© 1996 Deborah Foster
© 1996 The Fellowship for readers of The Urantia Book
By Deborah Foster
Anchorage, Alaska
You would be more than interested in the planetary conduct of this type of mortal because such a race of beings inhabits a sphere in close proximity to Urantia. (The Urantia Book, UB 49:3.6)
Among the many intriguing statements in The Urantia Book, the one concerning the location of a world of nonbreathing mortals has always been most tantalizing. What exactly is close proximity? Are the authors using their frames of reference or ours? Could humans possibly find this world?
Looking around our neighborhood, the nearest stars are in the Alpha Centauri system, about 4.29 light years (25-trillion miles)[1] from us. This is a triple star system containing Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B, and Proxima Centauri. And it might be a good candidate for the location of Anova.
“The oldest inhabited world of Satania, world number one, is Anova, one of the forty-four satellites revolving around an enormous dark planet but exposed to the differential light of three neighboring suns. Anova is in an advanced stage of progressive civilization.” (UB 49:0.5)
Twenty-five trillion miles is a trek, so looking a little closer to home, our own solar system, we read:
“In your solar system only three planets are at present suited to harbor life.” (UB 15:6.15)
The authors name these planets and denominate the types of mortals that would inhabit them. Venus would harbor superbreathers and Mars, with its thin atmosphere, would be the home of subbreathers. The other planet, of course, is Urantia. The Melchizedek of the Jerusem School of Planetary Administration, who wrote Paper 49 - The Inhabited Worlds, then tells us:
“If mortals should inhabit a planet devoid of air, like your moon, they would belong to the separate order of nonbreathers. This type represents a radical or extreme adjustment to the planetary environment and is separately considered. Nonbreathers account for the remaining one and onehalf per cent of Satania worlds.” (UB 49:2.14)
The operative word in these quotes is planet. Our moon is not a planet and it lacks any atmosphere. If the search for nonbreathers is expanded to include the moons in our solar system, however, some very interesting facts emerge.
In 1979 two NASA Voyager spacecraft began sending back pictures of most of the outer planets of our solar system and their moons. These pictures defined some new specialties in astronomy and geology. By matching the pictures from the Voyager missions with descriptions of the nonbreather spheres in The Urantia Book, one moon of the 44 known satellites stands out as the most likely location for our nearest mortal neighbors.
This moon is Europa, the second of four Galilean moons in synchronous equatorial rotation around Jupiter. These satellites are called the Galileans because they were first observed by Galileo in 1610 with his new telescope. Io, the closest orb to Jupiter, is where active volcanism was first seen outside of Earth. This is in conformity with The Urantia Book’s explanation (page 658) of tidal disruption forces acting on the moons of Jupiter. Ganymede and Callisto are the third and fourth moons, respectively.
Several characteristics point to Europa as the home of the nonbreathers:
1. Size. The moon is small enough not to have any appreciable atmosphere. This satellite is approximately 10 percent smaller than our own moon, both in radius and density. Recently, astrophysicists using the Hubble space telescope have reported measuring atomic oxygen emissions from Europa that would be the equivalent of atmospheric pressure 150 miles above the Earth’s surface.[2] Mars, by contrast, has an atmospheric pressure that is similar to living 18 miles above the earth.[3] This is a pressure subbreathers would be comfortable with. Europa fits The Urantia Book’s definition of “worlds of little or no air.”
2. The satellite would be located where there is possibility for “disastrous electrical storms.”
“These worlds are also subject to disastrous electrical storms of a nature unknown on Urantia. During such times of tremendous energy fluctuation the inhabitants must take refuge in their special structures of protective insulation.” (UB 49:3.3)
Jupiter’s rapid 10-hour rotation creates a huge magnetic field that envelops the planet, its moons, and the surrounding space area as far as Saturn. If visible from earth, this field, called the magnetosphere, would look as big as the sun. Within the magnetosphere are electric current sheets that rotate above and below the planet’s equator, a plasma torus that carries 5- *e million amps of current at 400,000 volts. These radiation belts emit enough radiation to kill humans hundreds of times over.[4]
The largest aurora ever seen, 18,000 miles long, has been observed above Jupiter’s northern latitudes, along with superbolts of lightning.[5] The energies contained within the magnetosphere, in conjunction with the energy received from the sun, are capable of causing “tremendous energy fluctuation” that would produce “disastrous electrical storms.”
3. Evidence of protection from meteors, such as the absence of meteor craters.
“Millions upon millions of meteorites enter the atmosphere of Urantia daily coming in at the rate of almost two hundred miles a second. On the nonbreathing worlds the advanced races must do much to protect themselves from meteor damage by making electrical installations which operate to consume or shunt the meteors. Great danger confronts them when they venture beyond these protected zones.” (UB 49:3.3)
With installations that “consume or shunt meteors,” the result of that action would be a world without serious cratering and some place that these meteors are shunted to. Europa has been likened to a “white billiard ball marked with a felt-tipped pen.”6 It is the smoothest body in our solar system. Almost all the other satellites in our solar system have an appearance that is some variation of our own moon, with many craters of different sizes scattered all over their surfaces. But on Europa only three to twelve craters have been mapped with any certainty.
So, where are all the meteor craters that should be on Europa? Pushing aside the meteors so they impact another body is certainly the most permanent way to get rid of this problem. And there are several targets of opportunity for this celestial billiards shoot. One target that shows the most hits is Callisto, the fourth moon of Jupiter.
This body is the most densely cratered in the solar system. The distribution of the craters points to a meteor origin from within the Jupiter system. There is also a sharp decrease in any craters larger than 37 miles (60 km.) in diameter.[6] This would seem to indicate that the nonbreathers prefer to deal with meteors of a certain size and may even chop them to a size that their facilities can handle.
This may explain the peculiar shape of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which crashed into Jupiter July 1994. It was likened to a “string of pearls” and consisted of 21 fragments lined up in a row.
4. Evidence of unusual features that may indicate creative minds at work.
“During such times of tremendous energy fluctuation the inhabitants must take refuge in their special structures of protective insulation.” (UB 49:3.3)
The moon is covered by light and dark streaks interspersed with many random dark spots. The darker areas have a definite organic appearance to the non-scientist. Perhaps these streaks are the plant life of Europa. This is the description of the light streaks by NASA: “One of the most remarkable geologic phenomena discovered by Voyager is the light streaks that appear on Europa. These are smaller than the dark streaks, only about 10 kilometers in width, but much more uniform. Seen at low Sun angle, they show vertical relief to less than a few hundred meters. These light ridges are seen best at low Sun and tend to be visible at higher illumination angles. The most amazing thing about the light ridges is their form. Instead of being straight, they form scallops or cusps with smooth curves that repeat regularly on a scale of 100 to a few hundred kilometers. In some of the low-Sun-angle pictures, the surface of Europa seems to be covered with a beautiful network of these regular curving lines. The impression is so bizarre that one tends not to believe the reality of what is seen. Nothing remotely like it has ever been seen on any other planet.”[7]
Perhaps these are their “special structures of protective insulation.”
The most prevalent working model the scientific community has developed to explain the lack of meteor craters and the surface appearance of Europa is that it is covered by a cracked, icy surface with water underneath. The dark material wells up from the interior, filling the cracks, and all the meteors that should be impacting the moon are absorbed by the surface.[8] Scientists, however, are standing by for more detailed pictures from the next spacecraft to reach the Jupiter system because, despite this model, Europa is Still an enigma to them.
Given the sum ofthe information available concerning our solar system, ifthe non-breathers are here, the most likely location is Europa. The answer to this proposition may be in our near future, as NASA 's next space-exploring craft, Galileo, arrives to reconnoiter the Jovian atmosphere and the inner moons December 7, 1995.
The first duty of the spacecraft is to monitor the descent of a probe into the cloud-covered giant planet. Once that is accomplished, it will spend the next two years taking pictures and scientific measurements of the planet’s moons. NASA has had to re- duce the number of pictures planned from 50,000 to 1,000, because the main transmitting antenna has never opened completely.[9] The closest flyby to Europa will be 600 kilometers (372.84 miles).[10]
Sometimes seeing is not believing; many times one needs to believe to see. If Galileo sends back spectacular pictures of Europa, the mindset of most scientists will be to explain its many unique features without resort to alien civilization, unless the proverbial hubcap from space is incontrovertible.
This is perfectly natural and follows the course of change through history whenever that change requires great shifts in reality perceptions. I doubt that the authors of The Urantia Book would have given us such detailed information about the nonbreathers unless they knew we would stumble into each other someday. The question is, have they already found us? But that is another story.
¶ Bibliography
Isaac Asimov, The Universe, (New York: Avon Books, 1968) p. 52 ↩︎
Hall, D.T., Strobel, D.F., Feldman, P.D., McGrath, M.A., Weaver, H.A., Nature 373, 677-679 (1995) ↩︎
Patrick Moore and Garry Hunt, Atlas of the Solar System (New York: Rand McNally 1983) p. 216 ↩︎
Patrick Moore and Garry Hunt, Atlas of the Solar System (New York: Rand McNally 1983) p. 254-257 ↩︎
David Morrison and Jane Samz, Voyage to Jupiter (Washington D.C.: NASA SP-439 1980) p. 87 ↩︎
David A. Rothery, Satellites of the Outer Planet Worlds in their Own Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) p. 73 ↩︎
David Morrison and Jane Samz, Voyage to Jupiter (Washington D.C.: NASA SP-439 1980) p. 152 ↩︎
C.M. Yeates and others, Galileo: Exploration of Jupiter’s System (Washington D.C.: NASA SP-479 1985) ↩︎
John Noble Wilfort, “For a Veteran Traveler, Jupiter is Within Reach,” New York Times, 11 July 1995 B8 ↩︎
Astro News, Astronomy, July 1995 ↩︎