Page:The Urantia Book, 1st Edition.djvu/538

464 Ultimatonic matter—the prime physical units of material existence, the energy particles which go to make up electrons. Subelectronic matter—the explosive and repellent stage of the solar supergases. Electronic matter—the electrical stage of material differentiation—electrons, protons, and various other units entering into the varied constitution of the electronic groups. Subatomic matter—matter existing extensively in the interior of the hot suns. Shattered atoms—found in the cooling suns and throughout space. Ionized matter—individual atoms stripped of their outer (chemically active) electrons by electrical, thermal, or X-ray activities and by solvents. Atomic matter—the chemical stage of elemental organization, the component units of molecular or visible matter. The molecular stage of matter—matter as it exists on Urantia in a state of relatively stable materialization under ordinary conditions. Radioactive matter—the disorganizing tendency and activity of the heavier elements under conditions of moderate heat and diminished gravity pressure. Collapsed matter—the relatively stationary matter found in the interior of the cold or dead suns. This form of matter is not really stationary; there is still some ultimatonic even electronic activity, but these units are in very close proximity, and their rates of revolution are greatly diminished.

The foregoing classification of matter pertains to its organization rather than to the forms of its appearance to created beings. Neither does it take into account the pre-emergent stages of energy nor the eternal materializations on Paradise and in the central universe.

Light, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemism, energy, and matter are—in origin, nature, and destiny—one and the same thing, together with other material realities as yet undiscovered on Urantia.

We do not fully comprehend the almost endless changes to which physical energy may be subject. In one universe it appears as light, in another as light plus heat, in another as forms of energy unknown on Urantia; in untold millions of years it may reappear as some form of restless, surging electrical energy or magnetic power; and still later on it may again appear in a subsequent universe as some form of variable matter going through a series of metamorphoses, to be followed by its outward physical disappearance in some great cataclysm of the realms. And then, after countless ages and almost endless wandering through numberless universes, again may this same energy re-emerge and many times change its form and potential; and so do these transformations continue through successive ages and throughout countless realms. Thus matter sweeps on, undergoing the transmutations of time but swinging ever true to the circle of eternity; even if long prevented from returning to its source, it is ever responsive thereto, and it ever proceeds in the path ordained by the Infinite Personality who sent it forth.