© 2005 Ken Glasziou
© 2005 Olga López, por la traducción
© 2005 Urantia Association of Spain
Retrieved from http://www.urantology.org
“1. The charged protons and the uncharged neutrons of the nucleus of the atom are held together by the reciprocating function of the mesotron, a particle of matter 180 times as heavy as the electron. Without this arrangement the electric charge carried by the protons would be disruptive of the atomic nucleus.
2. As atoms are constituted, neither electric nor gravitational forces could hold the nucleus together. The integrity of the nucleus is maintained by the reciprocal cohering function of the mesotron, which is able to hold charged and uncharged particles together because of superior force-mass power and by the further function of causing protons and neutrons constantly to change places. 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. Thus does the mesotron function as an “energy-carrier” particle which mightily contributes to the nuclear stability of the atom.
3. 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.
4. The mesotron explains certain cohesive properties of the atomic nucleus, but it does not account for the cohesion of proton to proton nor for the adhesion of neutron to neutron. The paradoxical and powerful force of atomic cohesive integrity is a form of energy as yet undiscovered on Urantia.” UB 42:8.3-6
For me, this is one of the truly remarkable science passages in the Urantia Papers, which we are told were written in 1934. I first read it in the early 1970s and recognized in paragraphs 1 and 2 the basic postulates of the theory for which Hideki Yukawa was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1948. From the 1950s through the 1970s, particle physics was in a state of confusion due to the multitude of subatomic particles that had emerged from particle accelerators. As new concepts and discoveries were announced, I jotted them down in the margins of page 479, which eventually came to seem chaotic. Sometimes I thought there wasn’t much truth on that page, and other times I marveled at its accuracy.
In recent years, a considerable amount of information has appeared on the history of the development of the present “standard model” of atomic structure.
Although acknowledged as incomplete, the Standard Model has greatly increased our understanding of the basic nature of matter. The electromagnetic force and the weak force of radioactive decay have been successfully unified to give rise to the “electroweak” theory. It has not yet been unified with the theory of the force that holds the atomic nucleus together. The force of gravity continues to resist unification with the other forces.
Paragraphs 1-3 of The Urantia Book quoted above, formally presented in 1934, could have sprung directly from the mind of Hideki Yukawa. In the quantum theory of electromagnetism, two charged particles interact when one emits a photon and the other absorbs it. By 1932, Yukawa had decided to try a similar approximation in describing the nuclear force shift. He wrote: “It seems probable that the nuclear force is a third, fundamental force, unrelated to either gravitation or electromagnetism…which might find expression as a field…Thus, if we were to regard the force field as a game of ‘tag’ between protons and neutrons, the crux of the matter would be to find the nature of the ‘ball’ or particle.” This work was published in Japanese in 1935 but was not well known in the United States.
At first, Yukawa followed Heisenberg’s work and used an electron field to provide the nuclear force between protons and neutrons, which caused him problems. In 1934, he decided “not to search among known particles for the nuclear force field particle.” He wrote: “The crucial point came one October night. The nuclear force is effective over extremely small distances, on the order of 0.02 trillionths of a centimeter. I then realized that this distance and the mass of the particle I was searching for were inversely proportional.” He realized that he could correct the range of the nuclear force if he allowed the ball in this game of “tag” to be heavy (approximately 200 times heavier than the electron).
Paragraph 3 extends Fermi’s 1934 theory of neutron radioactive decay. In his initial work, Yukawa had considered that his mesotron could act as the “ball” in a game of tag during radioactive decay. After revising his calculations, he published a paper in 1938 predicting the properties of such a mesotron, which he then called a “weak” photon, and which later became known as the “W” particle.
Paragraphs 1-3 approach the contemporary but incredibly speculative science of 1934. They include three unknown particles: the pion mesotron (discovered in 1947), the W mesotron (discovered in 1983), and tiny uncharged particles (neutrinos were discovered in 1953). Few would have bet on the correctness of these predictions.
Regarding paragraph 2, “These alternations of energy states are so incredibly rapid…”, according to Nobel Prize winner Steven Weinberg, these alternations occur on the order of a million, million, million, millionths of a second. In contrast, the process described in paragraph 3 takes on the order of hundredths of a second.
Paragraph 4 states that the mesotron (pion) does not explain certain cohesive properties of the atomic nucleus. It tells us that “it is a form of energy not yet discovered on Urantia.” Leon Lederman was a young researcher who in 1950 became director of the Fermi Laboratory. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1988. In his book “The God Particle,” he says: “The hot particle of 1950 was the pion, or pi meson, as it was also called. It was thought to hold the key to nuclear gravity, which in those days was a great mystery. Today we think of this force in terms of gluons. But back then (in the 1950s), pions, which flew back to protons to keep them together and bound in the nucleus, were the key, and we needed to create and study them.”
This force, unknown in 1934 (and, for our purposes, when The Urantia Book was published in 1955) is now known as the color force. Writing about it in their book, “The Particle Explosion,” Close, Marten, and Sutton state: “Back in the 1940s and 1950s, theorists thought that pions were the transmitters of the great force. But later experiments showed that pions and other hadrons are composite particles made of quarks, and the theory of nuclear gravity had to be completely revised. We now believe that it is the color within the proton and neutron that causes them to attract each other to form the nucleus. This process may bear similarities to the way electrical charge within an atom builds complex molecules. Just as electrons change atoms within a molecule, quarks and antiquarks (called pions when in groups) are exchanged between the protons and neutrons in the nucleus.”
The revelators’ mandate allowed for “the provision of information to fill vital gaps in knowledge already gained” (UB 101:4.9). Whether any physicist has ever used the information gleaned from UB 42:8.6, we will probably never know. But there is “more in heaven and earth”…for example, “it is expected that physics will someday reach the ultimate level of nature, where everything can be described and from which the entire universe develops. This belief might be termed the quest for the ultimon” (E. David Peat, 1988, “Superstrings and the Search for the Theory of Everything”). There is a curious coincidence here. The particle that The Urantia Book called the “mesotron” was shortened to “meson.” The Book calls the basic building block of matter the “ultimaton.” Will it one day be called the “ultimon”?