Sun Stability

The Urantia Book; Paper 41, Section 9

^{P465:1, 41:9.1} The larger suns maintain such a gravity control over their electrons that light escapes only with the aid of the powerful X rays. These helper rays penetrate all space and are concerned in the maintenance of the basic ultimatonic associations of energy. The great energy losses in the early days of a sun, subsequent to its attainment of maximum temperature -- upwards of 35,000,000 degrees -- are not so much due to light escape as to ultimatonic leakage. These ultimaton energies escape out into space, to engage in the adventure of electronic association and energy materialization, as a veritable energy blast during adolescent solar times.

^{P465:2, 41:9.2} Atoms and electrons are subject to gravity. The ultimatons are not subject to local gravity, the interplay of material attraction, but they are fully obedient to absolute or Paradise gravity, to the trend, the swing, of the universal and eternal circle of the universe of universes. Ultimatonic energy does not obey the linear or direct gravity attraction of near-by or remote material masses, but it does ever swing true to the circuit of the great ellipse of the far-flung creation.

^{P465:3, 41:9.3} Your own solar center radiates almost one hundred billion tons of actual matter annually, while the giant suns lose matter at a prodigious rate during their earlier growth, the first billion years. A sun's life becomes stable after the maximum of internal temperature is reached, and the subatomic energies begin to be released. And it is just at this critical point that the larger suns are given to convulsive pulsations.

^{P465:4, 41:9.4} Sun stability is wholly dependent on the equilibrium between gravity-heat contention -- tremendous pressures counterbalanced by unimagined temperatures. The interior gas elasticity of the suns upholds the overlying layers of varied materials, and when gravity and heat are in equilibrium, the weight of the outer materials exactly equals the temperature pressure of the underlying and interior gases. In many of the younger stars continued gravity condensation produces ever-heightening internal temperatures, and as internal heat increases, the interior X-ray pressure of supergas winds becomes so great that, in connection with the centrifugal motion, a sun begins to throw its exterior layers off into space, thus redressing the imbalance between gravity and heat.

^{P465:5, 41:9.5} Your own sun has long since attained relative equilibrium between its expansion and contraction cycles, those disturbances which produce the gigantic pulsations of many of the younger stars. Your sun is now passing out of its six billionth year. At the present time it is functioning through the period of greatest economy. It will shine on as of present efficiency for more than twenty-five billion years. It will probably experience a partially efficient period of decline as long as the combined periods of its youth and stabilized function.

Next: Origin of Inhabited Worlds