© 1986 Ken Glasziou
© 1986 ANZURA, Australia & New Zealand Urantia Association
The Urantia Book (UB 49:2.1) discusses varying kinds of life which inhabit planets with atmospheres different from our own. Our type of life form is called “mid-breather”, and constitutes 91% of all life types in the universe. Those which inhabit planets with high density atmospheres are termed “superbreathers”, and those inhabiting planets with low density atmospheres are termed “sub-breathers”. The Urantia Book then states that if there is life on Venus it would be of the superbreather class, whilst if life existed on Mars it would be the sub-breather class. We had no knowledge of the atmospheric densities of these two planets when the Urantia Book was written.
The Mariner 5 probe to Venus in 1967 sent back data on the atmosphere and later probes gave data for Mars. These measurements showed that the atmospheric pressure at the surface of Venus is 90 times that of the Earth, thus high density, whilst that of Mars is 1/100th that of Earth, hence low density.
(The Urantia Book divides atmospheres into 4 categories: none, low, medium, and high densities. A random guess at a planetary atmosphere would have one chance in four of being correct. To be correct for two planets, the chances of being right for both are one in sixteen.)
The Urantia Book (UB 57:6.3) tells us that our moon is presently drifting further away from the Earth. Recent measurements have shom this statement to be correct. (See Scientific American 249(6) p.71.)
The following extract is quoted verbatim from the Urantia Brotherhood Bulletin (late 1985).
“The most recent of the major cosmic eruptions in Orvonton was the extraordinary double star explosion, the light of which reached Urantia in A.D. 1572. This conflagration was so intense that the explosion was clearly visible in broad daylight.” (UB 41:3.5)
In the August 1985 issue of Scientific American, on pages 88-96, three scientists from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge Massachusetts, present an article entitled “Young Supernova remnants”. This article is of particular interest to scientifically inclined readers of the Urantia Book, since it presents a discussion of the nova of 1572 in terms of current thinking about the causes of such events. The story begins in November 1572, when, as a young man, the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe found a “new star” in the constellation Cassiopeia. Tycho observed the star from its appearance, when it was as bright as the planet Venus, until its disappearance in March 1574. Tycho drew an important philosophical lesson from his observations — that the ancient Aristotelian dogma, which asserted the immutability of the realm of fixed stars was false. This realization, supported by an observed event, contributed to the intellectual climate from which sprang the later work of Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton.
In 1935, the Indian astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar showed that a star which is at least 40% more massive than the sun will, after exhausting its sources of energy, eventually collapse into an extremely dense sphere of matter which explodes violently.
Current theory holds that one class of novas, called Type I, are actually explosions occurring in double star systems. One member of such a double star system is an old, energetically exhausted, and very dense white dwarf star. If the white dwarf orbits close to a companion star, its intense gravity will draw matter from the surface of the second star. Eventually the mass of the dwarf star will grow beyond
Chandrasekhar’s limit, leading to a violent explosion which disrrupts both stars. Another class of novas, called Type II, do not arise from double stars, but occur as natural events in the evolution of single, massive stars.
In 1952, the remnant of Tycho’s nova was discovered with the 250-foot radiotelescope at Jodrell Bank. In the years since its discovery, Tycho’s remnant has been extensively mapped by radio telescopes and, most recently, by the orbiting Einstein X-ray Observatory. These observations show that Tycho’s remnant resulted from the explosion of a double star, as stated in the Urantia Book. (end of quote)
In a further comment on novas, the Urantia Book states on UB 41:8.3 as follows:
“In large suns when hydrogen is exhausted and gravity contraction ensures, and such a body is not sufficiently opaque to retain the internal pressure of support for the outer gas regions, then a sudden collapse occurs. The gravity-electric changes give origin to vast quantities of tiny particles devoid of electric potential and such particles readily escape from the solar interior thus bringing about the collapse of a gigantic sun within a few days.” UB 41:8.3
In the discussion on novas in the same Scientific American article quoted above (253(2), 1985), the theory for the death of large stars at least 8 times as massive as our sun describes the final collapse as causing compression of electrons and protons (i.e. gravity-electric changes) to the point where they combine to form neutrons and neutrinos. When the core is about 10 kM, the collapse comes to a halt, and the gravitational energy is carried outwards by the neutrinos and shock waves which blow off the envelope. The end result is the birth of a neutron star.
The tiny particles devold of electric potential referred to in the Urantia Book correspond to what are now called neutrinos. These tiny particles were not demonstrated to exist until 1956, one year after the first publication of the Urantia Book. (see section on sub-atomic physics for further commentary on the neutrino).
Ken Glasziou, Clifton, Qld.