© 1986 Ken Glasziou
© 1986 ANZURA, Australia & New Zealand Urantia Association
One of our readers in Clifton, Queensland has been collecting odds and ends concerning the scientific content of the Urantia Book.for many years. Ken Glasziou has done this more or less in isolation, with no access to libraries, scientific journals, and without the benefit of discussion.
He would like to invite other Urantia Book readers with some kind of science background to join him in an effort to produce a better commentary and also to update continuously. Ken would appreciate criticism and any additions to his first effort and also would like the benefit of discussion. His expertise is in biochemistry and biology and it is a tall order for him to try and make a universal commentary.
Six-0-Six Newsletter will publish a series of Ken’s articles over the next few months.
This month’s subject:
Urantia Book UB 42:8.3 : The word “mesotron” is applied to an entity responsible for shuffling energy between protons and neutrons in the atomic nucleus. The word as used must refer to a family of such entities, as one which is mentioned carries electric charge between the proton and the neutron and is positively charged, whilst another involved in radioactive decay of the neutron carries negative charge. In modern theory the “mesotron” carrying charge between proton and neutron is called a meson, and itself consists of a quark and an antiquark. The existence of such an entity was highly speculative at the time of writing of the Urantia Book. Now (1986), it is a virtual certainty.
In discussing radioactive disintegration of the neutron, the Urantia Book states that the ‘mesotron’ energy carrier itself decays to yield a mere electron and that such disintegrations are accompanied by the emission of certain small uncharged particles. No such particle:was known to exist at the time of writing of the Urantia Book. Modern theory has it that disintegration of the neutron via radioactive beta decay is mediated by the W boson which itself decays to yield an electron and a neutrino. The latter is a small uncharged particle which was invented by Wolfgang Pauli in 1931 to account for the missing energy when a neutron decayed to yield a proton and an electron. Pauli did this to avoid the apparent contravention of the law of conservation of mass-energy. Many physicists rejected Pauli’s idea but it was taken up by Fermi who coined the name neutrino. The existence of the neutrino was not confirmed until 1956, after the Urantia Book was published. The existence of the energy carrier, the W boson, was not confirmed until 1983.
On UB 42:7.7 of the Urantia Book it is stated that atoms with more than 100 orbital electrons are unstable, and quickly decay. In the absence of prior knowledge this would have been a fairly wild guess at the time of writing of the Book. Element 101, with 101 orbital electrons and called Mendelevium, was detected in the products of atomic fission in 1952, and its half-life measured to be 30 minutes. Element 102, Nobelium was detected even later and its half-life measured as about 3 seconds.
The “Ultimaton”. The Urantia Book describes the transmutation of energy into units termed ultimatons which constitute the substance of all matter. On UB 42:4.1, we read “light, heat, magnetism, chemiam, energy, and matter are in origin, nature, and destiny, one and the same thing.” This concept in present day parlance would be termed a “unified” theory, requiring that protons, neutrons, electrons, etc., being formed from the same basic unit, should be interchangeable. Present unified gauge theories suggest that quarks can change into leptons and vice versa. Quarks are the units that form protons, neutrons, etc., and electrons belong to the group called leptons. Although still unproven, modern theory is heading towards unification, and the orderly interconversion of quarks and leptons. This interconversion does occur during the annihilation of matter such as happens when particles and their antiparticles are made to collide. Thus the collision of electrons and positrons, both of which are leptons, can give rise to quarks and antiquarks. There is nothing very orderly about such collisions, the outcome of which is dependent on the energy of collision. Presently the mutual annihilation of matter and anti-getter is thought to give rise to pure energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation, and the newly created particles emerge from the radiant energy. Perhaps this type of event is really a re-arrangement of ultimatons.
In discussing the limitations of revelation (UB 101:4.1), the authors of the Urantia Book specifically state that the cosmology of their revelations is not inspired, that they are not at liberty to anticipate scientific discovery, that they are restricted to co-ordinating and sorting existing knowledge, and that their statements regarding the physical sciences will soon stand in need of revision in consequence of new discoveries.
During the period of writing of the Urantia Papers (30’s and 40’s ) many physicists were developing what was called quantum theory, a system of mathematical relationships that appeared to apply uniquely to the micro world of the atom, but was more or less irrelevant to the familiar macro world. The writers of the Urantia Papers have obviously embraced the then very tenuous and embryonic concepts of quantum theory in describing sub-atomic events. However during the 30’s and 40’s, quantum theory was by no means universally accepted, and, in fact, was held in deep suspicion by Albert Einstein, the greatest physicist of all. Quantum theory is still in a state of development, but its astounding accuracy in predicting some of the parameters of nature demonstrate that it is not too far from the truth. But in the 1930-50 period it would be a very bold and rash author who would gamble the reputation and validity of his writings on such things as the existence of the neutrino or the transient reality of the carrier that shuttles energy and charge between the protons and neutrons of the atomic nucleus.
Ken Glasziou, Clifton, Qld