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THE CONQUEST OF SPACE
From this point of view, the following verse is of utmost importance:
O assembly of Jinns and Men, if you can penetrate regions of the heavens and the earth, then penetrate them! You will not penetrate them save with a Power (55:33)
This expresses, without any trace of ambiguity, what man should and will make an achievement in the conquest of space. This verse is followed by an invitation to recognize God's blessings. It forms the subject of the whole of the sura that bears the title 'The Beneficent'. The translation given here needs some explanatory comment:
a) The word 'if' expresses in English a condition that is dependant upon a possibility and either an achievable or an unachievable hypothesis. Arabic is a language which is able to introduce a nuance into the condition which is much more explicit. There is one word to express the possibility (ida), another for the achievable hypothesis (in) and a third for the unachievable hypothesis expressed by the word (lau). The verse in question has it as an achievable hypothesis expressed by the word (in). The Qur'an, therefore, suggests the material possibility of a concrete realization.
b) God is addressing the spirits (jinn) and human beings (ins), and not essentially allegorical figures.
c) 'To penetrate' is the translation of the verb nafada followed by the preposition min. According to Kazimirski's dictionary, the phrase means 'to pass right through and come out on the other side of a body' (e.g. an arrow that comes out on the other side). It therefore suggests a deep penetration and emergence at the other end into the regions in question.
d) The Power (sultan) these men will have to achieve this enterprise would seem to come from the Al-Mighty.
Thus this verse indicates the possibility that men will one day achieve what we today call (perhaps rather improperly) 'the conquest of space'. It is noteworthy that the text foretells not only penetration through the regions of the Heavens, but also the Earth, i.e. the exploration of its depths.
Besides, the following verses express astonishment due to a remarkable spectacle, different from anything man could imagine:
Even if We opened out to them a gate from heaven, and they were to continue (all day) ascending therein, They would only say: "Our eyes have been intoxicated: Nay, we have been bewitched by sorcery (15:14-15)
Here the conditional sentence is introduced here by the word lau which expresses a hypothesis that could never be realized as far as it concerned the people mentioned in these verses. However, it describes the human reactions to the unexpected spectacle that travelers in space had to experience in dumbfounded state, as if they were in drunkenness or being bewitched. This is exactly how astronauts have experienced this remarkable adventure since the first human space flight around the world in 1961. To be above the Earth's atmosphere was quite a novel experience when the Heavens no longer had the azure appearance as we see from Earth resulting from phenomenon of absorption of the Sun's light into the layers of the atmosphere. The human eye in space above the Earth's atmosphere saw a black sky and the Earth seemed to be the most beautiful thing in the universe surrounded by a halo of bluish and somewhat green colors. The Moon had no atmosphere, however, and therefore appeared in its true colors against the black background of the sky. Here again, it is so difficult not to be impressed, when the text of the Qur'an is compared to the data of modern science and statements of the astronauts that simply cannot be ascribed to the thought of a man who lived more than fourteen centuries ago.
TIME AND SPACE
Ourselves and the Universe alike exist in time as much as perhaps even more than in space. Days differ in length because sun, moon and stars all in motion through space with respect to each other. They have separate motions of their own, in different directions and different speeds. For instance Neptune’s orbit is so vast that the planet takes 165 of our years to get round it once. Thus the Neptunian year is 165 times longer than ours. In the words of John Robinson, “Since practically everybody in the Universe has a motion of its own, it follows that practically everybody in the Universe has a different time from that of every other body. If I am in motion and you are not, then my time is different from your time”. So for a God who is the Creator of the Great Universe a day must be different from the one that we spend on the earth. That is why it is expounded in the Holy Quran:
Yet they ask thee to hasten on the Punishment! But God will not fail in His Promise. Verily a Day in the sight of thy Lord is like a thousand years of your reckoning (22:47)
A ray of light with its fastest speed of 186,000 miles per second leaving the earth today to circumnavigate the vast, complex and mysterious Universe will not return to earth again for 300,000 million years. For administering the affairs of such a great Universe naturally the span of the day is explicated at another place:
He rules (all) affairs from the heavens to the earth: in the end will (all affairs) go up to Him, on a Day, the space whereof will be (as) a thousand years of your reckoning (32:5)
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