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The Origin of the Universe
Some Amazing Correspondences between the Qur`an and the Latest
Scientific Findings
By:
Dr. Ahmad Shafaat
(June
2003)
The Qur`an is not a book of science and
therefore its purpose is not to teach us science. In fact, in
talking about the natural phenomena it often uses very traditional
language. But using traditional language it often rises far above
the level of scientific knowledge of its own time and brings us very
close to the most recent scientific findings. Muslim writers have
pointed out several examples of this such as the process by which a
human being is formed in the womb.
The big bang
Another well known example concerns the
origin of the universe. The following verse has an obvious
correspondence1
with the big bang picture of the origin of our universe:
Do not the disbelievers consider
that the heavens and the earth were joined together (ratqan)
and we ripped (fataqna) them apart and we created from water
every living thing. Will they not then believe? (21:30).
The two key Arabic words have been shown
in transliteration in the above quotation. Both of them appear in
the Qur`an only once, which shows that they are probably being used
to describe something very special. The verb rataqa means to
join together or sew up or patch up something such as a torn cloth
or to repair by such sewing up or patching up; fataqa means
to rip open, tear apart, slit open, to unsew. Rataqa is used
in the adverbial form ratqan which describes a state while
fataqa is used as a verb to describe an action of God. This
suggests that being joined or patched up together was the original
state of the universe2.
If the statement were, “we joined the heavens and the earth together
and then slit them apart”, the suggestion would have been that
things were originally apart, then joined together, and then slit
apart. Thus the verse is telling us that the universe was originally
a single, well connected mass that was then split open to form the
heavens and the earth as we see them. The correspondence with the
current big-bang picture of the origin of the universe is very
striking.
The above correspondence between the
Qur`an and the latest science has been noted by Muslims for many
decades. I now show another amazing correspondence, which has not
been so far noted according to the best of my knowledge.
Creation in 300000 years
This concerns the time it took to create
the universe. Before looking at this example in detail, let us
introduce some clarity into the issue and ask: considering that the
universe is changing continuously, how do we define the time
required for its creation? If the age of the universe is about 15
billion years, do we say that it took 15 billion years to create it?
If so, after another billion years we would need to say that it took
16 billions to create the universe. This is one possible
understanding. But this is neither the only one nor the most common.
Usually we distinguish between the age of a thing and the time it
took to build it, even if it is continuously changing. Thus if a
university or a city or a building is 500 years old, we generally
would not say that it took 500 years to build it, even if during
that time it has been continuously changing. Often the time to build
a thing is counted as the time it took to set it on its intended
course. This in any case is the conception in the Qur`an, where an
event may be said to occur when it starts even if it has not yet
finished. For example, the Qur`an was revealed over more than two
decades and yet it is said to have been revealed on a particular
night called laylah al-qadr (97:1) when its revelation
started. This conception allows us to take any significant benchmark
in the history of a thing as the time when its creation was
accomplished. In the case of the universe, one such benchmark
mentioned by the Qur`an is 6 days (7:54 etc) with each day equal to
50000 years (70:3-4), that is, 300000 years.
Now 300,000 years after the big bang
mark a point of decisive importance in the history of the universe.
Until that time, according to current theory, the universe was so
hot that matter and radiation were entangled in a kind of soup. This
is because neutral atoms had not yet formed and the universe
consisted of charged particles - ions and electrons.
Unlike atoms, electrons readily scatter
photons, bouncing them back and forth. As a result the photons were
not free to move away from other matter until ions and electrons
combined into atoms. The simplest atoms, those of hydrogen, began to
form about 300,000 years after the big bang when the universe had
cooled to a temperature of about 4000 K. Almost immediately the
universe became transparent. The light which also originated in the
big bang could from then on propagate throughout the universe with
only very tiny bits of it intercepted by matter. This time is called
“the time of last scattering”.
Because of the expansion of the
universe, the wavelength of the light that separated from matter
about 300,000 years after the big bang has by today been shifted
into the microwave regime with a wavelength of about one millimeter.
Today in a much fainter form this light reaches us as Cosmic
Microwave Background (CMB), having “cooled” over the age of the
universe (about 14 billion years) from about 4,000 K at the “time of
last scattering” to about 2.74 K. CMB provides us with the earliest
possible picture of the universe. From a time earlier than 300000
years no photons have come to us and therefore we cannot have a
photograph of the universe for any earlier period.
The picture of the universe provided by
the CMB is that of a “surface” which may be called the “surface of
last scattering”. Just as the sun's glowing disk is the "surface of
last scattering" for photons emerging from the solar interior, so
the CMB is the surface of last scattering for photons emerging from
the hot plasma about to condense into the first neutral atoms3.
Thus according to the latest scientific
theories, the foundations of the universe of atoms and light that we
can see took place during 300000 years (or 6 days of 50000
years) after the big bang. The correspondence of this with the
Qur`an is close and striking.
Of course, not everything the Qur`an
says about the creation of the universe corresponds to what the
latest science tells us, but the two striking correspondences
pointed out in this article should make even the non-believers admit
the possibility that there is much greater depth of knowledge in the
Qur`an than might appear to them at first sight.
Notes
1 I speak
of “correspondence” between the Qur`anic statements and the most
recent scientific findings and avoid saying that the Qur`an referred
to the modern scientific discoveries and theories. This is because
in case of the Qur`an there is the question of interpretation and in
case of science there is an ever present possibility of its theories
undergoing a radical change.
2 But, of
course, in the light of the general Qur`anic thought, even the
original state of being patched together was the result of a
creative act of God.
3 The
American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News, No. 481 and
No. 491.
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