The Urantia Book

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protons

8 paragraphs · about 2 minutes

Every paragraph the index cites under protons, once, in the order of the book. Beside each stand the entries that cite it.

41:8.1In those suns which are en­cir­cuited in the space-en­ergy chan­nels, so­lar en­ergy is lib­er­ated by var­i­ous com­plex nu­clear-re­ac­tion chains, the most com­mon of which is the hy­dro­gen-car­bon-he­lium re­ac­tion. In this meta­mor­pho­sis, car­bon acts as an en­ergy cat­a­lyst since it is in no way ac­tu­ally changed by this pro­cess of con­vert­ing hy­dro­gen into he­lium. Un­der cer­tain con­di­tions of high tem­per­a­ture the hy­dro­gen pen­e­trates the car­bon nu­clei. Since the car­bon can­not hold more than four such pro­tons, when this sat­u­ra­tion state is at­tained, it be­gins to emit pro­tons as fast as new ones ar­rive. In this re­ac­tion the in­go­ing hy­dro­gen par­ti­cles come forth as a he­lium atom.

42:3.53. Elec­tronic mat­ter—the elec­tri­cal stage of ma­te­rial dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion—elec­trons, pro­tons, and var­i­ous other units en­ter­ing into the var­ied con­sti­tu­tion of the elec­tronic groups.

42:6.7Each 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.

42:6.8If 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. 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.

42:7.2Within the atom the elec­trons re­volve about the cen­tral pro­ton with about the same com­par­a­tive room the plan­ets have as they re­volve about the sun in the space of the so­lar sys­tem. There is the same rel­a­tive dis­tance, in com­par­i­son with ac­tual size, be­tween the atomic nu­cleus and the in­ner elec­tronic cir­cuit as ex­ists be­tween the in­ner planet, Mer­cury, and your sun.

42:7.3–6 · four paragraphs not cited here ·

42:7.3The elec­tronic ax­ial rev­o­lu­tions and their or­bital ve­loc­i­ties about the atomic nu­cleus are both be­yond the hu­man imag­i­na­tion, not to men­tion the ve­loc­i­ties of their com­po­nent ul­ti­ma­tons. The pos­i­tive par­ti­cles of ra­dium fly off into space at the rate of ten thou­sand miles a sec­ond, while the neg­a­tive par­ti­cles at­tain a ve­loc­ity ap­prox­i­mat­ing that of light.

42:7.4The lo­cal uni­verses are of dec­i­mal con­struc­tion. There are just one hun­dred dis­tin­guish­able atomic ma­te­ri­al­iza­tions of space-en­ergy in a dual uni­verse; that is the max­i­mum pos­si­ble or­ga­ni­za­tion of mat­ter in Neb­a­don. These one hun­dred forms of mat­ter con­sist of a reg­u­lar se­ries in which from one to one hun­dred elec­trons re­volve around a cen­tral and rel­a­tively com­pact nu­cleus. It is this or­derly and de­pend­able as­so­ci­a­tion of var­i­ous en­er­gies that con­sti­tutes mat­ter.

42:7.5Not ev­ery world will show one hun­dred rec­og­niz­able el­e­ments at the sur­face, but they are some­where pres­ent, have been pres­ent, or are in pro­cess of evo­lu­tion. Con­di­tions sur­round­ing the ori­gin and sub­se­quent evo­lu­tion of a planet de­ter­mine how many of the one hun­dred atomic types will be ob­serv­able. The heav­ier atoms are not found on the sur­face of many worlds. Even on Uran­tia the known heav­ier el­e­ments man­i­fest a ten­dency to fly to pieces, as is il­lus­trated by ra­dium be­hav­ior.

42:7.6Sta­bil­ity of the atom de­pends on the num­ber of elec­tri­cally in­ac­tive neu­trons in the cen­tral body. Chem­i­cal be­hav­ior is wholly de­pen­dent on the ac­tiv­ity of the freely re­volv­ing elec­trons.

42:7.7In Or­von­ton it has never been pos­si­ble nat­u­rally to as­sem­ble over one hun­dred or­bital elec­trons in one atomic sys­tem. When one hun­dred and one have been ar­ti­fi­cially in­tro­duced into the or­bital field, the re­sult has al­ways been the in­stan­ta­neous dis­rup­tion of the cen­tral pro­ton with the wild dis­per­sion of the elec­trons and other lib­er­ated en­er­gies.

42:8.3The charged pro­tons and the un­charged neu­trons of the nu­cleus of the atom are held to­gether by the re­cip­ro­cat­ing func­tion of the meso­tron, a par­ti­cle of mat­ter 180 times as heavy as the elec­tron. With­out this ar­range­ment the elec­tric charge car­ried by the pro­tons would be dis­rup­tive of the atomic nu­cleus.

42:8.4As atoms are con­sti­tuted, nei­ther elec­tric nor grav­i­ta­tional forces could hold the nu­cleus to­gether. The in­tegrity of the nu­cleus is main­tained by the re­cip­ro­cal co­her­ing func­tion of the meso­tron, which is able to hold charged and un­charged par­ti­cles to­gether be­cause of su­pe­rior force-mass power and by the fur­ther func­tion of caus­ing pro­tons and neu­trons con­stantly to change places. The meso­tron causes the elec­tric charge of the nu­clear par­ti­cles to be in­ces­santly tossed back and forth be­tween pro­tons and neu­trons. At one in­finites­i­mal part of a sec­ond a given nu­clear par­ti­cle is a charged pro­ton and the next an un­charged neu­tron. And these al­ter­na­tions of en­ergy sta­tus are so un­be­liev­ably rapid that the elec­tric charge is de­prived of all op­por­tu­nity to func­tion as a dis­rup­tive in­flu­ence. Thus does the meso­tron func­tion as an “en­ergy-car­rier” par­ti­cle which might­ily con­tributes to the nu­clear sta­bil­ity of the atom.

Onward

See also atoms; matter

Cited alongside: atoms, electrons, weights, comparisons, elements (chemical), hydrogen, mesotrons