marriage".

The fact that the Milky Way is seen in the sky at an angle has always puzzled astronomers. If we originated from the Milky Way, we ought to be oriented to the galaxy's ecliptic, with the planets aligned around our Sun in much the same angle as our Sun aligns with the Milky Way. Instead, as first suggested by researcher Matthew Perkins Erwin, the odd angle suggests that our Sun is influenced by some other system. Together with data from the Two-Micron All Sky Survey we now know what it is. We actually belong to the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy.

"We sifted several thousand interesting stars from a catalog of half a billion," said co-author Michael Skrutskie, U.Va. professor of astronomy and principal investigator for the 2MASS project. "By tuning our maps of the sky to the 'right' kind of star, the Sagittarius system jumped into view."


We are from another galaxy in the process of joining with the Milky Way. The Milky Way is actually not our parent galaxy. The mystery of why the Milky Way has always been sideways in the night sky has never been answered -- until now.

"This first full-sky map of Sagittarius shows its extensive interaction with the Milky Way," Majewski said. "Both stars and star clusters now in the outer parts of the Milky Way have been 'stolen' from Sagittarius as the gravitational forces of the Milky Way nibbled away at its dwarf companion. This one vivid example shows that the Milky Way grows by eating its smaller neighbors."

The study's map of M giants depicts 2 billion years of Sagittarius stripping by the Milky Way, and suggests that Sagittarius has reached a critical phase in what had been a slow dance of death.

"After slow, continuous gnawing by the Milky Way, Sagittarius has been whittled down to the point that it cannot hold itself together much longer," said 2MASS Science Team member and study co-author Martin Weinberg of the University of Massachusetts. "We are seeing Sagittarius at the very end of its life as an intact system."

Does this mean we are at a unique moment in the life of our galaxy? Yes and no.

"Whenever possible, astronomers appeal to the principle that we are not at a special time or place in the universe," Majewski said. "Because over the 14 billion-year history of the Milky Way it is unlikely that we would just happen to catch a brief event like the death of Sagittarius, we infer that such events must be common in the life of big spiral galaxies like our own. The Milky Way probably dined on a number of dwarf galaxy snacks in the past."

On the other hand, Majewski and his colleagues have been surprised by the Earth's proximity to a portion of the Sagittarius debris.

"For only a few percent of its 240 million-year orbit around the Milky Way galaxy does our Solar System pass through the path of Sagittarius debris," Majewski said. "Remarkably, stars from Sagittarius are now raining down onto our present position in the Milky Way. Stars from an alien galaxy are relatively near us. We have to re-think our assumptions about the Milky Way galaxy to account for this contamination."

The new findings will help astronomers measure the total mass of the Milky Way and Sagittarius galaxies, and probe the quantity and distribution of the invisible dark matter in these systems.

"The shape of the Sagittarius debris trail shows us that the Milky Way's unseen dark matter is in a spherical distribution, a result that is quite unexpected," Weinberg said.

"The observations provide new insights into the nature of the mysterious dark matter," said Princeton's Spergel. "Either our galaxy is unusual or the dark matter has richer properties than postulated by conventional models."

Implications in Global Warming?

It has been postulated that this is the real reason for both global warming since higher energy levels of the Milky Way are almost certain to cause our Sun to burn hotter and emit higher energies. Indeed, temperatures have been seen to rise on virtually all the planets in our system. This seems quite apart from any local phenomenon like greenhouse gases etc.

This grand turning is possibly the root cause for the discontinuation of the Mayan calendar (the most accurate on the planet) because the 'read-point' of the Pleiades star cluster, which many believe the calendar was based upon, can no longer be a constant as we begin to steer away from the earlier predictable movements.



Other changes happening in our system

The "marriage" of our birth galaxy with our new adopted Milky Way galaxy is causing energy shifts that are obvious just about everywhere. Here are some changes being watched by scientists:

* A growth of dark spots on Pluto.

* Reporting of auroras on Saturn.

* Reporting of Uranus and Neptune polar shifts (They are magnetically conjugate planets), and the abrupt large-scale growth of Uranus' magnetosphere intensity.

* A change in light intensity and light spot dynamics on Neptune.

* The doubling of the magnetic field intensity on Jupiter (based upon 1992 data), and a series of new states and processes observed on this planet as an aftermath of a series of explosions in July 1994 [caused by "Comet" SL-9]. That is, a relaxation of a plasmoid train which excited the Jovian magnetosphere, thus inducing excessive plasma generation and it's release in the same manner as Solar coronal holes inducing an appearance of radiation belt brightening in decimeter band (13.2 and 36 cm), and the appearance of large auroral anomalies and a change of the Jupiter - Io system of currents.


Update Note: A stream of ionized hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, etc. is being directed to Jupiter from the volcanic areas of Io through a one million amperes flux tube. It is affecting the character of Jupiter's magnetic process and intensifying it's plasma genesis.[Z.I.Vselennaya "Earth and Universe" N3, 1997 plo-9 by NASA data]

* A series of Martian atmosphere transformations increasing its biosphere quality. In particularly, a cloudy growth in the equator area and an unusual growth of ozone concentration.


Update Note: Mars Surveyor Satellite encountered an atmospheric density double that projected by NASA upon entering a Mars orbit. This greater density bent one of the solar array arms beyond the full and open stop. This combination of events has delayed the beginning of the scheduled photo mission for one year.

* A first stage atmosphere generation on the Moon, where a growing natrium atmosphere is detected that reaches 9,000 km in height.

* Significant physical, chemical and optical changes observed on Venus; an inversion of dark and light spots detected for the first time, and a sharp decrease of sulfur-containing gases in its atmosphere.

* A Change in the Quality of Interplanetary Space Towards an Increase in Its Interplanetary and Solar-Planetary Transmitting Properties.

When speaking of new energetic and material qualities of interplanetary space, we must first point out the increase of the interplanetary domains energetic charge, and level of material saturation. This change of the typical mean state of interplanetary space has two main causes:

* The supply/inflow of matter from interstellar space. (Radiation material, ionized elements, and combinations.)

* The after effects of Solar Cycle 22 activity, especially as a result of fast coronal mass ejection's [CME's] of magnetized solar plasmas.

What does it all mean?

We of the overarching Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy have finally come down next to, and even with the massively powerful spiral armed equatorial plane of the Milky Way Galaxy.

In our movement through space, our Earth has now fully begun to respond to the more powerful galactic energies and electro-gravitational bias of the massive Milky Way. We have reached the higher energy equatorial disc region of the massive spiral arm. We have now been "adopted" by a new system, a stornger and more powerful system, and we can expect changes on almost every level of energy.

Whatever these changes are, they are all part of the natural birth, death, rebirth and transformation of the cosmos. As our knowledge of the universe grows, we cannot but understand how much we do not understand. Such is life.

[For further reading we suggest you go to Matthew Perkins Erwin's blog; acb.net.au and www.astro.virginia.edu which was the basis of this summary.]



Compare to The Urantia book account 1934

The Urantia Book



Part III



The History of Urantia



PAPER 57



THE ORIGIN OF URANTIA  

IN PRESENTING excerpts from the archives of Jerusem for the records of Urantia respecting its antecedents and early history, we are directed to reckon time in terms of current usage--the present leap-year calendar of 3651/4 days to the year. As a rule, no attempt will be made to give exact years, though they are of record. We will use the nearest whole numbers as the better method of presenting these historic facts.

          When referring to an event as of one or two millions of years ago, we intend to date such an occurrence back that number of years from the early decades of the twentieth century of the Christian era. We will thus depict these far-distant events as occurring in even periods of thousands, millions, and billions of years.

1. THE ANDRONOVER NEBULA


          Urantia is of origin in your sun, and your sun is one of the multifarious offspring of the Andronover nebula, which was onetime organized as a component part of the physical power and material matter of the local universe of Nebadon. And this great nebula itself took origin in the universal force-charge of space in the superuniverse of Orvonton, long, long ago.

At the time of the beginning of this recital, the Primary Master Force Organizers of Paradise had long been in full control of the space-energies which were later organized as the Andronover nebula.

          987,000,000,000 years ago associate force organizer and then acting inspector number 811,307 of the Orvonton series, traveling out from Uversa, reported to the Ancients of Days that space conditions were favorable for the initiation of materialization phenomena in a certain sector of the, then, easterly segment of Orvonton.

          900,000,000,000 years ago the Uversa archives testify, there was recorded a permit issued by the Uversa Council of Equilibrium to the superuniverse government authorizing the dispatch of a force organizer and staff to the region previously designated by inspector number 811,307. The Orvonton authorities commissioned the original discoverer of this potential universe to execute the mandate of the Ancients of Days calling for the organization of a new material creation.



The recording of this permit signifies that the force organizer and staff had already departed from Uversa on the long journey to that easterly space sector where they were subsequently to engage in those protracted activities which would terminate in the emergence of a new physical creation in Orvonton.

          875,000,000,000 years ago the enormous Andronover nebula number 876,926 was duly initiated. Only the presence of the force organizer and the liaison staff was required to inaugurate the energy whirl which eventually grew into this vast cyclone of space. Subsequent to the initiation of such nebular revolutions, the living force organizers simply withdraw at right angles to the plane of the revolutionary disk, and from that time forward, the inherent qualities of energy insure the progressive and orderly evolution of such a new physical system.

          At about this time the narrative shifts to the functioning of the personalities of the superuniverse. In reality the story has its proper beginning at this point--at just about the time the Paradise force organizers are preparing to withdraw, having made the space-energy conditions ready for the action of the power directors and physical controllers of the superuniverse of Orvonton.

2. THE PRIMARY NEBULAR STAGE


          All evolutionary material creations are born of circular and gaseous nebulae, and all such primary nebulae are circular throughout the early part of their gaseous existence. As they grow older, they usually become spiral, and when their function of sun formation has run its course, they often terminate as clusters of stars or as enormous suns surrounded by a varying number of planets, satellites, and smaller groups of matter in many ways resembling your own diminutive solar system.

          800,000,000,000 years ago the Andronover creation was well established as one of the magnificent primary nebulae of Orvonton. As the astronomers of near-by universes looked out upon this phenomenon of space, they saw very little to attract their attention. Gravity estimates made in adjacent creations indicated that space materializations were taking place in the Andronover regions, but that was all.

          700,000,000,000 years ago the Andronover system was assuming gigantic proportions, and additional physical controllers were dispatched to nine surrounding material creations to afford support and supply co-operation to the power centers of this new material system which was so rapidly evolving. At this distant date all of the material bequeathed to the subsequent creations was held within the confines of this gigantic space wheel, which continued ever to whirl and, after reaching its maximum of diameter, to whirl faster and faster as it continued to condense and contract.

          600,000,000,000 years ago the height of the Andronover energy-mobilization period was attained; the nebula had acquired its maximum of mass. At this time it was a gigantic circular gas cloud in shape somewhat like a flattened spheroid. This was the early period of differential mass formation and varying revolutionary velocity. Gravity and other influences were about to begin their work of converting space gases into organized matter.



3. THE SECONDARY NEBULAR STAGE


          The enormous nebula now began gradually to assume the spiral form and to become clearly visible to the astronomers of even distant universes. This is the natural history of most nebulae; before they begin to throw off suns and start upon the work of universe building, these secondary space nebulae are usually observed as spiral phenomena.

          The near-by star students of that faraway era, as they observed this metamorphosis of the Andronover nebula, saw exactly what twentieth-century astronomers see when they turn their telescopes spaceward and view the present-age spiral nebulae of adjacent outer space.

          About the time of the attainment of the maximum of mass, the gravity control of the gaseous content commenced to weaken, and there ensued the stage of gas escapement, the gas streaming forth as two gigantic and distinct arms, which took origin on opposite sides of the mother mass. The rapid revolutions of this enormous central core soon imparted a spiral appearance to these two projecting gas streams. The cooling and subsequent condensation of portions of these protruding arms eventually produced their knotted appearance. These denser portions were vast systems and subsystems of physical matter whirling through space in the midst of the gaseous cloud of the nebula while being held securely within the gravity grasp of the mother wheel.

          But the nebula had begun to contract, and the increase in the rate of revolution further lessened gravity control; and erelong, the outer gaseous regions began actually to escape from the immediate embrace of the nebular nucleus, passing out into space on circuits of irregular outline, returning to the nuclear regions to complete their circuits, and so on. But this was only a temporary stage of nebular progression. The ever-increasing rate of whirling was soon to throw enormous suns off into space on independent circuits.

          And this is what happened in Andronover ages upon ages ago. The energy wheel grew and grew until it attained its maximum of expansion, and then, when contraction set in, it whirled on faster and faster until, eventually, the critical centrifugal stage was reached and the great breakup began.

          500,000,000,000 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.

          400,000,000,000 years ago began the recaptive period of the Andronover nebula. Many of the near-by and smaller suns were recaptured as a result of the gradual enlargement and further condensation of the mother nucleus. Very soon there was inaugurated the terminal phase of nebular condensation, the period which always precedes the final segregation of these immense space aggregations of energy and matter.

          It was scarcely a million years subsequent to this epoch that Michael of Nebadon, a Creator Son of Paradise, selected this disintegrating nebula as the site of his adventure in universe building. Almost immediately the architectural worlds of Salvington and the one hundred constellation headquarters groups of planets were begun. It required almost one million years to complete these clusters of specially created worlds. The local system headquarters planets were constructed over a period extending from that time to about five billion years ago.



          300,000,000,000 years ago the Andronover solar circuits were well established, and the nebular system was passing through a transient period of relative physical stability. About this time the staff of Michael arrived on Salvington, and the Uversa government of Orvonton extended physical recognition to the local universe of Nebadon.

          200,000,000,000 years ago witnessed the progression of contraction and condensation with enormous heat generation in the Andronover central cluster, or nuclear mass. Relative space appeared even in the regions near the central mother-sun wheel. The outer regions were becoming more stabilized and better organized; some planets revolving around the newborn suns had cooled sufficiently to be suitable for life implantation. The oldest inhabited planets of Nebadon date from these times.

          Now the completed universe mechanism of Nebadon first begins to function, and Michael's creation is registered on Uversa as a universe of inhabitation and progressive mortal ascension.

          100,000,000,000 years ago the nebular apex of condensation tension was reached; the point of maximum heat tension was attained. This critical stage of gravity-heat contention sometimes lasts for ages, but sooner or later, heat wins the struggle with gravity, and the spectacular period of sun dispersion begins. And this marks the end of the secondary career of a space nebula.

4. TERTIARY AND QUARTAN STAGES


          The primary stage of a nebula is circular; the secondary, spiral; the tertiary stage is that of the first sun dispersion, while the quartan embraces the second and last cycle of sun dispersion, with the mother nucleus ending either as a globular cluster or as a solitary sun functioning as the center of a terminal solar system.

          75,000,000,000 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.

          50,000,000,000 years ago this first period of sun dispersion was completed; the nebula was fast finishing its tertiary cycle of existence, during which it gave origin to 876,926 sun systems.

          25,000,000,000 years ago witnessed the completion of the tertiary cycle of nebular life and brought about the organization and relative stabilization of the far-flung starry systems derived from this parent nebula. But the process of physical contraction and increased heat production continued in the central mass of the nebular remnant.

          10,000,000,000 years ago the quartan cycle of Andronover began. The maximum of nuclear-mass temperature had been attained; the critical point of condensation was approaching. The original mother nucleus was convulsing under the combined pressure of its own internal-heat condensation tension and the increasing gravity-tidal pull of the surrounding swarm of liberated sun systems. The nuclear eruptions which were to inaugurate the second nebular sun cycle were imminent. The quartan cycle of nebular existence was about to begin.



          8,000,000,000 years ago the terrific terminal eruption began. Only the outer systems are safe at the time of such a cosmic upheaval. And this was the beginning of the end of the nebula. This final sun disgorgement extended over a period of almost two billion years.

          7,000,000,000 years ago witnessed the height of the Andronover terminal breakup. This was the period of the birth of the larger terminal suns and the apex of the local physical disturbances.

          6,000,000,000 years ago marks the end of the terminal breakup and the birth of your sun, the fifty-sixth from the last of the Andronover second solar family. This final eruption of the nebular nucleus gave birth to 136,702 suns, most of them solitary orbs. The total number of suns and sun systems having origin in the Andronover nebula was 1,013,628. The number of the solar system sun is 1,013,572.

          And now the great Andronover nebula is no more, but it lives on in the many suns and their planetary families which originated in this mother cloud of space. The final nuclear remnant of this magnificent nebula still burns with a reddish glow and continues to give forth moderate light and heat to its remnant planetary family of one hundred and sixty-five worlds, which now revolve about this venerable mother of two mighty generations of the monarchs of light.

5. ORIGIN OF MONMATIA--THE URANTIA SOLAR SYSTEM


          5,000,000,000 years ago your sun was a comparatively isolated blazing orb, having gathered to itself most of the near-by circulating matter of space, remnants of the recent upheaval which attended its own birth.

Today, 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.

          Thus was the stage of local space set for the unique origin of Monmatia, that being the name of your sun's planetary family, the solar system to which your world belongs. Less than one per cent of the planetary systems of Orvonton have had a similar origin.

          4,500,000,000 years ago the enormous Angona system began its approach to the neighborhood of this solitary sun. The center of this great system was a dark giant of space, solid, highly charged, and possessing tremendous gravity pull.

          As Angona more closely approached the sun, at moments of maximum expansion during solar pulsations, streams of gaseous material were shot out into space as gigantic solar tongues. At first these flaming gas tongues would invariably fall back into the sun, but as Angona drew nearer and nearer, the gravity pull of the gigantic visitor became so great that these tongues of gas would break off at certain points, the roots falling back into the sun while the outer sections would become detached to form independent bodies of matter, solar meteorites, which immediately started to revolve about the sun in elliptical orbits of their own.



          As the Angona system drew nearer, the solar extrusions grew larger and larger; more and more matter was drawn from the sun to become independent circulating bodies in surrounding space. This situation developed for about five hundred thousand years until Angona made its closest approach to the sun; whereupon the sun, in conjunction with one of its periodic internal convulsions, experienced a partial disruption; from opposite sides and simultaneously, enormous volumes of matter were disgorged. From the Angona side there was drawn out a vast column of solar gases, rather pointed at both ends and markedly bulging at the center, which became permanently detached from the immediate gravity control of the sun.

          This great column of solar gases which was thus separated from the sun subsequently evolved into the twelve planets of the solar system. The repercussional ejection of gas from the opposite side of the sun in tidal sympathy with the extrusion of this gigantic solar system ancestor, has since condensed into the meteors and space dust of the solar system, although much, very much, of this matter was subsequently recaptured by solar gravity as the Angona system receded into remote space.

          Although Angona succeeded in drawing away the ancestral material of the solar system planets and the enormous volume of matter now circulating about the sun as asteroids and meteors, it did not secure for itself any of this solar matter. The visiting system did not come quite close enough to actually steal any of the sun's substance, but it did swing sufficiently close to draw off into the intervening space all of the material comprising the present-day solar system.

          The five inner and five outer planets soon formed in miniature from the cooling and condensing nucleuses in the less massive and tapering ends of the gigantic gravity bulge which Angona had succeeded in detaching from the sun, while Saturn and Jupiter were formed from the more massive and bulging central portions. The powerful gravity pull of Jupiter and Saturn early captured most of the material stolen from Angona as the retrograde motion of certain of their satellites bears witness.

          Jupiter and Saturn, being derived from the very center of the enormous column of superheated solar gases, contained so much highly heated sun material that they shone with a brilliant light and emitted enormous volumes of heat; they were in reality secondary suns for a short period after their formation as separate space bodies. These two largest of the solar system planets have remained largely gaseous to this day, not even yet having cooled off to the point of complete condensation or solidification.

          The gas-contraction nucleuses of the other ten planets soon reached the stage of solidification and so began to draw to themselves increasing quantities of the meteoric matter circulating in near-by space. The worlds of the solar system thus had a double origin: nucleuses of gas condensation later on augmented by the capture of enormous quantities of meteors. Indeed they still continue to capture meteors, but in greatly lessened numbers.



          The planets do not swing around the sun in the equatorial plane of their solar mother, which they would do if they had been thrown off by solar revolution. Rather, they travel in the plane of the Angona solar extrusion, which existed at a considerable angle to the plane of the sun's equator.

          While Angona was unable to capture any of the solar mass, your sun did add to its metamorphosing planetary family some of the circulating space material of the visiting system. Due to the intense gravity field of Angona, its tributary planetary family pursued orbits of considerable distance from the dark giant; and shortly after the extrusion of the solar system ancestral mass and while Angona was yet in the vicinity of the sun, three of the major planets of the Angona system swung so near to the massive solar system ancestor that its gravitational pull, augmented by that of the sun, was sufficient to overbalance the gravity grasp of Angona and to permanently detach these three tributaries of the celestial wanderer.

          All of the solar system material derived from the sun was originally endowed with a homogeneous direction of orbital swing, and had it not been for the intrusion of these three foreign space bodies, all solar system material would still maintain the same direction of orbital movement. As it was, the impact of the three Angona tributaries injected new and foreign directional forces into the emerging solar system with the resultant appearance of retrograde motion. Retrograde motion in any astronomic system is always accidental and always appears as a result of the collisional impact of foreign space bodies. Such collisions may not always produce retrograde motion, but no retrograde ever appears except in a system containing masses which have diverse origins.



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PAPER 15: Section 3.
The Superuniverse Of Orvonton


------------------------------------------------------------------------

P167:4, 15:3.1 Practically all of the starry realms visible to the naked eye on Urantia belong to the seventh section of the grand universe, the superuniverse of Orvonton. The vast Milky Way starry system represents the central nucleus of Orvonton, being largely beyond the borders of your local universe. This great aggregation of suns, dark islands of space, double stars, globular clusters, star clouds, spiral and other nebulae, together with myriads of individual planets, forms a watchlike, elongated-circular grouping of about one seventh of the inhabited evolutionary universes.

P167:5, 15:3.2 From the astronomical position of Urantia, as you look through the cross section of near-by systems to the great Milky Way, you observe that the spheres of Orvonton are traveling in a vast elongated plane, the breadth being far greater than the thickness and the length far greater than the breadth.

P167:6, 15:3.3 Observation of the so-called Milky Way discloses the comparative increase in Orvonton stellar density when the heavens are viewed in one direction, while on either side the density diminishes; the number of stars and other spheres decreases away from the chief plane of our material superuniverse. When the angle of observation is propitious, gazing through the main body of this realm of maximum density, you are looking toward the residential universe and the center of all things.


P167:7, 15:3.4   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. If you could look upon the superuniverse of Orvonton from a position far distant in space, you would immediately recognize the ten major sectors of the seventh galaxy.
P168:1, 15:3.5 The rotational center of your minor sector is situated far away in the enormous and dense star cloud of Sagittarius, around which your local universe and its associated creations all move, and from opposite sides of the vast Sagittarius subgalactic system you may observe two great streams of star clouds emerging in stupendous stellar coils.

P168:2, 15:3.6 The nucleus of the physical system to which your sun and its associated planets belong is the center of the onetime Andronover nebula. This former spiral nebula was slightly distorted by the gravity disruptions associated with the events which were attendant upon the birth of your solar system, and which were occasioned by the near approach of a large neighboring nebula. This near collision changed Andronover into a somewhat globular aggregation but did not wholly destroy the two-way procession of the suns and their associated physical groups. Your solar system now occupies a fairly central position in one of the arms of this distorted spiral, situated about halfway from the center out towards the edge of the star stream.


P168:3, 15:3.7 The Sagittarius sector and all other sectors and divisions of Orvonton are in rotation around Uversa, and some of the confusion of Urantian star observers arises out of the illusions and relative distortions produced by the following multiple revolutionary movements:

1.   The revolution of Urantia around its sun.
2.   The circuit of your solar system about the nucleus of the former Andronover nebula.
3.   The rotation of the Andronover stellar family and the associated clusters about the composite rotation-gravity center of the star cloud of Nebadon.
4.   The swing of the local star cloud of Nebadon and its associated creations around the Sagittarius center of their minor sector.
5.   The rotation of the one hundred minor sectors, including Sagittarius, about their major sector.
6.   The whirl of the ten major sectors, the so-called star drifts, about the Uversa headquarters of Orvonton.
7.   The movement of Orvonton and six associated superuniverses around Paradise and Havona, the counterclockwise processional of the superuniverse space level.



P168:11, 15:3.8 These multiple motions are of several orders: The space paths of your planet and your solar system are genetic, inherent in origin. The absolute counterclockwise motion of Orvonton is also genetic, inherent in the architectural plans of the master universe. But the intervening motions are of composite origin, being derived in part from the constitutive segmentation of matter-energy into the superuniverses and in part produced by the intelligent and purposeful action of the Paradise force organizers.


P168:12, 15:3.9 The local universes are in closer proximity as they approach Havona; the circuits are greater in number, and there is increased superimposition, layer upon layer. But farther out from the eternal center there are fewer and fewer systems, layers, circuits, and universes.

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P465:6, 41:10.1 Some of the variable stars, in or near the state of maximum pulsation, are in process of giving origin to subsidiary systems, many of which will eventually be much like your own sun and its revolving planets. Your sun was in just such a state of mighty pulsation when the massive Angona system swung into near approach, and the outer surface of the sun began to erupt veritable streams -- continuous sheets -- of matter. This kept up with ever-increasing violence until nearest apposition, when the limits of solar cohesion were reached and a vast pinnacle of matter, the ancestor of the solar system, was disgorged. In similar circumstances the closest approach of the attracting body sometimes draws off whole planets, even a quarter or third of a sun. These major extrusions form certain peculiar cloud-bound types of worlds, spheres much like Jupiter and Saturn.

P466:1, 41:10.2 The majority of solar systems, however, had an origin entirely different from yours, and this is true even of those which were produced by gravity-tidal technique. But no matter what technique of world building obtains, gravity always produces the solar system type of creation; that is, a central sun or dark island with planets, satellites, subsatellites, and meteors.

[sevens]

Fantastic, brilliant Majeston.

It was just so spot on!

sevens

[Majeston]

Mercury’s Rotation Report
Prepared by Halbert Katzen with special thanks to Phil Calabrese
[Updated 2/22/07]

The Urantia Book states that, “The planets nearest the sun were the first to have their revolutions slowed down by tidal friction. Such gravitational influences also contribute to the stabilization of planetary orbits while acting as a brake on the rate of planetary-axial revolution, causing a planet to revolve ever slower until axial revolution ceases, leaving one hemisphere of the planet always turned toward the sun or larger body, as is illustrated by the planet Mercury and by the moon, which always turns the same face toward Urantia[Earth].” (See Urantia Book 57:6.2)

Wikipedia.com makes the following commentary on the subject:


“For many years it was thought that Mercury was synchronously tidally locked with the Sun, rotating once for each orbit and keeping the same face directed towards the Sun at all times, in the same way that the same side of the Moon always faces the Earth. However, radar observations in 1965 proved that the planet has a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance, rotating three times for every two revolutions around the Sun; the eccentricity of Mercury's orbit makes this resonance stable — at perihelion, when the solar tide is strongest, the Sun is nearly still in Mercury's sky. The original reason astronomers thought it was synchronously locked was because whenever Mercury was best placed for observation, it was always at the same point in its 3:2 resonance, hence showing the same face.”


This discovery was made ten years after publication of the Urantia Book.

Notwithstanding that the Urantia Book avoided the pitfall of agreeing with science that was wrong at the time of its publication, there is still disagreement between the Urantia Book and contemporary science. While the Urantia Book says that tidal friction causes “a planet to revolve ever slower until axial revolution ceases,” contemporary science is now supporting the notion that Mercury has a stable 3:2 spin-orbit resonance.

Whether further research will harmonize with the Urantia Book’s assertion that tidal friction will cause the planet to cease rotating is still an open question. And whether such harmony will occur any time soon is doubtful because current observations suggest that its 3:2 spin-orbit resonance is stable. Nonetheless, additional observations may yet reveal that Mercury’s axial rotation has a measure of instability that will eventually knock it out of what currently appears to astronomers as a stable 3:2 spin-orbit resonance.

Mercury is known for having an “eccentric” orbit. Wikipedia.com states, “The orbit of Mercury is the most eccentric of the major planets, with the planet's distance from the Sun ranging from 46,000,000 to 70,000,000 kilometers.” This eccentricity creates variations in the speed of its orbit. Tidal friction, which is an ongoing process, may yet cause a shift in both the orbit and axial rotation of Mercury.

Some research has gone in the direction of calculating such a probability/possibility of Mercury could have developed a 1:1 spin-orbit resonance, or to it put another way, no axial revolution with respect to the sun. From l’Observatoire de Paris’ analysis in a report titled The explanation of Mercury's capture into the 3:2 spin-orbit resonance as a result of its chaotic orbital dynamics , we have the following, “ With their extended numerical simulations, the researchers found that the capture into the 3:2 resonance is in fact the most probable outcome of the planet, with 55.4 % chances to occur. The remaining possibilities being a capture into the 1/1 resonance (2.2%) as for the Earth-Moon system, capture into the 2/1 resonance (3.6%), or no capture (38.8%). Temporary capture into higher order resonances (5/2 or 3/1 for example) are possible, but none of them survived over the full integration, as they become destabilized when the eccentricity of Mercury decreases to low values.”

This leaves the question a bit open by indicating that other possibilities existed. However, the vast majority of research on the subject does not address other possibilities the way they are talked about in the above article and there seems to be a fairly uniform acceptance of the notion that the rotation is stable for the foreseeable future. Even this article suggests that the other possibilities were with respect to things that could have happened during Mercury’s initial stages of development, not future developments.

With regard to a separate issue, some people have suggested the Urantia Book says that Mercury’s axial revolution has come to a stop and that, therefore, the Urantia Book is incorrect with regard to its statements about Mercury. This opinion comes from extracting the following phrases from the sentence in which they occur: “leaving one hemisphere of the planet always turned toward the sun or larger body, as is illustrated by the planet Mercury”.

This is a flawed analysis of the phrases because they are taken out of context both within the sentence from which they are taken and with respect the context created by the previous sentence. Proper interpretation of these phrases requires that they not only be put fully in the context of the sentence in which they occur but also in the context of a sentence-to-sentence analysis.

The previous sentence states: "The planets nearest the sun were the first to have their revolutions slowed down by tidal friction." Here it is important to note that the larger context is specifically about our solar system and the lead-in sentence of the paragraph, quoted above, relates to planets in our solar system being slowed by tidal friction. It does not say that any of the planets have stopped due to this effect. The slowing is the issue being noted and there is no mention here or anywhere else of any planet having stopped already. Though this first sentence would not be inconsistent with a planet having stopped, it certainly does not imply or suggest such a thing either. 

Next, and more importantly, we must appreciate the phrases within the context of the sentence in which they occur. 

The phrases in question are qualifying/clarifying phrases, additions to the main point of the sentence. This interpretation is necessary and supported by the fact that the first part of the sentence, "Such gravitational influences also contribute to the stabilization of planetary orbits while acting as a brake on the rate of planetary-axial revolution, . . ." is a complete thought within itself. A period could have been put at the end of this first part of the sentence and it would have been grammatically correct. Not only would it have been grammatically correct, but additionally and more to the point, it would have been instructive all by itself because it brings together two distinct issues. The one issue being the stabilization of orbits and the other being the braking effect on axial revolution. By starting with a complete thought, grammatical conventions require us to interpret what comes afterwards and is separated by commas in terms of how it fundamentally relates to this initial concept/complete thought.

Now let’s consider the first qualification/clarification, separated by a comma, that comes after the complete thought — "causing a planet to revolve ever slower until axial revolution ceases, . . ." The clarification is that the process mentioned above, as regards the braking/slowing of the planets (clearly, this is not addressing the orbital stability issue), is that eventually there is finality to the process, the planet stops. This does not imply that any particular planet has reached the point of having stopped because everything that comes before this comma-separated phrase is in general terms. Therefore, this phrase should not be construed to mean that stoppage has actually occurred, only that the process of tidal friction will eventually lead to this result.

Then we get the next comma-separated phrase which qualifies/clarifies the previous phrase — "leaving one hemisphere of the planet always turned toward the sun or larger body, . . ." What this phrase does by way of clarification of the previous phrase is to state specifically what is meant by stopped (i.e. one hemisphere always turned toward the sun) and then it adds an additional clarification that this process not only relates to planets but also to other orbiting bodies. This is what the "or larger body" contributes to the clarification of the main point regarding the effects of tidal friction; it expands the tidal friction effect to other orbiting spheres.

Then comes the next clarification —"as is illustrated by the planet Mercury and by the moon, . . ." So now the question is, "What is illustrated by the planet Mercury and the moon, that they are both examples of the effects of tidal friction (something that eventually leads to stoppage) or that they have both stopped?" To answer this question we must go to the last qualifying/clarifying and comma-separated phrase — "which always turns the same face toward Urantia[Earth]." 

This last qualifying phrase distinguishes the moon from Mercury. It could have just as easily said something like, "both of which now turn the same hemisphere toward the body around which they orbit." But it does not do this. Instead, it distinguishes these two bodies from each other by only addressing the status of the moon. By distinguishing the two spheres from each other, it leaves Mercury standing alone as an example of the main subject of the sentence, i.e. that tidal friction slows planets down, eventually to a stop, and first affects the planets closest to the sun.

[Majeston]

Magnetic Sensitivity
Report

Raw Data



Magnetic Sensitivity Summary
[Updated 7/31/07]

The Urantia Book asserts that all animals have at least a limited sense of direction due to magnetic forces on the planet that "activate the hosts of microscopic bodies" "which are sensitive and responsive to these directional currents. . . This sense is not wholly wanting as a conscious possession by mankind. These bodies were first observed on Urantia about the time of this narration."

The observation of a mechanism in sharks that is sufficiently sensitive to detect the earth's magnetic field was made at "about the time of this narration," the mid 1930's. After the Urantia Book was published in 1955, scientists discovered the presence of biologically produced magnetite in a variety of animals, including humans. Magnetite is the most magnetically sensitive material on earth. Sensitivity to the earth's magnetic field in a variety of migratory animals is now a well established fact of science. Though human sensitivity to the earth's magnetic field is still debated within the scholarly community, some researchers are confident that sufficient evidence already exists to make this claim.

 


Magnetic Sensitivity Report
[Updated 7/31/07]
Prepared by Halbert Katzen with special thanks to Phil Calabrese and Fred Harris

Before addressing the particular scientific advances that having been catching up to the Urantia Book's statements about the sensitivity of humans and other organisms to the earth's magnetic field, some context needs to be provided regarding the assertions made by the authors of the Urantia Book about the limitations and permissions that were placed upon them in preparing scientific material for the book. On the one hand the Urantia Book says,


"The laws of revelation hamper us greatly by their proscription of the impartation of unearned or premature knowledge. . .Mankind should understand that we who participate in the revelation of truth are very rigorously limited by the instructions of our superiors. We are not at liberty to anticipate the scientific discoveries of a thousand years." (Urantia Book 101:4.1,2)


On the other hand, the Urantia Book says,


"Let it be made clear that revelations are not necessarily inspired. The cosmology of these revelations is not inspired. It is limited by our permission for the co-ordination and sorting of present-day knowledge. . .

"While statements with reference to cosmology are never inspired, such revelations are of immense value in that they at least transiently clarify knowledge by:

1.   The reduction of confusion by the authoritative elimination of error.
2.   The co-ordination of known or about-to-be-known facts and observations."



Striking a balance between not "anticipating the discoveries of a thousand years" and "the co-ordination of known or about-to-be-known facts and observations" is something that would have had to have been done regarding the issue of biological sensitivity to the earth's magnetic field. The initial phases of scientific study on this issue certainly began before the Urantia Book was published, and today scientific opinion on the subject still lacks a broad consensus. Nonetheless, the pattern of emerging science is well aligned with the Urantia Book's assertions on this topic. The early research that was done prior to the Urantia Book's publication has advanced significantly in the last several decades.

Whether human beings can be consciously sensitive to the earth's magnetic field is not a settled question in science. However, the ongoing research in this area is pointing in that direction the way a compass needle points north. Some researchers already conclude that sufficient evidence exists for the assertion that human beings have this capability to some degree.

Wikipedia's provides a brief encapsulation of the subject and a quick appreciation for the basic issues related to this report.


"Magnetoception (or "magnetoreception") is the ability to detect changes in a magnetic field to perceive direction or altitude and has even been postulated as a method for animals to develop regional maps. It is most commonly observed in birds, though it has also been observed in many other animals including honeybees and turtles. Researchers have identified a probable sensor in pigeons: a small (dwarf), heavily innervated region of the skull, which contains biological magnetite. Humans have a similar magnetite deposit in the ethmoid bone of the nose. Although there is no dispute that a magnetic sense exists in many avians (it is essential to the navigational abilities of migratory birds), it is a controversial and not well-understood phenomenon. . . In bees, it has been observed that magnetite is embedded across the cellular membrane of a small group of neurons; the theory is that when the magnetite aligns with the Earth's magnetic field, induction causes a current to cross the membrane which depolarizes the cell."1


Could it be that all we have to do to find magnetic north is follow our nose? The Urantia Book makes the following statements regarding a sense of direction and orientation:


"The four points of the compass are universal and inherent in the life of Nebadon [the section of the cosmos where Earth exists]. All living creatures possess bodily units which are sensitive and responsive to these directional currents. These creature creations are duplicated on down through the universe to the individual planets and, in conjunction with the magnetic forces of the worlds, so activate the hosts of microscopic bodies in the animal organism that these direction cells ever point north and south. Thus is the sense of orientation forever fixed in the living beings of the universe. This sense is not wholly wanting as a conscious possession by mankind. These bodies were first observed on Urantia [Earth] about the time of this narration." (Urantia Book 34:4.10)


The Urantia Book claims that its content was provided in the mid 1930's; however, it was not published until 1955. Though the publication date is a universally uncontenscious issue, it's claim that the content of the Urantia Book was provided in the mid 1930's is an issue that attracts a broader range of opinion and is not so easily verified as the book's publication date. Notwithstanding that various forms of evidence exist to support the mid 1930's date, the accuracy of this date is not what is at issue here. The date is relevant because it provides a way to investigate the internal consistency of the Urantia Book. Because the text refers to the "time of this narration," presumably the mid 1930's date, and not the publication date, reflects the intended meaning.

If there were no evidence of the discovery in the mid 1930's of "bodies" that are sensitive to the earth's magnetic field, this lack of evidence would have to weigh against the credibility of the Urantia Book. But such is not the case. However, to the Urantia Book's credit, the observations of the mid 1930's, as will be shown, were not at all conclusive about sensitivity to the earth's magnetic field. They simply found a mechanism in sharks that was highly sensitive to electromagnetic fields. Therefore, the Urantia Book authors did risk loosing credibility if the observations in the mid 1930's were not later tied to issues regarding sensitivity to the earth's magnetic field.

However, before reviewing scientific discoveries on this subject, it is important to first provide some general information on the relationship between electricity and magnetism. This is necessary in order to appreciate why the jargon in this topic switches from "electroreceptors" to "magnetoreceptors."


"Electromagnetism is the physics of the electromagnetic field: a field which exerts a force on particles that possess the property of electric charge, and is in turn affected by the presence and motion of those particles.

"The magnetic field is produced by the motion of electric charges, i.e. electric current. The magnetic field causes the magnetic force associated with magnets.

"A changing magnetic field produces an electric field (this is the phenomenon of electromagnetic induction, the basis of operation for electrical generators, induction motors, and transformers). Similarly, a changing electric field generates a magnetic field. Because of this interdependence of the electric and magnetic fields, it makes sense to consider them as a single coherent entity—the electromagnetic field."2


With that understanding we can now proceed with appreciating scientific developments that are harmonious with the Urantia Book's assertion that observations were made in the mid 1930's related to biological mechanisms that would later be discovered to be sensitive to the earth's magnetic field.

In the History of Electroreceptors section of Faramarz Samie's paper titled Electroreception in Elasmobranchs he states:


"The first evidence of electrosensitivity in elasmobranchs dates back to 1935 when Dijkgraaf, working on Scyliorhinus canicula, noticed the animal's sensitivity to a rusty steel wire (Dijkgraaf & Kalmijn, 1962). The experimenters approached the head of a blindfolded shark with such a wire. They observed that the animal escaped when the wire was closer than several centimeters from its head. They repeated the experiment with a glass rod, but the animal did not react to it. Dijkgraaf assumed that the shark was stimulated by the galvanic currents produced at the surface of the metal wire, but had no way of proving his assumption.

"Dijkgraaf's hypothesis largely remained a speculation until Lissmann in 1958 formally suggested, based on behavioral evidence, that a group of receptors and central processes, called the ampullae of Lorenzini, aid in the detection and analysis of electric fields in the marine environment of fish. Later, experimenters verified the existence of the new class of specialized receptors through physiological experiments. They named them "electroreceptors" because their adequate stimuli3 were electric fields (Bullock et al. 1961, Kalmijn, 1966, 1971)."3


The Shark's Electric Sense article in the August 2007 edition of Scientific America provides additional information on the history of the discovery of electromagnetic sensitivity in animals.


"The story begins in 1678, when Italian anatomist Stefano Lorenzini described pores that speckled the forward part of the head of sharks and rays, endowing them with something resembling a bad five-o'clock shadow. He noted that. . .each opening led to a long transparent tube that was filled with a crystalline gel. Some of the tubes were small and delicate, but others were nearly the diameter of a strand of spaghetti and several inches in length. . .

"By the late 19th century the newly improved microscope revealed that the pores on a shark's snout and the unusual structures underneath them, today called ampullae of Lorenzini, must be sensory organs of some kind. . .

"A thin nerve emerged from the ampulla and joined branches of the anterior lateral line nerve. Scientists traced these nerve fibers to the base of the skull, where they enter the brain through the dorsal surface of the medulla, a destination characteristic of nerves that carry sensory information into the brain. Observers discerned a single tiny hair cell, similar to those of the human inner ear and of a fish's lateral line system, inside each ampulla. The type of stimulus they might detect remained unknown, however. . .

"In 1938 Alexander Sand of the Marine Biological Association of Plymouth, England, succeeded in amplifying and recording nerve pulses running from ampullae of Lorenzini to the brain. . . In the early 1960s biologist R. W. Murray of the University of Birmingham in England repeated Sand's experiments with modern electrophysiological instruments and confirmed the responses to temperature changes, pressure differences and touch, but he also observed that the organs were sensitive to slight variations in salinity. Moreover, when he happened to switch on an electric field near the opening of a tube connected to an ampulla, the firing pattern changed. Further, the pattern altered according to the intensity and polarity of the field. When the field's positive pole neared the opening of an ampulla, the firing rate declined; when the negative pole came near, firing increased.

"Astonishingly, Murray determined that the organs could respond to fields as weak as one millionth of a volt applied across a centimeter of seawater. This effect is equivalent to the intensity of the voltage gradient that would be produced in the sea by connecting up a 1.5 volt AA battery with one pole dipped in the Long Island Sound and the other pole in the waters off Jacksonville, Florida. Theoretically, a shark swimming between these points could tell when the battery was switched on or off."


This discovery in the mid 1930's of some of the functional characteristics of the ampullae of Lorenzini is in harmony with the Urantia Book's statement that the "bodies were first observed on Urantia about the time of this narration." Also consistent with the Urantia Book's assertion that its authors "are not at liberty to anticipate . . . scientific discoveries," is that there is no mention of magnetite being present in biologic organism, as this was not discovered until after the Urantia Book's publication in 1955.4 Additional discoveries were made within the ten years following publication of the Urantia Book that took this type of research to the next level. The conclusion regarding magnetic sensitivity is given by the Urantia Book, but the details are withheld. This could be the type of about-to-be-discovered knowledge that the authors indicate is within the permissible range of providing revelatory information.


"In the 1960s, Caltech paleoecologist Heinz Lowenstam startled biologists and geologists alike with the discovery that many animals do what conventional science had considered impossible: they manufacture substances such as the iron-containing mineral magnetite within their bodies. Out of Lowenstam's work came the more recent finding that many migratory animals, including birds, bees, and whales, generate magnetite within their bodies and may owe their uncanny homing instincts to the presence of this "internal compass" that allows them to navigate by means of Earth's magnetic field."5


The discovery of magnetite in numerous migrating species supports the Urantia Book's assertion that a general ability to detect direction exists throughout the spectrum of biological organism.

Magnetite is the world's most magnetic substance. In the article Biomagnetism and Bio-Electromagnetism: The Foundation of Life H. Coetzee, Ph.D. further explains the importance of this discovery.


"The discovery of a biogenic material (that is, one formed by a biological  organism) with ferromagnetic properties [the ability to maintain magnetic properties without an outside electric current being applied] and found to be magnetite was the first breakthrough toward an understanding as to why some animals have the ability to detect the earth's magnetic field. Searches for biogenic magnetite in human tissues had not been conclusive until the beginning of the 1990's when work with high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and electron diffraction on human brain tissue extracts of the cerebral cortex, cerebellum, and meninges (membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord) identified magnetite-maghemite crystals.


Magnetite Crystals under Low Magnification

"These magnetite crystals were found to be organized into linear, membrane-bound chains a few micrometers in length, with up to 80 crystals per chain. Furthermore individual crystals have their magnetite-maghemite aligned along the length of the chain axes (the "easy" direction of magnetization). The magnetite-maghemite crystal alignment has been interpreted as a biological mechanism for maximizing the magnetic moment per particle, as the magnetite-maghemite direction yields approximately 3% higher saturation magnetization than do other directions. This prismatic particle shape is also uncommon in geological magnetite crystals of this size, which are usually octahedra. The crystal morphology was found to be cubo-octahedral with the magnetite-maghemite faces of adjacent crystals lying perpendicular to the chain axis.

"All the magnetite crystals that have been examined to date are single magnetic domains, which means that they are uniformly and stably magnetized and have the maximum magnetic moment per unit volume possible for magnetite. Elemental analysis, by energy-dispersive X-ray analysis, electron diffraction patterns, and high resolution transmission electron microscopy lattice images, showed that many of the particles were structurally well-ordered and crystallographically single-domain magnetite. This means that the production of this biomineral must be under precise biological control.

"Ferromagnetic crystals interact more than a million times more strongly with external magnetic fields than do diamagnetic or paramagnetic materials (deoxyhemoglobin, ferritin, and hemosiderin). With this finding researchers were posed with a fundamental question for biology, namely: What is the mechanism through which the weak geomagnetic fields are perceived by organisms that are able to precipitate crystals of a ferromagnetic mineral such as magnetite (Fe3O4)? Could these crystals use their motion in a variety of ways to transduce the geomagnetic field into signals that can be processed by the nervous system?

"The presence of membrane-bound biomineral magnetite, which has been shown to have a biological origin, and the implication that some kind of mechanical coupling must take place between each compass magnetite particle and a mechanoreceptor, or at least a functionally equivalent mechanism allowing the position of the particle to be monitored by a sensory organelle in the body, is unique. Research has also found that the magnetite is produced by the cells of the organism when needed. Forms of advanced physical intelligence can directly tap into this information if they have a crystalline network within their brain cavity.

"Scientists are now asking the fundamental question: What is magnetite doing in the human brain? In magnetite-containing bacteria, the answer is simple: Magnetite crystals turn the bacteria into swimming needles that orient with respect to the earth's magnetic fields. Magnetite has also been found in animals that navigate by compass direction, such as bees, birds, and fish, but scientists do not know why the magnetite is present in humans, only that it is there."6

Above: A linear chain of biogenic magnetite crystals, extracted from tissues in the frontal region of the sockeye salmon, Oncorhynchus nerka, a close relative of the rainbow trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss. These are also single magnetic domains, with crystal alignments similar to those in magnetotactic bacteria. (Photo credit: S. Mann)




Even though scientists have discovered biogenic magnetite in animals, there still remains the question of whether and how such bodies could actually stimulate the brain in order to provide directional information. In the late 1990's results began to be published out of the University of Auckland of experiments that showed nerves connecting regions in both the skull and the nose of rainbow trout where magnetite is produced.7


"Since magnetite had been previously found in trout's skulls, the investigators decided to record neural activity from nerves that innervate the relevant region of the skull. They discovered a population of nerve fibers that respond to changes in the ambient magnetic field in one specific nerve, called the ros V ("ros five" nerve). This is a branch of the trigeminal nerve, which supplies an innervation to the face and skull of all vertebrates, including humans. Dye was used to trace this nerve to the nose of the trout."8

"Although this may seem like more than a smoking gun, Dr. Diebel is still cautious. Although she believes these are the long sort-after magneto-receptors, she says they are yet to prove the receptors are actually connected to the nerves. That involves future more complex experiments."9


Indeed, some caution in jumping to conclusions may be good advice. On May 14, 2004 Science Daily published an article that brings into to question whether nerves to the brain from locations where magnetite is present are responsible for magnetoreception. An article entitled Following Earth's Magnetic Field: Chemical Reaction In Birds Provides Sense Of Direction During Migratory Flights indicates that magnetite is not necessary. The article, however, seems to jump to conclusions by arguing that magnetite is not involved because it is possible that animals have redundant systems so that they can continue to navigate when one of their systems may not be able to function effectively.


"Migrating birds stay on track because of chemical reactions in their bodies that are influenced by the Earth's magnetic field, a UC Irvine-led team of researchers has found.

"The birds are sensitive even to rapidly fluctuating artificial magnetic fields. These fields had no effect on magnetic materials such as magnetite, indicating that the birds do not rely on simple chunks of magnetic material in their beaks or brains to determine direction, as experts had previously suggested.

"The results are reported in the May 13 issue of Nature. The study is the first to reveal the mechanism underlying magnetoreception the ability to detect fluctuations in magnetic fields in migratory birds.

"In the study, Thorsten Ritz, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, and colleagues exposed 12 European robins to artificial, oscillating magnetic fields and monitored the orientation chosen by these birds. The stimuli were specially designed to allow for responses that could differ depending on whether birds used small magnetic particles on their bodies or a magnetically sensitive photochemical reaction to detect the magnetic field.

"We found that the birds faced in the usual direction for their migration when the artificial field was parallel to the Earth's natural magnetic field, but were confused when the artificial field was applied in a different direction," said Ritz, the lead author of the paper. "Since the artificial field's oscillations were too rapid to influence magnetic materials like magnetite, it suggests that the most likely mechanism for magnetic orientation in these birds involves tiny changes to magnetically sensitive chemical reactions, possibly occurring in the eyes of the birds we are not sure.

"In the experiments, the robins could walk and flutter in their cages but could not fly. The birds oriented well in the Earth's magnetic field alone, but were disoriented in the presence of a broad-band (0.1-10 megahertz) and 7 megahertz oscillating field, aligned at a 24 or 48 degree angle to the Earth's magnetic field. When the same 7 megahertz oscillating field was aligned parallel to the Earth's magnetic field, the robins showed normal migratory orientation again.

"Unlike our senses involving vision, hearing, smell and touch, we do not know what receptors underlie magnetoreception," Ritz said. "Migratory birds have long been known to possess a magnetic compass that helps them find the correct direction during their migratory flights. It has remained unknown, however, how birds can detect the direction of the Earth's magnetic field.

"Now, our study points to what we need to look for a molecular substrate for certain chemical reactions. That is, we can rule out magnetic materials in birds' beaks and elsewhere as being possible candidates. Magnetite in the beaks, however, may play a role in detecting the strength but not the direction of the Earth's magnetic field."


Though the final word is obviously not in on the subject of megnetoreception, some things have been well established. One is that many animals are sensitive to the earth's magnetic field and are able to use this sensitivity for navigation. These findings are increasingly supportive of the Urantia Book's assertion that all organisms have this ability to some degree. Additionally, even though human sensitivity to the earth's magnetic field still remains an open question, there is uncontroversial evidence of the presence in the human body of magnetite and other mechanisms that seem to parallel those found in animals that do exhibit sensitivity to the earth's magnetic field. As well, the way the research has been unfolding is consistent with the Urantia Book's assertion that the specific information it provides must be limited with respect to what has already been discovered, even though the authors are given leeway to provide for the "co-ordination of known or about-to-be-known facts and observations."10

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoception

2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetism

3 http://wrt-intertext.syr.edu/II2/samie.html

4 Urantia Book 101: 4.2

5 http://www.admissions.caltech.edu/about/milestones

6 http://www.affs.org/html/biomagnetism.html

7 http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s154625.htm

8 Howard C. Hughes: Sensory Exotica: a world beyond human experience; 1999, Ch. 10

9 http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s154625.htm

10 Urantia Book 101:4.5

 


Magnetic Sensitivity Raw Data

Urantia Book 34:4.10

First evidence 1935 http://wrt-intertext.syr.edu/II2/samie.html

Caltech study on human sensitivity http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~jkirschvink/pdfs/KirschvinkBEMS92.pdf

http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/reprint/70/1/105.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoception

http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/s148725.htm

http://www.affs.org/html/biomagnetism.html

magnetite in brain abstract http://www.biophysics.uwa.edu.au/magnetite.html

magnetite in brain report http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/89/16/7683.pdf

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=49775&blobtype=pdf

magnetite in humans 1980 http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/reprint/92/1/333.pdf

1957 animal sensitivity http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/magnetic/animals.html

NOT magnetite http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/05/040514030725.htm

1947 ApplPhys Yeagley http://scitation.aip.org/getpdf/servlet/GetPDFServlet?filetype=
pdf&id=JAPIAU000018000012001035000001&idtype=cvips&prog=normal

bacteria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetotactic_bacteria

http://www.angel.ekol.lu.se/~rachel/publications/Introductory%20Paper%20def.pdf

images of bacteria w/ magnetite http://aem.asm.org/cgi/content/full/71/8/4902

Biomagnetism and Bio-Electromagnetism: The Foundation of Life http://www.affs.org/html/biomagnetism.html

Nerves in trout connecting nose and brain where magnetite is present http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s154625.htm

http://wrt-intertext.syr.edu/II2/samie.html

A 1992 Caltech study titled Magnetite in Human Tissues: A Mechanism for the Biological Effects of Weak ELF Magnetic Fields provides additional evidence of this capability that goes beyond the "microscopic bodies" that were discovered in other animals prior to the Urantia Book's publication. The summary of this study concludes that "These structures are "biological bar magnets," with interaction energies with the geomagnetic field exceeding thermal noise (kT). Biogenic magnetite provides easy and well-understood mechanisms for the geomagnetic field to influence processes at the cellular level, and it may also be involved with other cellular functions, such as iron transport or storage." The study also indicates that biogenic magnetite is produced by human beings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoception

Howard C. Hughes: Sensory Exotica: a world beyond human experience; 1999

Discovery of magnetoreception:

First suggested in 1859 by Middendorf

"[F]riedrich Merkel and his students at the University of Frankfurt. . . amassed an impressive body of evidence suggesting that migratory birds do indeed sense some aspect of the Earth's magnetic field, and use this ability to navigate accurately over long distances." Ch. 9, p. 137

"The initial evidence for magnetically based orientation in migratory birds came from a classic experinment by Merkel and Fromme in 1958." p.138

reference to Baker, 1985 "Baker reports that people score above chance at orienting themselves according to compass directions." p. 150

polyester clothing can interfer with magnetic sensitivity, cotton is better p. 150

"But the scientific study of animal navigation is usually said to have begun in the years between 1958 and 1965, when a group of zoologists led by Friedrich Merkel, a professor at the Univeristy of Frankfurt in Germany, made a startling and initially quite controversial discovery." Noticed that birds in enclosed rooms without visual cues aligned toward migration "premigratory restlessness" p.129

Ch. 10 Michael M. Walker and associates at the University of Auckland published results in 1997 of experiments that showed nerves related to magnetite in the nose of trout. "Since magnetite had been previously found in trout's skulls, the investigators decided to record neural activity from nerves that innervate the relevant region of the skull. They discovered a population of nerve fibers that respond to changes in the ambient magnetic field in one specific nerve, called the ros V ("ros five" nerve). This is a branch of the trigeminal nerve, which supplies an innervation to the face and skull of all vertebrates, including humans." Dye was used to trace this nerve to the nose of the trout.

Ch 12 p.204 "And in 1917, two American zoologists, George Parker an dAnne van Heusen, noted that blindfolded catfish resonded quite vigorously to metal rods placed in the water, but did not respond in a similar fashion to glass rods. Parker an dvan Heusen recognized that this effect was probably due to the electrical fields generated by cahimcal reactions between the metal rods and the water; they knew that glass rods could not produce these fields."

Major Huber, Animal Homing and Migration QL 782.5 .H82 1993

Scientific America August 2007: The Shark's Electric Sense

"The story begins in 1678, when Italian anatomist Stefano Lorenzini described pores that specled the forward part of the head of sharks and rays, endowing them with something resembling a bad five-o'clock shadow. He noted that. . .each opening led to a long transparent tube that was filled with a crystalline gel. Some fo the tubes were small an ddelicate, but others were nearly the diameter of a strand of spaghetti and several inches in length. . .By the late 19th century the newly improved microscope revealed that the pores on a shark's snout and the unusual structures underneath them, today called ampullae of Lorenzini, must be sensory organs of some kind. . .A thin nerve emerged from the ampulla and joined branches of the anterior lateral line nerve. Scientists traced these nerve fibers to the base of the skull, where they enter the brain through the dorsal surface of the medulla, a destination characteristic of nerves that carry sensory information into the brain. Observers discerned a single tiny hair cell, similar to those of the human inner ear and of a fish's lateral line system, iniside each ampulla. The type of stimulus they might detect remained unknown, however. . . In 1938 Alexander Sand of the Marine Biological Association of Plymouth, England, succeeded in amplifying and recording nerve pulses running from ampullae of Lorenzinin to the brain. . . In the early 1960s biologist R. W. Murray of the University of Birmingham in England repeated Sand's experiments with modern electrophysiological instruments and confirmed the responses to temperature changes, pressure differences and touch, but he also observed that the organs were sensitive to slight varioations in salinity. Moreover, when he happened to switch on an electric field near the opening of a tube connected to an ampulla, the firing pattern changed. Further, the pattern altered according to the intensity and polarity of the field. When the field's positive pole neared the opening of an ampulla, the firing rate declined; when the negative pole came near, firing increased. Astonishingly, Murray determined that the organs could respond to fields as weak as one millionth of a volt applied across a centimeter of seawater. This effect is equivalent to the intensity of the voltage gradient that would be produced in the sea by connecting up a 1.5 volt AA battery with one pole dipped in the Long Island Sound and the other pole in the waters off Jacksonville, Florida. Theoretically, a shark swimming between these points could tell when the battery was switched on or off."

http://wrt-intertext.syr.edu/II2/samie.html

 

Electroreception in Elasmobranchs

Faramarz Samie


*   

As a bioengineer I learn to apply mathematical, chemical, and physical concepts to the analysis of biological systems. In the Writing 405 course that I took with Roberta Kirby-Werner, I was given an opportunity to address research issues in my discipline in a formal project. I chose to analyze electroreception, a sensory modality that enables sharks and other animals to perceive electric fields, and wrote a professional-technical paper in which I reported my findings. I studied electroreception because of the insight it gives into the life of animals that perceive the world in a way that we cannot. It also teaches us about identifying and classifying receptors. My objective for this particular paper was to make some of the technical concepts in my discipline accessible to a more general audience which possesses an interest in science.


Sharks, rays, and skates make up a scientific grouping of fish called elasmobranchs. Unlike vertebrates, these animals have a cartilaginous skeletal system. The earliest record of this group dates back over 450 million years. In fact, their fossil records date back more than twice that of the dinosaurs. Without question, they are among the most feared animals on earth. Few acts of brutality committed by humans can top the terror that a Great White shark strikes into the hearts of men and women. In keeping with the Hollywood image of sharks (License to Kill, Jaws, Jaws II, and Jaws III), many people see sharks as mindless eating machines that create havoc upon sensing the smallest drop of blood. This image is incorrect. Elasmobranchs are feared because they are misunderstood.

Elasmobranchs, through the processes of natural selection, have adapted to live and survive in the earth's oceans and seas. They are one of the most dominant predators in their domain although in comparison to man they are not nearly as dangerous. Their attributes consists of a well-developed sensory network. Their senses include olfactory, tactile, auditory, vision, taste, and electroreception. Electroreception is a remarkable modality1 because it enables the animal to detect electrical fields. The animals use this modality to locate their food and analyze their environment.

According to Theodore H. Bullock, a neuroscientist, "the prediction, discovery, and establishment of electroreceptors is of extreme interest not only for the intrinsic insight into the life of some elasmobranchs that see the world through a new sense but also for the lessons it teaches about identifying and classifying receptors by function." As a response to this statement, this article will address electroreception in elasmobranchs by examining the history of electroreception, the morphology2 of electroreceptors, the physiological and behavioral evidence, and, lastly, the ways electroreception influences the behavior of these remarkable animals.

History of Electroreceptors

It is believed that the "electric" fish evolved from a pre-electric fish without electric organs but sensitive to electric fields. Furthermore, it is suggested that at that primitive stage, the electrosensitivity might have been used to detect the muscular potentials of prey, predators, and members of the same species (Kalmijn, 1971). The first evidence of electrosensitivity in elasmobranchs dates back to 1935 when Dijkgraaf, working on Scyliorhinus canicula, noticed the animal's sensitivity to a rusty steel wire (Dijkgraaf & Kalmijn, 1962). The experimenters approached the head of a blindfolded shark with such a wire. They observed that the animal escaped when the wire was closer than several centimeters from its head. They repeated the experiment with a glass rod, but the animal did not react to it. Dijkgraaf assumed that the shark was stimulated by the galvanic currents produced at the surface of the metal wire, but had no way of proving his assumption.

Dijkgraaf's hypothesis largely remained a speculation until Lissmann in 1958 formally suggested, based on behavioral evidence, that a group of receptors and central processes, called the ampullae of Lorenzini, aid in the detection and analysis of electric fields in the marine environment of fish. Later, experimenters verified the existence of the new class of specialized receptors through physiological experiments. They named them "electroreceptors" because their adequate stimuli3 were electric fields (Bullock et al. 1961, Kalmijn, 1966, 1971).

The Physical Stimulus for Electroreception

In oceans, electric fields are induced by both biological and geological causes. In the latter case electric fields are induced by water flowing or fish swimming through the earth's magnetic field by geomagnetic variations4 and by geophysical events5. The animals use these electric fields for navigation and identification of their environment.

Electric fields in the oceans can also be produced by marine animals. The internal and external electrochemical environments of marine animals differs. The difference creates a voltage gradient across the water skin boundary. The potential difference produces current loops which yield a bioelectric field in the surrounding waters. An animal's behavior can produce additional electric fields. For example, when a fish swims, muscles contract. Muscle contraction takes place when chemically-dependent channels, impermeable to sodium and potassium, open. The movement of such ions across the membrane produces an electric field that travels away from the animal in the conducting medium (salt water).

The number of muscle contractions affects the magnitude of the electric fields. If more muscles contract, the magnitude of the field is greater and vice versa. Furthermore, the intensity of the electric fields changes in the case of a wounded animal. For example, crustaceans can generate a voltage of 50.0 mV measured with a sensing electrode 1 mm away from the surface of the animal. The same crustacean, if wounded, generates a much higher voltage of 1250.0 mV (Kalmijn, 1974). H. S. Burr in 1947 established the presence of these bioelectric fields in the vicinity of marine animals (Kalmijn, 1974). These gradients can be easily detected by certain members of elasmobranchs.

Ampullae of Lorenzini

The ampullae of Lorenzini are complicated and extensive specialized skin sense organs characteristic of sharks and rays. The next four subsections of this article address the physical stimulus, the anatomy, and physiological characteristics of electroreceptors.

Anatomy

The ampullae of Lorenzini are electroreceptive units in sharks. They are jelly-filled canals found on the head of the animal which form a system of sense organs, each of which receives stimuli from the outside environment through the dermis and epidermis. Each canal ends in groups of small bulges lined by the sensory epithelium6. A small bundle of afferent nerve fibers innervates each ampullae7 ; there are no efferent fibers8 (Murray, 1974). The ampullae are mostly clustered into groups. The lengths of the canals vary from species to species. Even within any one fish, but the pattern of distribution is approximately species specific. An interesting anatomical observation is that the same number of nerve fibers are dedicated to electroreceptors as are dedicated to the eye, ear, and the lateral line (Murray, 1974). The number of nerves that innervate a sensory organ often determine the sensitivity and degree of acuity9 of that sensory organ. They also tell us about the relative importance of that sensory organ for an animal. Consequently, we can conclude that the ampullae of Lorenzini is at least as important to an animal as its eyes, ears, and the lateral line (Murray, 1974).

Physiological Characteristics

Murray's studies of electrophysiological characteristics in Raja and Scyliorhinus have demonstrated that the ampullae are sensitive to weak electric fields. In fact Scyliorhinus canicula can detect gradients as low as 1-µV/cm while the Raja can detect a 0.01-µV/cm. This means that Raja can detect a 1.5 V gradient (relative to ground) from about 1000 miles away (Kalmijn, 1974).

In one experiment Murray recorded the electrical activity from the ampullary nerves under water by stimulating them with electric fields produced by electrodes some distance away. He obtained the best results when the voltage gradient of the field was parallel to the ampullary canals. When the surface openings of the canals were made negative by a DC field, the response was an increase in the frequency of action potentials at the beginning and a decrease in the frequency at the termination of the stimulus. Murray also recorded from the lateral-line organs of the sharks and rays and found them not nearly as sensitive to electric fields as the ampullae of Lorenzini (Murray, 1974).

Role of Electroreception in Behavior

In 1971 Kalmijn looked at the feeding responses of the shark, Scyliorhinus canicula, and the ray, Raja clavata, toward the flatfish, Pleuronectes platessa. These experiments demonstrated that the animals make significant use of their sensitivity towards electric fields. A synopsis of these experiments follows.

First, the flatfish was introduced into a pool where the sharks and rays were maintained, and the flatfish was given enough time to bury itself in the sand. When the sharks and rays swam within 10-15 cm of the flatfish, the researchers observed that the animals attacked the spot where the fish was buried. Subsequently, the animals retrieved and consumed the fish.

Then, the fish was placed in an agar chamber to conceal it both mechanically and chemically without affecting the electric field of the animal. The agar chamber did not change the attack pattern of the sharks and rays. To prove that the 1 cm agar10 layer was thick enough to block the chemical scent of the animal, frozen pieces of fish were exchanged for live fish. Following this change, the animals did not attack the chamber. Next, the live flatfish was returned to the agar chamber and a thin electrically-insulating plastic film was placed above the chamber to block the electric field of the flatfish. Once again the sharks made no attempt to attack the flatfish. Finally, to provide direct evidence for the shark's and ray's ability to detect electric fields, two electrodes were buried under the sand, and a current was passed between them. The shark and ray exhibited the same attack pattern as when a live flatfish was buried under the sand.

These experiments suggest that detection of electric fields directly influences the feeding response of the animals. The behavioral evidence combined with the ability of the animals to detect electric fields in their natural environment leads to the conclusion that electroreception is a biologically significant modality to the animal.

Significance of Research

Electroreceptors enable the elasmobranchs to search and locate prey and navigate through the earth's ocean and seas. Electroreception allows these animals to sense the presence of their victims long before the victims have the chance to see their predators. This awesome advantage has made these animals into one of the most threatening predators on earth.

By understanding the sensory capabilities of the marine predators and stimuli emanated from their prey we can guard ourselves from hazards by building the proper repellents or shields11. At the same time we protect the animals from the side which effects our technology by taking the necessary precautions. For example when ships or fishing nets are being built, engines could be shielded.

Unlike elasmobranchs, humans only possess five sensory modalities. Sometimes humans conclude incorrectly that marine animals use only the same five senses. The type of scientific research described in this article helps to clear up such misunderstandings, but also gives us a better understanding of the world in which we live.

References

Bullock, T. H. 1982. Electroreception. Annual Review of Neuroscience 5:121-70.

Bullock, T. H., Hagiwara, S., Kusano, K., Negishi, K. 1961. Evidence for a category of electroreceptors in the lateral line of gymnotid fishes. Science 134:1426-27.

Dijkgraaf, S., Kalmijn, A. J. 1962. Verhaltungsversuche zur Funktion der Lorenzinischen, Ampullen. Naturwissenschaften 49:400.

Kalmijn, A. J. 1966. Electro-perception in sharks and rays. Nature 212:1232-33.

Kalmijn, A. J. 1971. The Electric Sense of sharks and rays. Journal of Experimental Biology. 55:371-83.

Kalmijn, A. J. 1974. The Detection of Electric Fields from animate and Animate Sources Other Than Electric Organs. In: Handbook of Sensory Physiology., A. Fessard, (ed). Springer-Verlag, New York.

Murray, R. W. 1974. The Ampullae of Lorenzini. In: Handbook of Sensory Physiology., A. Fessard, (ed). Springer-Verlag, New York.

Stevens, W. K. The Odds of a Shark Attack. New York Times, December 8, 1992.

Footnotes

1 An avenue of sensation (Webster's Dictionary).

2 Morphology is the study of structure and form in plants and animals (Webster's Dictionary).

3 Adequate stimulus is the form of stimulus to which a sense organ is most sensitive.

4 Geomagnetic variation is the change in the fluctuating strength of earth's magnetic field.

5 An example of a geophysical event is the tectonic processes that cause strain variations in the earth's crust which lead to changes in the magnetization of rocks and local electric fields.

6 The sensory epithelium is a single layer of receptor and supporting cells.

7 Afferent nerve fibers carry information towards the central nervous system (Brain).

8 Efferent nerve fibers carry information towards the peripheral nervous system.

9 Acuity refers to the resolving power of the sensory organ.

10 Agar is a gelatinous colloidal extractive of a red alga (Webster's Dictionary).

11 The chance of being killed by a shark attack is less than the chance of being killed by a bee sting. There are 50 to 70 shark attacks every year worldwide. They result in five to ten deaths according to International Shark Attack file at the Florida Museum of Natural History (Stevens, 1993).



http://www.ubthenews.com/topics/magnetic_sensitivity.htm

[Majeston]

Inner Ionosphere
Report


Inner Ionosphere Summary
[Updated 4/13/07]

In discussing earth's atmosphere, the Urantia Book states the following, "The lower five or six miles of the earth's atmosphere is the troposphere; this is the region of winds and air currents which provide weather phenomena. Above this region is the inner ionosphere and next above is the stratosphere." (Urantia Book 58:2.6) Urantia Book enthusiasts and critics alike have long considered this statement to be a mistake because the longstanding understanding of the earth's atmosphere has been that the ionosphere exists above the stratosphere.

However, in the late 1980's and early 1990's, over thirty years after the Urantia Book's publication, observation of "blue jets" were conclusively documented and accepted as an atmospheric condition. Notwithstanding that this phenomenon is still not well understood, what has been learned about blue jets indicates that there must be an ionospheric layer below the stratosphere. Blue jets form above thunderclouds and often reach a height of about 25 miles above sea level. The long-recognized ionosphere, which exists above the stratosphere, begins at around 30 miles above sea level.

Calculations based on videos taken of blue jets, as well as other associated research, indicate that the ionic condition necessary to create their luminescent quality could not have its source in the thunderclouds over which they occur.

 


Inner Ionosphere Report
Prepared by Halbert Katzen with special thanks to Chris Halvorson, Chris Riggio, Matthew Block, and Phil Calabrese
[Updated 6/30/07]

This topic is concerned with the Urantia Book's assertion that an "inner ionosphere" exists between the troposphere and the stratosphere. The troposphere is roughly the first six miles (9 to 10 km) above sea level where we have a direct experience of weather conditions. Currently, scientists demarcate the tropopause region as the next mile or two of consistent temperature before the start of the stratosphere. From before the Urantia Book was published in 1955, the generally held belief has been and continues to be that conditions are not present between the troposphere and the stratosphere to support the type of ionic activity necessary to create visible electrical phenomena. In the late 1980's and early 1990's documentation of such visible began raising questions and changing this longstanding paradigm regarding the nature earth's atmosphere.

The following illustrations provide a general appreciation for the current understanding of the different atmospheric regions and their characteristics.











When it comes to topics for UBtheNEWS, the various topics will each have their own set of specific characteristics. This topic, though timely for an initial presentation, is in the early stages of development. It will be updated periodically as scientists continue to research and analyze the phenomena associated with this topic. As a UBtheNEWS topic, the assertion that an inner ionosphere exists raises four distinct issues:

1.   It is not at all a settled issue in science that an "inner ionosphere" exists between the troposphere and the stratosphere.
2.   Evidence of ionic activity in the region between the troposphere and stratosphere existed before 1955.
3.   At least one physicist theorized about the possibility of ionic activity developing above thunderclouds.
4.   This topic raises issues related to the human sources that were used in the creation of the Urantia Book.


Multiple, documented observations of the phenomenon related to this topic did not emerge until around the beginning of the 1990s. The discovery of this atmospheric activity does not lend itself well to being commercialized and it challenges currently held paradigms on the subject. Consequently, the science is still very much in the developmental stages. Many things related to electrical activity in the atmosphere are not clearly understood by scientists at this point in time. If we had a clear understanding of these issues, theories that support the existence of these now documented phenomena would have been given more credence. Instead, the early, undocumented sightings tended to be discounted.

The degree to which current science corroborates the existence of ionic activity between the troposphere and the stratosphere will, of course, be the primary focus of this report. The history of observations related to ionic activity will be reviewed as part of the explanation given regarding the current state of the scientific developments. But this will be addressed after creating some context for this topic as it relates to the issue of using "human sources."

The issue of human sources in the creation of the Urantia Book comes up because the Urantia Book claims to have been written by angels. The Urantia Book explains the wisdom guiding the permissions and limitations placed on the angelic authors with regard to the presentation of information. The following quotes are germane to this aspect of the Urantia Book:


"We have been instructed to introduce new terms only when the concept to be portrayed finds no terminology in English which can be employed to convey such a new concept partially or even with more or less distortion of meaning." (Urantia Book: Forward, paragraph 2)

"Because your world is generally ignorant of origins, even of physical origins, it has appeared to be wise from time to time to provide instruction in cosmology. And always has this made trouble for the future. The laws of revelation hamper us greatly by their proscription of the impartation of unearned or premature knowledge. Any cosmology presented as a part of revealed religion is destined to be outgrown in a very short time. Accordingly, future students of such a revelation are tempted to discard any element of genuine religious truth it may contain because they discover errors on the face of the associated cosmologies therein presented.

Mankind should understand that we who participate in the revelation of truth are very rigorously limited by the instructions of our superiors. We are not at liberty to anticipate the scientific discoveries of a thousand years. Revelators must act in accordance with the instructions which form a part of the revelation mandate. We see no way of overcoming this difficulty, either now or at any future time. We full well know that, while the historic facts and religious truths of this series of revelatory presentations will stand on the records of the ages to come, within a few short years many of our statements regarding the physical sciences will stand in need of revision in consequence of additional scientific developments and new discoveries. These new developments we even now foresee, but we are forbidden to include such humanly undiscovered facts in the revelatory records. Let it be made clear that revelations are not necessarily inspired. The cosmology of these revelations is not inspired. It is limited by our permission for the co-ordination and sorting of present-day knowledge. While divine or spiritual insight is a gift, human wisdom must evolve.

"Truth may be but relatively inspired, even though revelation is invariably a spiritual phenomenon. While statements with reference to cosmology are never inspired, such revelations are of immense value in that they at least transiently clarify knowledge by:

1.   The reduction of confusion by the authoritative elimination of error.
2.   The co-ordination of known or about-to-be-known facts and observations.
3.   The restoration of important bits of lost knowledge concerning epochal transactions in the distant past.
4.   The supplying of information which will fill in vital missing gaps in otherwise earned knowledge.
5.   Presenting cosmic data in such a manner as to illuminate the spiritual teachings contained in the accompanying revelation." (Urantia Book 101:4)1


The statements quoted above inspired Matthew Block to search for scientific source material that existed prior to publication of the Urantia Book that would have shaped the boundaries for what information could permissibly be imparted, given the claim of angelic authorship. His underlying belief being that, if such proscriptions are to be taken seriously, then a person ought to be able to discover the writings that existed during the time period in which the Urantia Book was created that formed the parameters of the such revelatory limitations. Or, if the Urantia Book is not what it claims to be regarding its authorship, even still such human sources of the then current understandings of scientific issues ought to be discoverable. He maintains a website where he posts his research on this subject.2

With regard to the section in the Urantia Book that asserts the existence of an inner ionosphere, Block discovered in the June 1942 issue of Scientific Monthly an article titled Solar Radiation and the State of the Atmosphere by Harlan True Stetson.3 The section in the Urantia Book that makes mention of the existence of an inner ionosphere closely parallels and is consistent with this article by Stetson in most respects for several paragraphs. However, with regard to the issue of the existence of an inner ionosphere the Urantia Book departs from Stetson's article.

Stetson's article states, "If we look at a cross-section of the earth's atmosphere, it may for convenience be divided into three zones or layers in which the stratosphere occupies the middle ground. The region below the stratosphere is that which contacts our immediate surroundings and provides the winds and atmospheric currents, giving rise to all our weather. We call this lower region comprising perhaps the first 5 or 6 miles the troposphere. The region above the stratosphere is the ionosphere."

The Urantia Book says, "The lower five or six miles of the earth's atmosphere is the troposphere; this is the region of winds and air currents which provide weather phenomena. Above this region is the inner ionosphere and next above is the stratosphere." (Urantia Book 58:2.6)


Because the Urantia Book's section on the atmosphere so closely parallels the Stetson article, it is generally accepted as source material for establishing the parameters of the Urantia Book's discussion of this issue. Naturally, for those who accept the Urantia Book's claim regarding angelic authorship, this source material is generally referred to as "human source" material. Due to the difference between Stetson's article and the Urantia Book regarding the inner ionosphere, there has been a spectrum of opinion about this difference based upon a person's belief system. For those who do not believe the Urantia is what it purports to be, this has been used as evidence not only of human authorship, but also human fallibility. For those who do believe the Urantia Book is what it purports to be, until more recently, this issue has given rise to various types of "apologetic" and defensive responses, ranging from "the Urantia Book does not claim to be a perfect document" to "maybe someday it will be discovered to be accurate."

"Maybe someday" may be on its way.

Referring to an "inner ionosphere" below the stratosphere has been and continues to be an assertion that is only made by the Urantia Book. However, C.T.R. Wilson, Nobel Laureate and inventor of the atomic cloud chamber, predicted upwards lightning in his 1925 treatise on Thundercloud Electric Field Theory. "The electric field of the cloud may cause ionization at great heights, the result being continuous or discontinuous discharge between the cloud and the upper atmosphere. . . The charges separated in the thundercloud may re-combine directly by a short-circuiting discharge within the cloud or by continuous or discontinuous discharges through external circuits, one such circuit including the earth and the upper atmosphere. . ."4

Atmospheric luminescence is generally understood to occur in connection with the presence of ions in the atmosphere. The aurora borealis is the best-known example of atmospheric luminescence associated with the ionosphere. Photographic documentation has conclusively confirmed the existence of transient luminous events (TLE's) called blue jets, blue starters, red sprites, and elves. The documentation of these TLE's has allowed for detailed analysis of their nature and behavior, and with this, a whole new field of questions has emerged in atmospheric science. Many of these questions remain unanswered. Nonetheless, research from the last twenty years on TLE's suggests ionic presence and activity during storms between the troposphere and the stratosphere.

Prior to the videographic documentation of these TLE's, sightings of them had been reported. But they were very much discounted because of the lack of documentation. Known as The Weather Doctor, Keith C. Heidorn, PhD writes in a November 1, 2005 article, "Though first reported in 1886 as unidentified oddities, it was not until the last decade that the meteorological community accepted their existence."5 The Geophysical Institute at University of Alaska Fairbanks published in a May 15, 1995 report that "Over the past century there have been scattered anecdotal accounts of blue or green pillars, columns or rocket like optical phenomena over thunderstorms [Corliss, 1977, 1983; Wilson, 1956; Malan, 1937; Ashmore 1950; Wright,1951]."6 The bias against acceptance of this phenomenon in the scientific community is reflected in a National Geographic article from June 23, 2003 which states, "Airplane pilots have spotted "transient luminous events" since the dawn of aviation, "but many were afraid to report the [flashes of light] because of their elusive nature," commented Victor P. Pasko at Penn State University's Communications and Space Sciences Laboratory in University Park."7

If the blue starters and blue jets are accepted as indications of an inner ionosphere that exists between the troposphere and the stratosphere, then the Urantia Book is at least several decades ahead of scientific corroboration. Part of the problem in making definitive statements on this topic is that scientists simply are not sure about how to interpret what they are seeing.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks report stated in 1995, "We speculate on possible mechanisms, but none seem very satisfactory."8 "Since 1990 these phenomena have been intensely photographed and studied from mountaintop observatories, satellites and the space shuttle, yet the origin and mechanisms of these phenomena are still somewhat mysterious."9 One of the most comprehensive studies of blue jets and blue starters can be found in a 2002 report out of the Pennsylvania State University.10 This is a detailed and technical report called Three-dimensional modeling of blue jets and blue starters. Quoting this report directly would require extensively educating the reader on highly technical aspects of this field. If this field of science were better understood, such lengths would be taken. Because this is relatively new area of science that is likely to be evolving in the relatively near future, this type of extended analysis will not be done in this report at this point. The basic theory of that research suggests that the ionic presence necessary for the luminescence of blue jets and blue starters derives from activities within storm clouds that send an ionic field into the region above the storm clouds.

In the first several years after blue jets were first documented, these TLE's were especially confusing because larger ones had not yet been filmed that flashed all the way up to the ionosphere that exists above the stratosphere. There had been speculation in the scientific community regarding the possibility of electrical interactions between the troposphere and the ionosphere, but not that discharges would terminate in the region directly above the troposphere or in the lower regions of the stratosphere. Such speculation received passing mention in a 2003 article on Physics Web, which states, "It was suggested more than 80 years ago that such electrical discharges could bridge the gap between a thundercloud and the upper atmosphere. But previous measurements indicated that blue jets could only reach heights of about 40 kilometers."11 As recently as 2000 the University of Alaska Fairbanks described blue jets as spanning 15 to 40 kilometers (9.4 to 25 miles).12

As more documentation of the blue jets continued to be compiled in the wake of the first documented sightings, increasingly occurrences of larger expressions of the phenomenon were recorded and some of these reached up to the tendrils that reach downward from the red sprites that exist in the ionosphere (above the stratosphere). The trend seems to be for scientists to focus on these more rare and larger expressions of the blue jet phenomenon because it relates to the acknowledged and somewhat understood ionosphere above the stratosphere. But as the previous quote indicates, these are not the more prevalent expressions of blue jets. Until scientists are willing to focus their attention on the blue jets and blue starters that do not reach above the lower levels of the stratosphere, as was done in the Pennsylvania State University report mentioned above, it is unlikely that an "inner ionosphere" will be commonly acknowledged to exist by the scientific community.

As larger occurrences of blue jets became documented, there also has been a diminished focus on the significance of blue starters (excepting the Pennsylvania State University report). Blue starters do not reach as high as blue jets and are considered by some to simply be a less intense expression of the blue jet phenomenon. "The blue starter, a related phenomenon, may actually be a blue jet that fails to completely form."13 "Blue starters differ from blue jets in that they are brighter but shorter (reaching to only about 12 miles altitude). These were reported to occur over regions where large hailstones were falling."14 The Pennsylvania State University report is generally aligned with this position on the relationship between blue jets and blue starters.

Blue starters and blue jets, because they occur in the region between the troposphere and ionosphere, indicate that this region is an important part of the picture when it comes to understanding how electric currents travel on a global level. National Geographic News published a June 25, 2003 article stating that, "Scientists have known that the global electric circuit is powered by thunderstorms, two thousand of which rage across the Earth's surface at any given moment. These storms act as a generator, driving electric charge upwards. . ."15 Even though atmospheric scientists are not yet ready to identify the region between the troposphere and stratosphere as an "inner ionosphere," current studies increasingly point in this direction. By any name it is now being widely accepted that some form of ionic activity regularly occurs in this region, creating a link that continually works to balance out the electrical charges that develop in our atmosphere.

No matter what one believes about the origins of the Urantia Book, its assertion that an inner ionosphere exists is increasingly looking consistent with emerging science on the subject. Either the angelic authors knew what they were talking about and determined that the sightings and theories in existence prior to the books publication were sufficient to keep them within the limitations imposed on them regarding the revelation of unearned knowledge. Or the human authors took an extraordinary chance by stating a position that was not at all corroborated by science at the time of publication. In either case, the Urantia Book's assertion regarding the existence of an inner ionosphere is increasingly being supported by advancing scientific research, while the position that this statement is an error is quickly having its foundation eroded.

 

Blue jets are one of many types of upper-atmosphere electrical discharges, or "transient luminous events" currently being studied by scientists in Asia and North America. The images above were captured using low-light-level cameras, since most of the phenomena appear and disappear much too quickly for the human eye to capture.

Photographs courtesy the ISUAL project, NCKU/NSPO, Taiwan

 


Red Sprite

 

This large blue jet, shooting upwards from a thunderstorm's top, reached an upper altitude of about 130,000 feet (40 km). These jets have been reported in anecdotal accounts over the last century. This image and other images of jets captured on the evening of June 30 are the first ever recorded. The jets appear to move at speeds of 45,000 to 223,000 miles per hour (20 to 100 km per sec). This example was captured with a very wide angle low-light, black-and-white television camera flying over eastern Arkansas at 10:03 PM CDT (03:03 UT on UT date July 1). Universal Time is shown in the upper left; other flight data is shown at the bottom. Image credit: Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks.16



 

Footnotes

1 Citations for the Urantia Book are generally presented in the following form: 101:4.2. In this example it would mean Chapter 101, section 4, paragraph 2. The Urantia Book actually uses the term "Papers" to refer to chapters. In this particular case there is no paragraph number because the entire section is included.

2 http://www.squarecircles.com/

3 http://www.squarecircles.com/matarticles/atmosphere/22-51.pdf

4 http://www.altair.org/atmoelec.html

5 http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/elements/bluejets.htm

6 http://www.gi.alaska.edu/~heavner/rs/bluejets.html

7 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/06/
   0625_030625_atmospherethunder_2.html

8 http://www.gi.alaska.edu/~heavner/rs/bluejets.html

9 http://www.altair.org/atmoelec.html

10 http://www.ee.psu.edu/faculty/pasko/Publications/pasko-george-jets.pdf

11 http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/6/3/9

12 http://www.gi.alaska.edu/~heavner/rs/bluejets.html

13 http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/elements/bluejets.htm

14 http://www.albany.edu/faculty/rgk/atm101/sprite.htm

15 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/06/
     0625_030625_atmospherethunder.html

16 http://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/spd/sprites.html

 

 


Inner Ionosphere Raw Data

Urantia Book 58:2

http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/6/3/9

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/06/
0625_030625_atmospherethunder.html

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2000PhDT........29H

http://www.rps.psu.edu/0309/electric.html

http://www.gi.alaska.edu/~heavner/rs/bluejets.html

http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/elements/bluejets.htm

http://www.albany.edu/faculty/rgk/atm101/sprite.htm

http://start.org/meetings/fm06/fm06-sessions/fm06_SA44A.html

http://www.cosmic.ucar.edu/related_papers/2001_hocke_gravity_waves.pdf

http://www.squarecircles.com/matarticles/atmosphere/22-51.pdf

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2006GL029051.shtml

http://www.altair.org/atmoelec.html

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0080-4630(19560802)236%3A1206%3C297%3
AATOTE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P

most comprehensive, technical report: http://www.ee.psu.edu/faculty/pasko/Publications/pasko-george-jets.pdf

http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/060322sprite.htm

http://www.mysteriousuniverse.org/?p=1023

nice image http://mysteriousuniverse.org//uploads/2007/06/lightning_sprites.jpg

good images http://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/spd/sprites.html





http://www.ubthenews.com/topics/ionosphere.htm

[Majeston]

Early Migration to the Americas
Report

Raw Data



Early Migration to the Americas Summary
[Updated 4/21/07]

The Urantia Book, published in 1955, states, "About eighty-five thousand years ago the comparatively pure remnants of the red race went en masse across to North America, and shortly thereafter the Bering land isthmus sank, thus isolating them." This statement is quite out of line with the mainstream scholarly perspective on the when Native Americans first began to populate North and South America. According to answers.com, "Some scholars accept evidence of Native American existence in the Americas back more than 25,000 years, while many others believe that people arrived later than that, perhaps as recently as 12,000 years ago."

In the last ten years, however, sites at Monte Verde, Chile, Pedra Furada, Brazil, and Allendale, South Carolina are finding evidence of human civilization dating back 33,000 to 56,000+ years ago. Back in 1955, there was no scholarly or scientific literature suggesting that modern man lived in the Americas so long ago. Because travel across a Bering Strait land bridge is still the predominantly held theory for how anatomically modern humans arrived in the Americas, a civilization in South America indicates that migration by this route must have happened considerably in advance of the arrival of modern man in South American.

 


Early Migration to the Americas Report
This report was prepared by Halbert Katzen.
[Updated 4/23/07]

This topic is still far from being a settled issue and periodic updates can be expected as ongoing research and analysis continues to develop. Nonetheless, significant movement toward the Urantia Book's position has been made in the last twenty years. This topic serves as an example of how the science of prehistoric man is increasingly moving closer to the Urantia Book's account of human history. Additionally, this topic is a good example of how difficult it is to break through old paradigms. As will be shown later in the report, researches who make new discoveries face an uphill battle in the fight for acceptance of their findings.

According to the Urantia Book, the North American continent first became inhabited 85,000 years ago when the "red man" crossed the Bering Strait land bridge, which at that time connected Siberia and Alaska. In the last twenty years remains have been found at sites in both North and South American that indicate the American continents were inhabited at least 50,000 years ago. One site in Brazil dates back to approximately 60,000 years ago. Before these finds the predominantly held scholarly opinion was that the red man entered North America roughly 12,000 years ago by way a Bering Strait land bridge. These new finds seriously challenge the whole field of anthropological study because the current "out of Africa" theory suggests that modern man migrated out of Africa 60,000 to 80,000 years ago.

According to the Urantia Book, modern humans arrived on the scene almost one million years ago. This broader issue of human origins will not be addressed here. However, for the purpose of interpreting relevant quotes regarding the migration of humans to the Americas, it is helpful to be aware of certain aspects of the Urantia Book's position on this subject.

In recounting the history of humanity, the Urantia Book relates that the various colored races sprang, as an evolutionary mutation, from one mother approximately 500,000 years ago. The Eskimos are said to be the nearest and only remaining example of what human beings were like prior to the differentiation into the various colored races. However, the Eskimos are not considered to be a pure representation of the earliest people. The mutation that occurred gave rise to six colored races: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo.1

Adam and Eve are said to have been biologically superior to all other human beings when they made their appearance almost 38,000 years ago and started a new race, referred to as the violet race. The development of their civilization and the intermixing of their descendants with the rest of humanity significantly impacted the development of our species and the progress of civilization.2

Obviously, the out of Africa theory, which dates the emergence of modern man at 60,000 to 80,000 years ago, is not aligned with the Urantia Book's presentation of human history. That issue will be addressed in other reports; this report will stay focused on the issues related to (genetically) modern man's early migration to the American continents. However, it is important to note that adherence to the out of Africa theory by many American anthropologists has created a bias against acceptance of the analysis done on the more recent finds of the last decades. Even without the inertial resistance created by acceptance of the out of Africa theory, American scholars who have developed and supported the theory that the red man entered North America around 11,500 have been reluctant to embrace the mounting evidence that is contrary to this theory. Currently, mainstream popular resources for information on this subject still say things similar to what is published on Answers.com: "Some scholars accept evidence of Native American existence in the Americas back more than 25,000 years, while many others believe that people arrived later than that, perhaps as recently as 12,000 years ago."3 From Wikipedia.com we get, "They entered North America by at least 12,000 years ago and diversified into hundreds of culturally distinct nations and tribes."4 These cursory reviews indicate the degree of cultural and academic bias that is faced by researchers regarding acceptance of the analysis of more recent discoveries.

The long held scholarly belief that modern man came to the Americas around 11,500 years ago dates back to a find made in 1932. Encyclopedia Smithsonian provides the following summary:


"The traditional theory held that the first Americans crossed the land bridge from Siberia to Alaska around 11,500 years ago and followed an "ice-free corridor" between two large Canadian ice sheets (the Laurentide and Cordilleran) to reach unglaciated lands to the south. These first inhabitants, whose archaeological sites are scattered across North and South America, were called the Clovis people, named after the town in New Mexico where their fluted spear points used for hunting mammoth were first found in 1932."5


This report will present the Urantia Book's position on the subject and then provide summaries of the analysis done on some of the more recent finds that are forcing a re-evaluation of this topic along lines that are increasingly harmonious with the Urantia Book's position. One of the reasons that remnants of the red man are difficult to find may be that their tendency to fight amongst themselves significantly depleted their populations. The Urantia Book states:


"In later times [approximately 200,000 to 85,000 years ago] they [the red man] had serious and prolonged trouble with their yellow brethren in Asia. They were aided by their early invention of the bow and arrow, but they had unfortunately inherited much of the tendency of their ancestors to fight among themselves, and this so weakened them that the yellow tribes were able to drive them off the Asiatic continent.

"About eighty-five thousand years ago the comparatively pure remnants of the red race went en masse across to North America, and shortly thereafter the Bering land isthmus sank, thus isolating them. . .

"When the red man crossed over into America, he brought along much of the teachings and traditions of his early origin. . . But in a short time after reaching the Americas, the red men began to lose sight of these teachings, and there occurred a great decline in intellectual and spiritual culture. Very soon these people again fell to fighting so fiercely among themselves that it appeared that these tribal wars would result in the speedy extinction of this remnant of the comparatively pure red race.

"Because of this great retrogression the red men seemed doomed when, about sixty-five thousand years ago, Onamonalonton appeared as their leader and spiritual deliverer. He brought temporary peace among the American red men and revived their worship of the "Great Spirit." Onamonalonton lived to be ninety-six years of age and maintained his headquarters among the great redwood trees of California. Many of his later descendants have come down to modern times among the Blackfoot Indians.

"As time passed, the teachings of Onamonalonton became hazy traditions. Internecine wars were resumed, and never after the days of this great teacher did another leader succeed in bringing universal peace among them. Increasingly the more intelligent strains perished in these tribal struggles; otherwise a great civilization would have been built upon the North American continent by these able and intelligent red men. (Urantia Book 64:6.4-8) 6

"The red men early began to migrate to the northeast, on the heels of the retreating ice, passing around the highlands of India and occupying all of northeastern Asia. They were closely followed by the yellow tribes, who subsequently drove them out of Asia into North America.

"When the relatively pure-line remnants of the red race forsook Asia, there were eleven tribes, and they numbered a little over seven thousand men, women, and children. These tribes were accompanied by three small groups of mixed ancestry, the largest of these being a combination of the orange and blue races. These three groups never fully fraternized with the red man and early journeyed southward to Mexico and Central America, where they were later joined by a small group of mixed yellows and reds. These peoples all intermarried and founded a new and amalgamated race, one which was much less warlike than the pure-line red men. Within five thousand years this amalgamated race broke up into three groups, establishing the civilizations respectively of Mexico, Central America, and South America. The South American offshoot did receive a faint touch of the blood of Adam.

". . . While the yellow men now and then engaged in racial war, they did not carry on such incessant and relentless wars of extermination as were waged by the red, green, and orange men. These three races virtually destroyed themselves before they were finally all but annihilated by their enemies of other races. (Urantia Book 64:7.4-7)

"During the periods of farthest glacial advance the westernmost of the Andon tribes came very near being driven into the sea. They lived for years on a narrow southern strip of the present island of England. And it was the tradition of these repeated glacial advances that drove them to take to the sea when the sixth and last glacier finally appeared. They were the first marine adventurers. They built boats and started in search of new lands which they hoped might be free from the terrifying ice invasions. And some of them reached Iceland, others Greenland, but the vast majority perished from hunger and thirst on the open sea.

"A little more than eighty thousand years ago, shortly after the red man entered northwestern North America, the freezing over of the north seas and the advance of local ice fields on Greenland drove these Eskimo descendants of the Urantia aborigines to seek a better land, a new home; and they were successful, safely crossing the narrow straits which then separated Greenland from the northeastern land masses of North America. They reached the continent about twenty-one hundred years after the red man arrived in Alaska. Subsequently some of the mixed stock of the blue man journeyed westward and amalgamated with the later-day Eskimos, and this union was slightly beneficial to the Eskimo tribes.

"About five thousand years ago a chance meeting occurred between an Indian tribe and a lone Eskimo group on the southeastern shores of Hudson Bay. These two tribes found it difficult to communicate with each other, but very soon they intermarried with the result that these Eskimos were eventually absorbed by the more numerous red men. . ." (Urantia Book 64:7.17-19)

"One hundred and thirty-two of this race [violet mixed with some of the other races], embarking in a fleet of small boats from Japan [approximately 13,000 years ago], eventually reached South America and by intermarriage with the natives of the Andes established the ancestry of the later rulers of the Incas. They crossed the Pacific by easy stages, tarrying on the many islands they found along the way. The islands of the Polynesian group were both more numerous and larger then than now, and these Andite sailors, together with some who followed them, biologically modified the native groups in transit. Many flourishing centers of civilization grew up on these now submerged lands as a result of Andite penetration. Easter Island was long a religious and administrative center of one of these lost groups. But of the Andites who navigated the Pacific of long ago none but the one hundred and thirty-two ever reached the mainland of the Americas." (Urantia Book 78:5.7)


The preceding quotes cover the vast majority of the material in the Urantia Book that directly relates to this topic. The Urantia Book was published in 1955. Naturally, there has been a tendency for estimates of migration to the Americas to reach further and further back in time as new discoveries are made. Breaking through the traditional view that the Clovis people were the first modern humans in the Americas has not been easy, though. A Washington Post from 1997 addresses this issue and how the site at Monte Verde, Chile helped to disintegrate this view:


"When recent dating of the excavation (using an accurate method that depends on the rate at which radioactive forms of carbon decay) indicated an age in excess of 12,000 years, many scientists expressed grave doubt. So in January, a consortium of sponsors -- including the National Geographic Society and the Dallas (Tex.) Museum of Natural History -- sent the nine-member team down to investigate the controversial site.

"Among them were several prominent skeptics, including Dena F. Dincauze of the University of Massachusetts and C. Vance Haynes Jr. of the University of Arizona. After 10 days, the group unanimously endorsed the Monte Verde find. Dincauze yesterday told a news conference at the Dallas museum that the work was "a kind of paradigm-buster" and "a new benchmark in knowledge." Haynes said from his Arizona office that the site was clearly valid, with many artifacts that are "indisputably" human in origin.

"The Clovis record has stood since the late 1930s, though numerous contenders for evidence of earlier human habitation have arisen. Until now, none had proved convincing to a majority of scientists. Flakes of rock initially thought to be stone tools were shown to have cracked naturally, for example, or specimens thought to be from the site were found to have traveled there later.

"One major advantage of the Monte Verde site, Dillehay said in Dallas yesterday, was that shortly after habitation the area was covered with a peat bog, ensuring preservation of a wide variety of evidence. "There are, for example, stakes that are still lashed in place with string that is knotted," said Alex W. Barker, chief curator of the Dallas museum. . .

"The new findings make this notion far less tenable. If the Monte Verde site is 12,500 years old, that means that the ancestors of those Chilean settlers somehow managed to travel some 10,000 miles from the Bering Strait to southern South America in only a few hundred years.

"In short, said Stanford, curator of North American archaeology and director of the paleoindian program at the National Museum of Natural History, "they either had to go like hell to get to South America, or they simply came in earlier." Climate data and other evidence show that the next earlier window of migratory opportunity existed about 22,000 years ago."7


Notwithstanding that the initial discoveries at Monte Verde raised significant questions about the dominant paradigm, it still did not push the date back very far. However, this did open the door for less bias consideration of deeper layers found at Monte Verde, which in turn has made it a little bit easier for other recent finds to be given serious consideration that push the arrival date back to 50,000 to 60,000 years ago.


"But the real date of the first arrival of Homo sapiens in the Americas may be far earlier than any consensus theory now permits. The Monte Verde team has found a second, deeper layer of putative human artifacts that can be reliably dated at 33,000 years old. The evidence so far is tentative, though Stanford said that "most of [the nine-member team] thought it looked pretty good."8


As was the case at Monte Verde, finding older remains at the Topper site in South Carolina's Savannah River Valley was also simply a matter of digging down deeper. It may seem like it has taken researchers a rather long time to find these various remains in North and South America. But if what the Urantia Book says is true about how the red man suffered extensive population reductions due to in-fighting, this would significantly reduce the amount of evidence available and may create gaps during periods when the population was at its lowest ebb.

Additionally, remains that reach further back in human history sometimes require significant amounts of excavation in order to be recovered. As a practice matter, digging up the past can be a lot of work. Without a backhoe, going deeper can be a discouraging prospect. Fortunately, at the Topper site in 2004, a good location and the right equipment were both present. Science Daily published the following from a University of South Carolina report:


"In 1998, Goodyear. . .dug below the 13,000-year Clovis level at the Topper site and found unusual stone tools up to a meter deeper. The Topper excavation site is on the bank of the Savannah River. . . He recovered numerous stone tool artifacts in soils that were later dated by an outside team of geologists to be 16,000 years old.

"For five years, Goodyear continued to add artifacts and evidence that a pre-Clovis people existed, slowly eroding the long-held theory by archaeologists that man arrived in North America around 13,000 years ago.

"Last May, Goodyear dug even deeper to see whether man's existence extended further back in time. Using a backhoe and hand excavations, Goodyear's team dug through the Pleistocene terrace soil, some 4 meters below the ground surface. Goodyear found a number of artifacts similar to the pre-Clovis forms he has excavated in recent years.

Then on the last day of the last week of digging, Goodyear's team uncovered a black stain in the soil where artifacts lay, providing him the charcoal needed for radiocarbon dating. Dr. Tom Stafford of Stafford Laboratories in Boulder, Colo., came to Topper and collected charcoal samples for dating.

"Three radiocarbon dates were obtained from deep in the terrace at Topper with two dates of 50,300 and 51,700 on burnt plant remains. One modern date related to an intrusion," Stafford says. "The two 50,000 dates indicate that they are at least 50,300 years. The absolute age is not known."9


In North America the Topper site has produced the oldest evidence to date of early human habitation of the American continent. Assuming that a Bering Strait land bridge was the point of entry by the first human migrations, this would mean that over seven thousand miles would have to be covered to get to South Carolina from Alaska. This would have taken a considerable amount of time, thus pushing the date of first migration back even further than 50,000 years ago. The Topper site, however, does not push the date back as far as the site in Pedra Furada, Brazil, which is, of course, even further from Alaska.

Interviews conducted in 2002 by the Athena Review with researchers from this location reveal the following:


"[Dr.] Guaciara dos Santos: A comprehensive chronology of human activity at the Boqueirão da Pedra Furada (BPF) site, the oldest archaeological site found at the Capivara National Park (fig.3), has been established by reliable radiocarbon dates on charcoal excavated from different levels. . .

"A new ABOX-SC (acid-base-wet oxidation followed by stepped combustion) procedure, developed by Bird et al. (1999), which has been instrumental in establishing secure radiocarbon dates of greater than 40,000 for the human occupation of Australia (Turney et al. 2001), has now been applied by me to charcoal from the oldest occupation layer of the Pedra Furada site. This more rigorous chemical pre-treatment, which was followed by a stepped combustion (SC) procedure to remove any residual contamination, decontaminates samples from charcoal and wood (Bird et al. 1999; Santos et al. 2001), enabling credible radiocarbon dating to around 55,000 BP.

"A total of seven charcoal samples from hearths at site BPF 1 were subjected to the full ABOX-SC procedure and their radiocarbon contents were determined by accelerator mass spectrometry at the Australian National University. Five of the samples proved to be even beyond the limit of this new technique, returning ages of greater than 56,000 BP. Finite ages of 53,000 and 55,000 BP were obtained for the remaining two (Santos et al., in manuscript).  

 "These new results push back the time of human occupation at the Pedra Furada site by at least another 8,000 years relative to the previous results. Hence, it appears that humans were already at this site about 60,000 years ago, and possibly even earlier.


In their interview Athena Review asked why the research at the Pedra Furada site has not been more widely accepted:


"AR: Some have proposed that the earliest Pedra Furada charcoal dates may be from natural fires (cf. Meltzer, Adovasio, and Dillehay 1994). Why do you think your findings, which seem very compelling, have not been fully accepted by some other New World archaeologists who have found preClovis sites?

Niède Guidon: I cannot understand why. Perhaps because when you are the first to discover something, people want to kill you because you disturbed the placid waters of the lake. The theories on the peopling of America are only theories, and in prehistory it is not possible to say that something does not exist only because we do not find them. A theory is not a law, but may and must be changed each time new facts are discovered. And I am sure of our discoveries because our team is very good with specialists in different sciences. I have degrees in both Natural History and Prehistory, and decades of fieldwork. I know when I am digging a place where people placed stones in order to make a fire inside the structure, and when I am facing a natural fire. And forest fires were not common events in the rain forest before the arrival of white men."


Fabio Parenti's response identified three reasons: 1) the remains are not the "undisputable" variety that researchers always hope to find, like bones, 2) being especially old makes the remains more peculiar and, therefore, more suspect, and 3) there has not been direct participation by a team of international archaeologists working at the site. 10

Don Wyckoff, who is with the Oklahoma Archaeological Survey, acknowledges the substantial degree of prejudice prevalent among archaeological scholars when recounting his work at the Burnham site. Nine miles north of Freedom, OK, Gene Burnham found remains on his property when he was in the process of building a pond. The ensuing investigation turned up evidence of human habitation dating back 35,000 years. Wyckoff's willingness to involve himself with this 1986 discovery would not have been a sure thing earlier in his career:


"[A]bout 15 feet below the surface, the diggers found soil that dated to about 34,000 B.C.

"In the soil, students found flakes of flint that appeared to be shaped and then discarded when sharpening a tool. There were 52 of them. They also discovered broken tools.

"Wyckoff realized what he'd found, but he didn't want to admit it.

"The evidence meant people were here, in Oklahoma and North America, 34,000 to 36,000 years ago — long before the Clovis and Folsom people appeared in the American Southwest about 11,600 years ago.

""If I was younger, I would have walked away. It made us look crazy. I don't think I would have wanted to risk my career on this," Wyckoff, 64, said.

""But being at the age I am, I guess I can live with it. We tried to do the best work we could and let the evidence speak for itself."

"The new idea had few supporters, and most of them were researchers who had done work at a site in South America that eventually helped back Wyckoff's find."11


We are now in a period where the previous paradigm is seriously discredited. The Clovis culture is no longer viewed as it was during the several decades that followed the Urantia Book's publication in 1955. Evidence of human habitation in the Americas prior to 12,000 years ago is now fairly well substantiated and accepted. There are many questions that remain unanswered and, clearly, the current evidence does not yet support the Urantia Book's assertion that modern man arrived on the American continent 85,000 years. Nonetheless, this date does not seem nearly so far fetched as it did at the time of publication. Additional discoveries and research are increasingly harmonious with the Urantia Book's position on this subject.

If the Pedra Furada remains hold up as authentic, this places human habitation on the eastern side of Brazil about 60,000 years ago. This adds nearly 50,000 years onto accepted view at the time of publication and brings us to within 25,000 of confirming the Urantia Book entry date. This report will be updated, of course, as new discoveries are made.

The chart below lists sites in North and South America where radiocarbon dating has been done.              12
http://www.jqjacobs.net/anthro/paleoamericans.html
 
APPENDA: Radiocarbon Dates of Some Archaeological Sites.  
Site   Radiocarbon years     Laboratory Number   Reference
Burnham, Oklahoma   40900   Â±   1600   AA-3840   Wychoff, et. al. 1990
El Cedral, Mexico   37694   Â±   1963   INAH-305   Lorenzo and Mirambell 1999
Burnham, Oklahoma   35890   Â±   850   AA-3837   Wychoff, et. al. 1990
Monte Verde I, Chile   33370   Â±   530   Beta-6754   Roosevelt, et. al. 1996
El Cedral, Mexico   33300   Â±   2700   GX-7684   Lorenzo and Mirambell 1999
El Cedral, Mexico   31850   Â±   1600   I-10438   Lorenzo and Mirambell 1999
Meadowcroft Rockshelter   31400   Â±   1200   OxA-364   Adovasio, et. al. 1990
Burnham, Oklahoma   31150   Â±   700   Beta-23045   Wychoff, et. al. 1990
Meadowcroft Rockshelter   30900   Â±   1100   OxA-363   Adovasio, et. al. 1990
Burnham, Oklahoma   26820   Â±   350   AA-3838   Wychoff, et. al. 1990
Tlapacoya, Mexico   24000   Â±   4000   A-794   Lorenzo and Mirambell 1999
Tlapacoya, Mexico   21700   Â±   500   I-4449   Lorenzo and Mirambell 1999
El Cedral, Mexico   21468   Â±   458   INAH-388   Lorenzo and Mirambell 1999
Meadowcroft Rockshelter   19600   Â±   2400   SI-2062   Adovasio, et. al. 1988
Meadowcroft Rockshelter   19100   Â±   810   SI-2062   Adovasio, et. al. 1988
Lovewell Mammoth   18250   Â±   90   CAMS-15636   Holen 1996
Meadowcroft Rockshelter   16175   Â±   975   SI-2354   Adovasio, et. al. 1988
Meadowcroft Rockshelter   15120   Â±   165   SI-1686   Adovasio, et. al. 1988
Meadowcroft Rockshelter   14925   Â±   620   SI-1872   Adovasio, et. al. 1988
Meadowcroft Rockshelter   13270   Â±   340   SI-2488   Adovasio, et. al. 1988
Meadowcroft Rockshelter   13240   Â±   1010   SI-2065   Adovasio, et. al. 1988
Fort Rock Cave, Oregon   13200   Â±   720   GaK-1738   Byran and Tuohy 1999
Owl Cave, Idaho   12850   Â±   150   WSU-1281   Miller 1982
Meadowcroft Rockshelter   12800   Â±   870   SI-2489   Adovasio, et. al. 1988
Arroio dos Fosseis, Brazil   12770   Â±   220   SI-800   Borrero 1996
RS-I-50, Brazil   12770   Â±   220   SI-801   Borrero 1996
RS-Q-2, Brazil   12690   Â±   100   SI-2351   Borrero 1996
Lubbock Lake, Texas   12650       250   I-246   Green 1962
Bonfire Shelter, Texas   12460   Â±   490   AA-344   Bennett 1986
La Moderna   12330   Â±   370   TO-1507   Borrero 1996
Abrigo do Sol, Brazil   12300   Â±   95   SI-3477   Borrero 1996
Owl Cave, Idaho   12250   Â±   200   WSU-1259   Miller 1982
Smith Creek Cave, Nevada   12150   Â±   120   Birm-752   Byran and Tuohy 1999
Swan Point, Alaska   12060   Â±   70   CAMS-17405   Holmes, et. al. 1996
Quereo   12000   Â±   195   N-2965   Borrero 1996
Johnson Site, Tennessee   11950   Â±   110   Tx-7454   Byran and Tuohy 1999
Walker Road, Alaska   11820   Â±   200   Beta-11254   Powers and Hoffecker 1989
Broken Mammoth, Alaska   11770   Â±   220   WSU-4364   Holmes 1996
Moose Creek, Alaska   11730   Â±   250   GX-6281   Powers and Hoffecker 1989
Blackwater Draw   11630   Â±   350   A-491   Hayes, et. al. 1984
Mead, Alaska   11600   Â±   80   CAMS-4877   Holmes 1996
Lehner Ranch, AZ   11470   Â±   110   SMU-308   Haynes 1991
Tule Lake, California   11450   Â±   340   Beta-39545   Beaton 1991
Owl Ridge, Alaska   11340   Â±   150   Beta-11209   Phippen 1988
Dry Creek, Alaska   11120   Â±   85   SI-2880   Thorson and Hamilton 1977
Hell Gap, Wyoming   10955   Â±   135   AA-14434   Frison 1999
Owl Cave, Idaho   10920   Â±   150   WSU-1786   Miller 1982
Healy Lake, Alaska   10500   Â±   280   GX-1944   Erlandson et. al. 1991
Berelekh, Siberia   12930   Â±   80   CGIN-1021   Mochanov 1978:60
Ust'Mil II (C)   33000   Â±   500   LE-1000   Mochanov 1978:62
Ust'Mil II (C)   30000   Â±   500   LE-1001   Mochanov 1978:62
Ust'Mil II (C)   35400   Â±   600   LE-954   Mochanov 1978:62
Ikhine II (B)   24600   Â±   380   IMSOAN-153   Mochanov 1978:62
Ikhine II (B)   30200   Â±   300   GIN-1019   Mochanov 1978:62
Ikhine II (B)   31290   Â±   500   GIN-1020   Mochanov 1978:62
Ust'Mil II (B)   23500   Â±   500   LE-999   Mochanov 1978:62
Diuktai Cave (B)   13070   Â±   90   LE-784   Mochanov 1978:62
Diuktai Cave (B)   14000   Â±   100   GIN-404   Mochanov 1978:62
Diuktai Cave (B)   12690   Â±   120   LE-860   Mochanov 1978:62
Diuktai Cave (B)   13110   Â±   90   LE-908   Mochanov 1978:62
Afontova Gora II   20900   Â±   300   GIN-1171   Mochanov 1978:62
Berelekh, Siberia   12240   Â±   160   LU-149   Mochanov 1978:62
Berelekh, Siberia   10600   Â±   90   LE-998   Mochanov 1978:62
Berelekh, Siberia   11830   Â±   110   LU-147   Mochanov 1978:62
Ushki (5)   10360   Â±   350   MO-345   Mochanov 1978:62
Ushki (7)   13600   Â±   250   GIN-167   Mochanov 1978:62
Ushki (7)   14300   Â±   200   GIN-   Mochanov 1978:62

 

1 See chapters 62 through 64 for a more complete description of these events.

2 See chapters 74 through 80 for a more complete description of these events.

3 http://www.answers.com/topic/native-american

4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas

5 http://www.si.edu/Encyclopedia_SI/nmnh/origin.htm

6 Citations to the Urantia Book are provided in the above format. In the present case, 64 refers to the chapter (referred to as "Papers" in the Urantia book); 6 refers to the section; and 4-8 refers to the paragraphs.

7 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/americas/feb/17/artifact.htm

8 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/americas/feb/17/artifact.htm

9 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/11/041118104010.htm

10 http://www.athenapub.com/10pfurad.htm

11 http://www.turtletrack.org/Issues03/Co10182003/CO_10182003_Timeline.htm

12 http://www.jqjacobs.net/anthro/paleoamericans.html

 


Early Migration to the Americas Raw Data

Urantia Book 64:6

http://www.si.edu/Encyclopedia_SI/nmnh/origin.htm
(Smithsonian, Paleoamerican Origins 1999)

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/1998/0311/linguistics.html
(Linguistic Analysis, Berkeley)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/americas/feb/17/artifact.htm
(WashPost, Monte Verde, Chili site, 33,000 years old)

http://www.answers.com/topic/bering-land-bridge
(Bering Strait Land Bridge)

http://www.athenapub.com/topper.htm
(Topper site in North Carolina)

http://www.athenapub.com/10pfurad.htm
(Pedra Furada, Brazil)

http://www.turtletrack.org/Issues03/Co10182003/CO_10182003_Timeline.htm
(Burnham site, Oklahoma)

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06266/724317-85.stm

http://www.daysknob.com/
(Pre Clovis site in Ohio)

http://www.matrixbookstore.biz/preclovis.htm
(Pre Clovis cultures in North America

http://www.jqjacobs.net/anthro/paleoamericans.html
(Paleoamericans)






http://www.ubthenews.com/topics/early_migration_americas.htm