Urantia Book Commentary and Articles

Miranda Devine
September 27, 2008

This is the first of a two-page article. As you may know, John Templeton, for whom this lecture is named, was a champion and supporter of the effort to harmonize science and religion. Again, this is an article which shows how the revolutionary new discoveries in space science and physics are slowly but surely helping scientists look even further for the Truth of creation. The truth of The Urantia Book's revelations are slowly becoming known...

Please click on "external source" for the complete article.

In a lecture theatre on the second floor of the Physics Building at Sydney University on Wednesday, an American professor in jeans and sandshoes bounced around the seven blackboards, scribbling formulas, talking of quarks, gluons and multiverses, drawing chalk pictures of expanding galaxies and workshopping a few little mysteries of the universe.

What caused the Big Bang? What is dark energy? Does God exist?

Known as the "rock star of physics" for his lucid language and peppy style, Lawrence Krauss, 54, a theoretical physicist and best-selling author from Arizona State University, was briefly in town to present the Templeton Lecture at Sydney University and a small workshop for students the next day.

In the past decade a series of discoveries about the universe has prompted a revolution in scientific thinking, of which the average person is probably blissfully unaware.

Krauss is one of those scientists at the forefront of this new cosmological understanding - and of a corresponding renewed battle between science and religion. "The last 10 years have changed everything," he said in an interview after Wednesday's workshop. "Our ideas of what the universe is made of have changed â€¦ That's why physicists have gone so crazy."

For instance, we now know that the universe is flat (although we don't know if it has an edge). And we have discovered that 70 per cent of the energy of the universe is in empty space. But we don't know how that can be.

"The dominant part of the universe is dark energy - the energy associated with empty space. That implies something," he says. "Why is the universe driven by the energy of nothing?"

What's more, dark energy is "gravitationally repulsive", so it acts to push the universe apart. "The expansion of the universe is speeding up, but dark energy is constant â€¦ That is the biggest mystery in the universe."

Why is the energy density of all matter in the universe almost exactly equal to the density of dark energy today?

It is the great cosmic coincidence: we humans exist at the precise point in the life of the universe when those two numbers coincide. Physicists call it the "coincidence problem".

"The fact we happen to be close to the time when the two values are the same is absurd," says Krauss. "It's absurd. It drives me crazy."

The accepted explanation for how the universe began is the Big Bang theory, first proposed in 1927 by the Belgian mathematician and priest Georges Lemaitre, which holds that the universe expanded 13.7 billion years ago from a single dense point and has been expanding ever since. More recently came the discovery that the rate at which the universe is expanding is speeding up.

Labels: Big Bang, dark matter, God, gravity, Lawrence Krauss, Miranda Devine, physics, religion, science, space, Templeton Lecture

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Thursday, June 19, 2008

A trio of super-Earths

An interesting article inviting thought and speculation regarding whether these new discoveries may harbor life...and further evidence that science is beginning to discover what we believe from reading The Urantia Book

Astronomers have found a triple system of super-Earths around the star HD 40307.

June 16, 2008

Today, at an international conference, a team of European astronomers announced a remarkable breakthrough in the field of extra-solar planets. Using the HARPS instrument at the ESO La Silla Observatory, they have found a triple system of super-Earths around the star HD 40307. Moreover, looking at their entire sample studied with HARPS, the astronomers count a total of 45 candidate planets with a mass below 30 Earth masses and an orbital period shorter than 50 days. This implies that one solar-like star out of three harbours such planets.

Since the discovery in 1995 of a planet around the star 51 Pegasi by Mayor and Didier Queloz, more than 270 exoplanets have been found, mostly around solar-like stars. Most of these planets are giants, such as Jupiter or Saturn, and current statistics show that about 1 out of
14 stars harbours this kind of planet.

"With the advent of much more precise instruments such as the HARPS spectrograph on ESO's 3.6-m telescope at La Silla, we can now discover smaller planets, with masses between 2 and 10 times the Earth's mass,"
says Stephane Udry, one of Mayor's colleagues. Such planets are called super-Earths, as they are more massive than the Earth but less massive than Uranus and Neptune (about 15 Earth masses).

The group of astronomers have now discovered a system of three super-Earths around a rather normal star, which is slightly less massive than our Sun, and is located 42 light-years away towards the southern Doradus and Pictor constellations.

"We have made very precise measurements of the velocity of the star HD
40307 over the last five years, which clearly reveal the presence of three planets," says Mayor.

The planets, having 4.2, 6.7, and 9.4 times the mass of the Earth, orbit the star with periods of 4.3, 9.6, and 20.4 days, respectively.

"The perturbations induced by the planets are really tiny - the mass of the smallest planets is one hundred thousand times smaller than that of the star - and only the high sensitivity of HARPS made it possible to detect them," says co-author Francois Bouchy, from the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, France.

Indeed, each planet induces a motion of the star of only a few metres per second.

At the same conference, the team of astronomers announced the discovery of two other planetary systems, also with the HARPS spectrograph. In one, a super-Earth (7.5 Earth masses) orbits the star HD 181433 in 9.5 days. This star also hosts a Jupiter-like planet with a period close to 3 years. The second system contains a 22 Earth-mass planet having a period of 4 days and a Saturn-like planet with a 3-year period as well.

"Clearly these planets are only the tip of the iceberg," says Mayor.
"The analysis of all the stars studied with HARPS shows that about one third of all solar-like stars have either super-Earth or Neptune-like planets with orbital periods shorter than 50 days."

A planet in a tight, short-period orbit is indeed easier to find than one in a wide, long-period orbit.

"It is most probable that there are many other planets present: not only super-Earth and Neptune-like planets with longer periods, but also Earth-like planets that we cannot detect yet. Add to it the Jupiter-like planets already known, and you may well arrive at the conclusion that planets are ubiquitous," concludes Udry.

Labels: astronomy, HAARPS, planetary systems, planets, space

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Monday, March 17, 2008

Arizona Telescope Sees Deep into the Cosmos

All Things Considered, March 17, 2008

Please click on "external link for an audio feature as well...

The best pair of eyes on Earth are now wide open. The Large Binocular Telescope sits in a 17-story building atop an Arizona mountain.

LBT, as it's known for short, can probe deeper into the cosmos than any other instrument. The 580-ton telescope is twice as big as the next-largest telescope on Earth, and it has 10 times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope. The LBT cannot see farther than Hubble, but the images it sends back are much sharper and of a much wider field than the space telescope.

In the control room, Richard Pogge, professor of astronomy at Ohio State University, types in coordinates for this night's viewing. He and a half-dozen others sit in a room filled with computer screens.

There's a universe to look at, but time is limited, so scientists submit proposals for observation. One of the first for tonight: the Kuiper Belt, which lies on the edge of the solar system, about 2.7 billion miles from Earth.

How small? Well, Pluto is roughly 1,200 miles wide. The LBT can see ice balls in the same region that are one or two miles wide. The cameras take an exposure â€“ which lasts five minutes â€” and then the image is revealed on a computer screen. It looks like a field of stars. But take the same picture six nights in a row and â€” if you know what you're looking for â€” you can see the ice balls moving.

And with the data this telescope gathers, Pogge says you can see a lot more, including how far are away an object is, what it is made of, what its mass is and how fast it's moving away from us.

Answering Questions About the Universe

Notre Dame professor Peter Garnevich helps focus the LBT on another object, which is no small task given the instrument's complexity. Garnevich is interested in a supernova that exploded a few nights earlier.

"The star just happened to die and its jet was pointed at us and we can see it most of the way across the universe," says Garnevich.

The screen shows a large mass with a plume coming from it. Garnevich wants to learn how energy from the dying star decays over time. By looking at objects like this â€” halfway across the universe and back in time â€” these astronomers hope the LBT will answer some fundamental questions.

Pogge lists some of those questions: "Where do we come from, how did we get here, where are we going? Astronomy's one of the few ways we can answer that."

Over the next few years, many more devices will be added to the LBT to enhance its capabilities. That should be enough to keep astronomers happy at night for decades.

Labels: Large Binocular Telescope, Pluto, space, Ted Robbins, the universe

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, March 14, 2008

BOOK REVIEW: E.T.? An intriguing possibility in "Beyond UFOs"

By Fred Bortz

(Although not strictly a "Urantian" article, I hope you'll agree that it is an interesting one...ed.)

"Beyond UFOs: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Its Astonishing Implications for Our Future"

by Jeffrey Bennett

Princeton University Press, 211 pp., $26.95

Is there life beyond Earth? Until about 40 years ago, that question was beyond scientific investigation with one dubious exception: the persistent but unsupported hypothesis that some unidentified flying objects â€” UFOs â€” are alien spacecraft.

Today, however, respectable scientists armed with real data are able to speculate about the existence of life on other worlds. Spacecraft have probed every planet from Mercury to Neptune. Advanced telescopic instruments and techniques have detected hundreds of planets orbiting other stars, and it is probably only a matter of a decade or two before the first extrasolar Earthlike world is discovered.

As astrophysicist Jeffrey Bennett declares in the title of his new book, it is time to look toward the emerging science of astrobiology. "Beyond UFOs" is, as the opening paragraph of its first chapter promises, "a book about possibilities."

"It is about the possibility that, within a decade or two, robotic or human explorers will drill into the Martian surface and discover microscopic life. It is about the possibility of landing spaceborne submarines on Jupiter's moon Europa, where they might melt their way through miles of ice and observe life swimming in a volcanically heated ocean. It is about the possibility of strange, cold-adapted life forms on Saturn's moon Titan."

And another possibility looms: the arrival of "an unmistakable signal coming to us from a civilization that has grown up around a faraway star."

In a series of well-crafted chapters, the book delivers on all of those promises. It takes a grand trajectory from Earth â€” which has "The Makings of a Truly Great Planet" (as one chapter title puts it) â€” to the stars. Planet by planet, moon by moon, the book explores the possibility of life elsewhere in this solar system. It then speculates about other solar systems in our galaxy where, according to the prevailing scientific view, simple life almost surely exists and intelligent life is plausible.

For the most part, Bennett's search for extraterrestrial life adds up to a very satisfying package. More problematic are his diversions into his personal philosophy and politics as he weighs extraterrestrial life's "astonishing implications for our future."

Numerous times, Bennett climbs on his soapbox and preaches. In many cases, such as when he is trying to address people who reject science in favor of religion, most readers will find themselves wondering why the author is sermonizing on the obvious. In other places the preaching turns blatantly political. Readers on one side of his argument will agree, while those in opposition to him will grumble about "green" or "peacenik" philosophies. The first group doesn't need the sermon; the second will reject it.

Fortunately, even readers who are annoyed by Bennett's preaching will be willing to forgive his flights of passion. At its core, this book delivers a combination that is hard to beat: solid yet highly speculative science plus accessible prose that add up to an out-of-this-world reading experience.

Physicist Fred Bortz is the author of many science books for young readers, including Astrobiology in Lerner Publishing's "Cool Science" series.

Labels: astrobiology, extraterrestrials, Fred Bortz, Jeffrey Bennett, science, space

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Einstein and the Revelation: Inventing the Universe

RICK WARREN, USA

Albert Einstein would have reveled in the Urantia Papers. They offer what he craved to discover: a plausible unifying explanation for all things and beings, a theory that encompassed everything. Alas, he searched only in the material realm for the greater part of his life, but toward the end he did appear to have the glint of God in his seasoned eyes.

If he were again to attempt to uncover the unifying principle of the Universe, this time in the light of the revelation, he might find that he could, in simple terms, define the physical universe as it hangs on three God-created elements: ultimatons, space, and gravity (169:1). Of course he would say it in the language of mathematics and with the metaphor of symbolic equation.

If Albert Einstein agreed with the scientific and spiritual revelations of The Urantia Book, he would rejoice in the connectedness of the physical, the mental, and the divine (102:1). Of course the reason he didn't reach philosophic or religious climax is because mathematics is only a minor and impersonal revelation of the vastly greater whole. But you must admire the quality of his thinking, if not his unremitting persistence. How many of us are able or willing to devote our thinking to one subject for decades?

Imagine what thoughts he could have conjured as a result of embracing the Urantia revelation!
The physical universe is elegantly simple on its surface; ultimatons manifest in space and gravity begins its work (465:2). The ultimatonic â€œhuddlingâ€� [478:4] tendency pulls them into masses (eventually with direction from the physical controllers) that gravity faithfully crushes. This creates heat and pressure which breaks down matter (463:12), and that causes light to be released. Light goes out in all directions, and this light fuels plant life which propels
animal life, which is needed for spirit life to begin the journey back to where the ultimaton beganâ€”Paradise (169:1).

But in between nascent light and eternal life lies a mystery: How can ultimatons, gravity, and space make heat and light which make planets of 100 elements? (541:6) One cannot see the planetary elements in the original three elements of physical universe construction, but they are inherent. How does God do that? And how can the elements show such blindingly diverse properties? (467:4)

We and old Albert are confronted with a question of quintessential significance regarding the mysteries of the physical universes. How can 100 elements display so many odd, unique and eccentric qualities? If the material universes have only three ingredients, how do the Gods transform ultimatons, space, and gravity into star-stuff, light, and planets so that beings may take up bodies to experience life and soul growth in the presence of these 100 elements? (399:7) How can copper come from the same ultimaton that hydrogen comes from?

Mysteries aside, the universal machine does create a magnificent variety of materials by forcing ultimatons to go through different processes. Subject an ultimaton to space, let gravity pull it together with other ultimatons, let the nuclear fire be lit, and voilÃ , implanted vegiforms consume the fireâ€™s light, and preplanned people eat the plants to evolve, and souls use
the bodies to act and grow, and the three great Gods enjoy the show (most of the time) (468:2).

Instead of three inanimate elements, we now have five: matter, space, gravity, heat, and light. Add the crowning two, planets and life, and that makes seven. It's a model that's served Father for eternity. But the story of the â€œInvention of the Universeâ€� (1276:2) is a little more complex where personal will is distributed (53:5) carte blanche, willy-nilly, and apparently, helterskelter.

Underneath lies serenity, however.

In the beginning, there you are in utter harmony, the I AM (6:3); you are infinitely wise and limitlessly capable. You decide to create a Universe where there are beings like yourself, who have free will (71:7). You want them to be sovereign in their world, as are you in infinity. First you divide yourself, becoming a team of three (108:2). You three build a permanent residence
(7:10) and work to hardwire all creation with the basics for independent free will (70:5). Youâ€™ll need material, Mind, Spirit, and Personality circuits (1286:5).

After you create a personal family and a proper home for you and your perfect helpers, you call it Paradise (7:10). (I wonder what symbol Einstein would use for Paradise? Zero?) Then you send ultimatons out in a wide circle (473:1). And with the help of your â€œchildrenâ€�, you start the vortices that pull the ultimatons into aggregations. These clumps of matter are acted on by your gravity, which pulls them into definable masses, and then heat, caused by gravity working on ultimatons, begins to make suns (465:1).

The solar process then gives rise to the 100 elements through the variable use of more heat, then cold and sometimes pressure, which form the diverse planets from cooling solar matter (473:5).

The stage is now set for life. Life is the greatest mystery in the universe aside from the appearance of the I AM. No one can essay to pontificate on life, whence it came, how it came to be (399:6) or where it will take us in ultimate Eternity, save for God (347:5).

The I AM divides himself so that by the time he manifests at our level (638:4), he has forgotten his origin. He has accomplished self-forgetfulness; he has differentiated his consciousness into trillions upon trillions of relatively freewill beings scattered over
vast fields of ultimatonic constructs (2018:4).

God weaves the physical universe on three irrepressible threads: ultimatons, gravity, and space.

What a simple concept! It is not so hard to accept that matter, when gathered into a starâ€™s intense gravity pull, should begin to heat and then radiate light for billions of years as solar engines on which hang the lives and experiences of man and beast (125:4).

What is hard to understand, and maybe Albert would have trouble with this too, is how ultimatons, after becoming grist for the mill of divine creation, develop such diverse properties and amazing powers of cohesion (169:1). Metals are bound in well-nigh indissoluble links and can withstand enormous forces.

Gases are compressible, yet water, made of two gasses, is not compressible, unless it is in the form of steam. The oddities, idiosyncrasies, and the outright diversity of chemical properties are far more than astonishing, they are stupefying!

Water, a compound of two common elements, has within it several odd properties that can be used as a material suggestion for spirit (1795:5), since spirit can flow in any direction, can freeze, and can expand.

Spirit is used but nothing is used up (76:1). Spirit sustains all living beings (1155:4), and without it there is only the barren desert. But without a desert, there will be no place for spirit to flow and no oases of creativity. No oases, no Alberts, no you or me. It all started â€œrelativelyâ€� simply. Einstein would have genuinely enjoyed knowing of the simplicity and elegance of the unified theory of everything, as complex as it finally is. It is simple complexity, mixed with a mystery and driven by a dream.

Albert would have embraced it.

Labels: Albert Einstein, God, gravity, Paradise, Rick Warren, space, the universe, The Urantia Book, ultimaton