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We've had the icing on the cake so now it is time for lighting the candles. Here we have a different kind of prediction that was hidden away in the text of the book and only recently uncovered by Stefan Tallquist, a scientist who works at the Technical Research Center of Finland.
If the mass of matter should be magnified until that of an electron equaled one tenth of an ounce, then were size to be proportionately magnified, the volume of such an electron would become as large as that of the earth. (477)
Problem: How do we feed a large family when we have only a little loaf and a tiny fish?
Answer: Ask our friendly neighborhood magician to make them bigger. But how much by? The tiny fish and the little loaf will feed two people. We want to feed one hundred. So our magnification factor (K) is 100/2 or fifty times. That is big number / little number.
Data: Electron weight = 9.1 x 10-28 gm
1/10 oz is 2.8 gm
Radius of Earth is 6.4 x 106 m
The magnification factor going from the electron to 2.8 g is: Big number/little number, hence K = 2.8 / 9.1 x 10-28
which is 3.07 x 1027
The magnification factor for the radius of an electron going to the radius of the earth is again big number / little number, so:
K = radius of Earth (rE) / radius of electron (re)
We already know K, so:
Radius of the electron, re = 6.4 x 106 /3.07 x 1027
which is 2.1 x 10-21 m
In 1934, the electron radius was thought to be the Dirac radius of zero, a dimensionless point particle. Many physicists believed this until present times. Others took the 'classical' radius to be 2.8 x 10-15m, which is about 1 million-fold out from The Urantia Book figure.
In the 1980's, new techniques were developed to confine electrons in magnetic traps, it being possible to confine single electrons for lengthy periods. In the 1990's, the new technology enabled Nobel Prize winner, Hans Dehmelt, to set limits for the electron radius as being between 1 x 10-19m and 1 x 10-22m. Hence, The Urantia Book estimate falls in between these limits.
Question: How could it be possible for a human being to make such an estimate prior to 1955?
My answer: Impossible!
If the volume of a proton--eighteen hundred times as heavy as an electron--should be magnified to the size of the head of a pin, then, in comparison, a pin's head would attain a diameter equal to that of the earth's orbit around the sun. (477)
Radius of Earth's orbit around the sun is aprox. 1.5 x 108 km
which is 1.5 x 1014mm
In the absence of exact data, we take the radius of the pinhead as 1.0 mm.
The magnification factor is, again, big number / little number, so
K = 1.0 / radius of proton (rp)...............1
But if the radius of a pinhead is magnified by K, then it equals the radius of the Earth's orbit around the sun, so:
K x 1.0 = 1.5 x 1014mm...................2
from (1), substituting for (K), & re-arranging,
Radius of a proton (rp) = 1.0 / 1.5 x 1014mm
= 7 x 10-15mm
= 7 x 10-18m
The classical proton radius is 0.853 x 10-15m, but modern measurements give the Bohr radius of a quark system as 7.7 x 10-18m.
Let's see why the quark system radius is the best estimate of a proton radius. From "The World of Quarks" by Christine Sutton, New Scientist, Inside Science, No. 63.(1993): "If we could look inside a proton we would see a seething hive of activity. The three valence quarks, u, u, and d, endow the proton with its major properties, and are bound together by exchanging gluons, the carriers of the strong force. The gluons can radiate other gluons and can very briefly form quark-antiquark pairs, giving rise to an ephemeral "sea" of quarks and anti-quarks."
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