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X-Rays from the Sun. The interior of your sun is a vast X-ray generator. (P. 460)
The Sun was the first celestial object determined to give off X-Rays; rocket-borne radiation counters measured X-ray emissions from its corona in 1949. In the "Physics-Astronomy Front" by Hoyle and Narliker we find, "One of the authors remembers how, in the middle 1940's, the question of whether the sun might emit X-rays was considered by astronomers to be highly speculative.
Crab nebula. "…the Crab nebula, which had its origin about nine hundred years ago, and which still exhibits the mother sphere as a lone star near the center of this irregular nebular mass." (P.464)
The Urantia Paper states that the Crab nebular had its origin in a nova explosion occurring 900 years ago. The existence of a neutron star at its center was demonstrated in 1967 with the detection of a pulsar which pulsed at a rate of 30 per sec. This was far too high for it to originate from a white dwarf which would disintegrate if spinning at that speed. It could only be from a neutron star.
Comments
Except that they had access to privileged information, the authors of the Urantia Papers went out on a long light limb when they opted to embrace such phenomena as continental drift, the break-up of a super continent 750 million years ago, the consequential mountain building along the west coast of the Americas plus a land bridge enabling migration of marsupials between Australia, Antarctica, and South America. Then there is the neutron star story with its tiny particles devoid of electric potential, the figures they put to the radii of electron and proton, the suggestion of the still to be discovered strong force stabilizing protons and neutrons in the atomic nucleus, and so on.
However, a word of caution. The chances of correctly guessing for this small selection of prophetic material are so slight that only a totally shut mind would reject their significance. But the reason for including prophetic material is not so obvious.
In terms of what was known in the 1930's period, even a flawed cosmology content of the Papers would have been quite adequate to provide a conceptual "universe frame in which to think" (P. 1260) that would have been suitable for the next thirty or so years. Today it is outdated and will become increasingly so.
The good side of this is that it will ensure that a label of infallibility and divine authority cannot be sustained--for even those with a reasonable level of high school education will recognize the now badly outdated state of its cosmology.
The bad side is that many may turn away from the book without having given it due consideration--and thus miss out on its genuinely unique religious and spiritual value. Apparently the powers that be have adjudged that losing readership is preferable to the Book becoming the foundation stone for yet another fundamentalist religion.
[For comment on the error component of the Urantia Papers see the July/August 2004 issue of Innerface International.]
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