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Angona, Nemesis, and the Solar System
"Four and a half billion years ago the enormous Angona system began its approach to the neighborhood of our solitary sun. The center of this great system was a dark giant of space, solid, highly charged, and possessing tremendous gravity pull." (from p. 655)
In its account of the formation of the solar system, The Urantia Book credits the Angona system as being the source of an enormous gravitational disturbance that partially disrupted the sun, thereby creating the disk of material that, by accretion, eventually gave rise to the planets, comets, meteors, dust, etc., of our solar system.
According to some astronomers sufficient evidence exists to postulate that the collapsed remains of a massive star orbits our sun about 100 billion miles beyond the orbit of Neptune. Impossible to see in visible light, it betrays its presence through periodic gravitational disturbances that bring mass devastation to all the planets of the solar system. Labeled "Nemesis" or the "Death Star," past disasters have brought swarms of comets into collision with the Earth and other planets with pulverizing blows.
The evidence for these disasters shows up on Earth at 12, 38, 65, 92, and 125 million years ago, indicating a cycle of about 28 million years. Probably the cycle goes back into the far distant past but the evidence has now been obliterated through natural geological processes.
Could this collapsed star be Angona, The Urantia Book's culprit for the initiation of the solar system? From the book's account, the visit of Angona to the neighborhood of the sun lasted for about 500 million years, sufficient time for in the order of twenty visits from the Nemesis Death Star. At a guess, it seems unlikely they are the same system.
Because of the scientific evidence that has accumulated since the Papers were received in 1934, a review is now needed of the book's cosmology for solar system origins. Was it meant to be taken as fact, or is it a "near enough" account so as to serve as fill material of a "universe frame in which to think?" (see p. 1260)
The revelators implicitly state that the universe rules for revelation proscribe the furnishing of unearned knowledge--but allow the provision of information to fill vital missing gaps in human knowledge.
The mechanism by which systems like our solar system are generated can hardly be defined as a vital missing gap in our knowledge. And to provide such information would appear to contravene universe rules on revelation.
Since the Papers were received, there has been a virtual explosion of factual information in this area of cosmology. Much of it has derived from the orbiting "Hubble" telescope, probes such as Voyager and Galileo that explored the outer planets, and the Russian and the Apollo missions to our Moon. The latter were discussed in Innerface of Sept./October 2000 which concluded the book's account was in the "near enough" universe frame class rather than being a factual account.
Whereas our present knowledge of the formation of our outer planets, including the gas giants, does not permit an adequate theoretical treatment, nevertheless the book's account appears not to be consistent with observed facts.
The book correctly describes Jupiter and Saturn as gas giants but includes Uranus and Neptune with their comment, "the gas contraction of the other ten planets soon reached the stage of solidification…."
The Voyager mission revealed that both these planets are still enormous gas giants, and also found that Neptune had surface winds and clouds moving at quite incredible speeds, even greater than those of Jupiter.
This section in the book immediately precedes that which deals with the growth of Earth and its moon. Logically, rather than being factual, it would also be part of a "universe frame in which to think"--exactly as we should expect under the universe rules for revelation.
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