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Astrophysics--more prophecies: Neutrinos, Neutron Stars, and Black Holes
"In large suns when hydrogen is exhausted and gravity contraction ensues, if such a body is not sufficiently opaque to retain the internal pressure of support for the outer gas regions, then a sudden collapse occurs. The gravity-electric changes give origin to vast quantities of tiny particles devoid of electric potential, and such particles readily escape from the solar interior, thus bringing about the collapse of a gigantic sun within a few days." (Paper 41, Section 9)
At the time of receipt of the Urantia Papers (1935), it was generally believed that the destiny for large stars well in excess of the size of our sun was to blow off their outer layers by a series of explosions until they could retire in comfort as a white dwarf, the same destiny as expected for our own sun. Names for neutron stars, neutrinos, and black holes had not even been invented and all were, at best, figments of the imagination.
The concept of a particle with no properties, hence one that would be impossible to ever detect, was proposed by leading physicist, Wolfgang Pauli, as a result of the inability of experimentalists to account for mass-energy that disappeared during radioactive beta decay. During subsequent years this became a serious enough problem so that in 1953, Cowan and Reines began experiments using a fission reactor to try to detect Pauli's undetectable particle. Success did not come until 1956, when R.R. Davis was able to detect its antiparticle, what is now called the anti-neutrino.
This discovery ensured that neutrinos did actually exist. However the neutrino itself was not finally detected until 1965 when they were identified coming from the sun using huge perchloroethylene tanks buried far underground.1 The neutrino is now recognized as the particle referred to as "vast quantities of tiny particles devoid of electric potential" that are capable of escaping from the interior of an exhausted large star undergoing gravitational collapse.
That the above description, as given in the Urantia Papers, is an accurate description of what is now called a supernova, is indisputable. Yet the theoretical basis for such explosions was not laid until 19572, but even then the neutrino was not implicated as the means by which the energy of the explosion could escape so readily. This is perhaps more easily comprehended when we realize that light energy generated in the interior of such stars may take a million years or more to reach its surface. The neutrino, because of its inertness, makes that very same journey in a few seconds.
The concept of a supernova was first mooted by Zwicky and Baade in 1933 as an explanation for about half a dozen unexplained gigantic explosions that had been observed by astronomers. However the idea that they could arise from the collapse of large stars had no theoretical back-up. Zwicky calculated that about ten percent of the mass of the star might be lost this way. In his book on black holes3, physicist K.S. Thorne states that Zwicky knew nothing about the possible role of "little neutral particles" being released in the implosion of a large star. Instead he had attributed the entire mass-energy loss to cosmic rays. Zwicky's idea that a supernova-type collapse could occur was ridiculed by many and was also strongly opposed in 1939 by the most prominent physicist of the time, Albert Einstein, as well as the most prominent astronomer, Sir Arthur Eddington.
According to eminent Russian astrophysicist, Igor Novikov, no searches in earnest for neutron stars or black holes were attempted by astronomers before the 1960's. He says, "It was tacitly assumed that these objects were far too eccentric and most probably were the fruits of theorists' wishful thinking…at any rate, if they existed, then they could not be detected.4"
The opportunity to confirm the release of neutrinos during a supernova explosion occurred in 1987 when a supernova, visible to the naked eye, was observed in the Large Magellanic Cloud that neighbors our Milky Way galaxy. Calculations indicated that this supernova, dubbed SN
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