© 1998 Ken Glasziou
© 1998 The Brotherhood of Man Library
In our previous issue, we discussed an article written by Dr G. Gamow in 1942 entitled Neutrinos VS Supernovae that was published in that year’s January issue of the journal, The Scientific Monthly. This article had been identified by Matthew Block as being one of the sources for statements in The Urantia Book about the collapse of aging stars. Also mentioned was a long-suppressed document in which Dr Sadler noted that additions and alterations had been made to the Urantia Papers during the period, 1935 to 1942.
Our Jan/Feb. article notified readers that a further discussion would appear in the next issue of Innerface on a paper by C.W. Sheppard entitled The Evanescent Mesotron—also identified by Matthew Block as one of the sources of Urantia Book statements. Sheppard’s paper was published in Scientific American of October, 1940, and is about the structure of the nucleus of the atom.
The uncovering of these human sources is almost entirely due to the untiring and dedicated efforts of Matthew Block in a work that undoubtedly will prove to be of enormous value for the proper assessment and appreciation of The Urantia Book.
It is factual that the revelators clearly stated that they used in the order of three thousand human sources in constructing the text of the book. They also informed us that the terms of their mandate included “the proscription of the impartation of unearned or premature knowledge.” (UB 101:4.1) Because of these restrictions, the revelators concluded that some of their statements, particularly those relating to the physical sciences and cosmology, would soon stand in need of revision. As well, the revelators said that, where considered essential, their mandate permitted them to provide key information that would fill missing gaps in our knowledge or restore lost knowledge. (UB 101:4.2)
Many readers, when first coming to The Urantia Book, have taken the word “revelation” to imply that the total text of this book falls into the category of divinely-revealed and hence infallible truth. Some have suggested that the discovery of even one error would disqualify the book as being revelatory. But longer exposure to the book, plus a careful and unbiased reading of the mandate and other statements made by the authors usually causes most such readers to modify this extreme view.
In its widest sense, the meaning of the word “revelation” is contained in the definition, “Any fact which gives knowledge is a revelation.” The different meanings that individuals give to “revelation” is wide-ranging and subjective, with all individuals being their own “authority.”
Nowhere do the revelators of The Urantia Book lay claim to divine authority or infallibility for their revelation. In fact, they reject their own infallibility by informing us that only the Creators possess it. (UB 159:4.6) And they do tell us that when truth is linked with fact, that both time and space condition its meanings and correlate its values, thus relegating such concepts to the domain of relative cosmic realities. (UB 118:3.3) “Truth is relative and expanding; it lives always in the present, achieving new expression in each generation of men.” (UB 79:8.8) There is nothing in The Urantia Book to support the thesis that its authors considered its text to be infallible. On the contrary, they recognize that truth is living, expanding, evolutionary and relative; it must never be permitted to become static—for static truth is dead truth. (UB 180:5.2)
Provided that we are sufficiently open minded to accept that the revelators were required to work within the framework of “the proscription of the impartation of unearned knowledge,” then surely we must appreciate that The Urantia Book has given us a unique overview of the total creation that permits us to better comprehend its purpose, our role therein, even to attain an understanding of “free will” and the consequential sin, evil, and iniquity. As such, it is the most valuable work currently available to the human race.
With all that in mind let’s get on with examining Sheppard’s evanescent mesotron paper and its contribution to The Urantia Book text. Readers need to be aware that the word “mesotron” was coined in the early 1930’s to imply all particles of mass between the masses of the electron and the proton.
In his presentation of evidence that a particular work is among the sources used by the revelators, Matthew Block brings the text from the two works together in a two-column layout, the comparable sentences or paragraphs being placed adjacent to one another for ease of comparison. Viewed in this way, the degree of correspondence between the works is made evident. Eventually Matthew’s work is to be published, hence in this article we will take a different approach and examine material that the revelators did not use, rather than comparing what they did use.
The third paragraph of Sheppard’s paper states: “As most persons know, the atoms out of which matter is constructed are tiny ‘solar systems.’ Each has a central nucleus and a number of electrons revolving around it, like planets around the Sun.”
The Urantia Book has: “Within the atom the electrons revolve about the central proton with about the same comparative room the planets have as they revolve about the sun in the space of the solar system.” (UB 42:7.2) [note: the term “central proton” instead of “central nucleus” is almost certainly a copying error as in the very next paragraph, the revelators speak of electrons revolving about the atomic nucleus.]
In its previous paragraph, The Urantia Book speaks of energy units (electrons) that revolve around a central body and “are faintly comparable to the planets encircling the sun.”
In Sheppard’s statement there is no trace of the planetary concept being only a “faintly comparable” one. Why have the revelators diverged from Sheppard’s description which, being a 1940 review article from a reputable journal, should have been more up-to-date than W.F.G. Swann’s The Architecture of the Universe (1934) which mentions the planetary model and is also a human source work for Paper 42?
I was actually surprised to read Sheppard’s statement “that most persons know that atoms. . . are constructed like tiny solar systems.” In reality, the planetary model of the atom, having been introduced firstly by Rutherford in about 1911, and further elaborated by Bohr around 1913, was superseded by the mid-1920’s. By then, electrons were no longer thought of as solid, planet-like particles, wave-particle duality having taken over. Today, this wave-particle duality is firmly entrenched, being supported by incontrovertible experimental evidence. Thus in saying that the atomic model is only faintly comparable to a solar system model, the revelators have shown “knowledgeable discriminatory selection” of what they would or would not use from Sheppard (who is supposed to be an expert in the field he is reviewing). This “knowledgeable discriminatory selection” by the revelators becomes more evident as we get further into the paper.
Sheppard’s main topic was the role of the mesotron (meson) in the Yukawa model for nuclear stability and also in beta radioactive decay of certain atoms, models that appear on UB 42:8.3 of The Urantia Book. Previous commentary on this material is in “Science, Anthropology, and Archaeology in The Urantia Book” and in Innerface vol. 4 (1), available from the addresses on our front page. Again we will leave it to Matthew to point out the similarities while we note some of the differences.
The Urantia Book describes beta radioactive decay as follows: “The presence and function of the mesotron also explains another atomic riddle. When atoms perform radioactively, they emit far more energy than would be expected. This excess of radiation is derived from the breaking up of the mesotron “energy carrier,” which thereby becomes a mere electron. The mesotronic disintegration is also accompanied by the emission of certain small uncharged particles.”
Sheppards description of this phenomenon is: “There are certain radio-active substances. . . which eject electrons. . . It is known that, when a nucleus shoots such a particle out, a certain definite amount of energy is let loose. Unfortunately, however, if one examines the electron after it is emitted, one finds that it usually doesn’t have the correct amount of energy, but a good deal less. Scientists therefore have been forced to say that the missing part of the energy has been carried away by a phantom particle which has no charge and practically no mass. . . This particle has been named the neutrino but it has never actually been detected.” (Note: The neutrino is what The Urantia Book terms “certain small uncharged particles.” At this point, ask yourself if you were a physicist faking a revelation would you really think it valid to infer that these particles were real when all attempts to demonstrate them since they were first proposed in 1932 had failed.)
Sheppard continues: “We have said that the nucleus consists of protons, neutrons, and carrier mesotrons alone. If this is true, where do the ejected electron and neutrino come from? The suggestion soon was made that the mesotron is not a stable particle but that it disintegrates into an electron and a neutrino. . . Calculations showed that on this assumption the mesotron could last only a few millionths of a second before this decay process occurred.”
Note that there is no mention in The Urantia Book about any rapid decay of the mesotron of beta radioactive decay. Writing in 1992, Nobel prize winning physicist, Steven Weinberg, tells us that this mesotron-mediated radioactive decay is actually a relatively slow process that takes place in about one hundredth of a second.
Sheppard’s discussion of the rapidity of mesotron disruption in radioactive decay takes up about one third of his paper. So have the revelators again shown “knowledgeable discriminatory selection” in choosing not to mention this rapid decay claimed by Sheppard?
Sheppard makes no mention of the time taken for the exchange process in which the mesotron functions as charge-carrier between the proton and the neutron of the nucleus. The Urantia Book does so: “The mesotron causes the electric charge of the nuclear particles to be incessantly tossed back and forth between protons and neutrons. At one infinitesimal part of a second a given nuclear particle is a charged proton and the next an uncharged neutron. And these alternations of energy status are so unbelievably rapid that the electric charge is deprived of all opportunity to function as a disruptive influence.” (UB 42:8.4) Weinberg confirms that these alternations take place in a million million million millionth of a second. Were the revelators again showing “knowledgeable discriminatory selection?”
As a point of interest, Yukawa’s “mesotron,” the one described in The Urantia Book as contributing to the binding of neutrons and protons of the atomic nucleus was not actually detected until 1947, while the existence of the neutrino was not confirmed until 1956. The so-called mesotron of beta radioactive decay eventually became known as the W- particle and was not detected until 1981. Thus the description of these subatomic processes on UB 42:8.4 of the book, even though partially taken from Sheppard’s 1940 paper, still remain quite remarkable.