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Particle physics--two remarkable prophecies: The radii of the electron and proton.
In a textbook published at an American university in 1934 entitled, "The Architecture of the Universe," physicist W.F.G. Swann wrote: "The mass of the electron is so small that if you should magnify all masses so that the electron attains a mass of one tenth of an ounce, that one tenth of an ounce would, on the same scale of magnification, become as heavy as the earth."
The words of Swann were reproduced in Paper 42, Section 6 but with the comparison obviously deliberately changed from mass to volume. It reads:
"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."
Taking the rest mass of the electron at 9.1 x 10-28 g, 0.1 ounce as 2.8 g, the radius of the earth as 6.4 x 106 m and putting k as the magnification constant, then:
k x 9.1 x 10-28 = 2.8……..1, and so
k = 3.1 x 10-27…………….2
As the radius of the electron (Re) x k is said to be equal to the radius of the earth, we have:
Re x k = 6.4 x 106……….3
And substituting for k in (3), we get the electron radius:
Re = 2 x 10-21 m ………...4
At the time of receipt of the Urantia Papers and up until the 1990's this made no sense. Many physicists treated the electron as a dimensionless point so at best its radius would be half the Planck length of 10-35 m. Others, by a process of circuitous reasoning, assigned it a radius of 5 x 10-15 m.
The statement remained nonsensical until the 1990's when Nobel prize winner, Hans Dehmelt, found a way to confine a single electron to a trap semi-permanently. This achievement allowed actual measurements to be made that assigned the radius of the electron to fall into the range of 10-19 m to 10-22 m.
This new estimate was noticed by physicist Stefan Talqvist, a Urantia Book student who had previously checked the calculation using the Urantia Paper's version of Swann's earlier work. A few years later at Dehmelt's laboratory, refining of their techniques allowed them to settle for the electron radius being in the order of 10-22 m, so even closer to the 2 x 10-21 that is calculated for the Urantia Papers modified version of Swann's comparison.
What are the chances that these figures are coincidental, that the correspondence came about through accident or guesswork alone? Let's be conservative and consider only the order of magnitude. The possible range could extend to the Planck length of 10-35 m, so approximately a 25-30 fold range, with the chances of a close guess roughly at one in twenty five. But there was a second part to Swann's comparison that went:
"Then we have the proton--the fundamental unit of positive charge--a thing 1800 times as heavy as the electron, but 1800 times smaller in size, so that if you should magnify it to the size of a pin's head, that pin's head would, on the same scale of magnification, attain a diameter equal to that of the earth's orbit around the sun."
[Note: Swann's estimate of the size of the proton as 1800 times smaller than the electron came from using r = e2/mc2, where e is the charge of the electron. The charge to mass ratio for the electron was known accurately by the early 1900 period. The charge was determined by Millikan in 1909. Its mass was then determined as 9.11 x 10-28 g.]
The Urantia Paper's author did not use this equation, changing the comparison to:
"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."
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