The fact that the Universe is not static but in a state of expansion was discovered by the American astronomer Edwin Hubble in the late 1920s, almost 1400 years after the Koran described it. One eminent thinker and astronomer said that the expansion of the Universe is as commonplace, as the expansion of a gas, the difference being only one of scale.’ Why should we not adore Allah, the Almighty for expansion of the universe being the most marvelous, awe-inspiring and unseen phenomenon is amazingly so commonplace and convenient, so simple and effortless that in the words of the Holy Quran it applies to anything, tiny or titanic of the whole universe:
Verily, when He intends a thing, His Command is, "be", and it is! (36:82)
One may be flabbergasted as to how even a colossal thing can be created with only a word spoken within the fraction of a second. Here Quantum cosmology comes to solve this riddle. This endeavors to describe quantum processes at the earliest times that we can conceive of a classical space-time, that is, the Planck epoch at 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 second. There is another Scientist, Steinhardt whose ideas about the origin of the Universe are based on an extension of string theory called M-theory that does not do away with the Big Bang. The evidence that everything emerged from a 'fireball' with a temperature of 10 billion degrees, expanding on a timescale of one second, is now very compelling and uncontroversial. Paul Steinhardt and colleagues at Princeton University propose the so-called ‘ekpyrotic model’. It explains important details about the nature of our Universe such as why the cosmos is expanding the way it is.
The Qur'an presents in two verses a brief synthesis of the phenomena that constituted the basic process of the formation of the Universe.
FORMATION OF THE UNIVERSE
Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together (as one unit of creation), before We clove them asunder and We got every living thing out of the water. Will they not then believe? (21:30)
Out of a number of different theories about the origin of the universe many people in the scientific community regard the "Big Bang" as the best estimate of how the universe began. The theory starts out by stating that the universe as it is today is only one phase, which started with a giant explosion. The universe began with one singular point, which is known as a singularity. All the matter and energy, which is now present in the universe, was squeezed into this singularity of infinitely small volume. From the singularity the Universe exploded and released an incredible amount of matter and energy. What happened in the time before the explosion? Scientists say that there was no universe before the Big Bang and that from the singularity came not only matter and energy but also space and time. So there is no use in questioning about before because then time did not exist.
Immediately after the explosion a massive fireball formed called the primordial fireball which is thought to have been as hot as one million billion billion billion (10 with 32 zeros) degrees Kelvin. This fireball moved away from the singularity in all directions and from it came elementary particles like neutrons, protons, and electrons. For a long period of time these particles spread out across the universe at an incredible rate. This period in history is known as the radiation era, which was very influential in the way the use universe, is composed today. Quantum theory also holds that a vacuum, like atoms, is subject to quantum uncertainties. This means that things can materialize out of the vacuum, although they tend to vanish back into it quickly. These particles began to cool down and soon started to form elements like hydrogen and helium. These would serve as the building blocks for the stars and the planets. The universe continued to cool down and eventually galaxies formed and planets materialized. The proof that clinched the Big Bang theory for scientists came in 1992. COBE, the first ever cosmological satellite took a picture of the radiation from the Big Bang that showed evidence for how the first galaxies formed. In this century, science has come to understand how the universe began from a tiny point, fifteen billion years ago.
Moreover He comprehended in His design the sky, and it had been (as) smoke: He said to it and to the earth: ‘Come ye together, willingly or unwillingly.’ They said: ‘We do come (together), in willing obedience’ . . .(41:11)
The important points to remember as pointed out by are: a) the statement of the existence of a gaseous mass with fine particles, for this is how the word 'smoke' (dukan in Arabic) is to be interpreted. Smoke is generally made -up of a gaseous substratum, plus, in more or less stable suspension, fine particles that may belong to solid and even liquid states of matter at high or low temperature; b) The reference to a separation process (fatq) of an primary single mass whose elements were initially fused together (ratq). It is to be noted that in Arabic 'fatq' is the action of breaking, diffusing, separating, and that 'ratq' is the action of fusing or binding together elements to make a homogenous whole. This concept of the separation of a whole into several parts is noted in other passages of the Book with reference to multiple worlds.
Scientists have only very recently confirmed that the universe was indeed, at an early stage, a gaseous mass composed of hydrogen and some helium, a big mass of hot gasses. The Koran is more accurate in describing the gasses as "smoke" rather than the word "mist" or "fog" used frequently by scientists (Rees uses the word "fog" in his book) as the gasses were hot. This smoke or nebula subsequently split up into multiple fragments with very large dimensions and masses, so large indeed, that specialists in astrophysics are able to estimate their mass from 1 to 100 billion times the present mass of the Sun (which is over 300,000 times that of the Earth). These figures give an idea of the large size of the fragments of primary gaseous mass that were to give birth to the galaxies. According to the astrophysicists, the remarkable scenario as being widely believed is that our galaxy, the Milky Way, is a highly evolved entity, and an elegant structure that shows both order and complexity, of which our own sun is a member. It is a spiral-disk galaxy, a type very common in the cosmos. It is supposed that it began from vast quantities of gas from the Big Bang explosion collapsing through gravitational attraction of the molecules in the gas. The end product is especially remarkable in the light of what is believed to be the starting point: nebulous blobs of gas. What about individual stars? The standard guess is that the first stars, called Population III, were formed only of hydrogen and helium. Later stars with heavier elements were supposedly generated when these first stars collapsed, forming heavier elements in their heated interiors which then traversed space to eventually coalesce enough to form new suns. In short, a high degree of knowledge concerning the general process involved in the formation of the solar system may be summarized as: condensation and contraction of a rotating gaseous mass, splitting up into fragments that leave the Sun. and planets in their places, among them the Earth.
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