The original 1955 paragraph read as follows: "Each atom is a trifle over 1/100,000,000th of an inch in diameter, while an electron weighs a little less than 1/2,000th of the smallest atom, hydrogen. The positive proton, characteristic of the atomic nucleus, while it may be no larger than a negative electron, weighs from two to three thousand times more."

All subsequent Urantia Foundation printings read, "Each atom is a trifle over 1/100,000,000th of an inch in diameter, while an electron weighs a little more than 1/2,000th of the smallest atom, hydrogen. The positive proton, characteristic of the atomic nucleus, while it may be no larger than a negative electron, weighs almost two thousand times more."

The revised wording is, on its face, more consistent with the statement in the paragraph following the subject paragraph 42:6.8, where the author states that a proton is "eighteen hundred times as heavy as an electron". (This is also in accord with current scientific opinion which places the ratio at 1,836.109. (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition, Chicago, 1977), Vol. 5, p. 80. Current scientific opinion holds that the hydrogen atom weighs 1.6735 X 10-24 grams, and that electrons weigh 9.1 x 10-2 8 grams, or 1/1,839th as much as the hydrogen atom. Protons are believed to weigh 1,836.1 times as much as an electron.

It should be noted that the edit apparently required to make this passage consistent is not easily explained. Unlike other such problems, allowance for a simple clerical error does not reconstruct the text.