The Sun Will Eventually Expire
And the Sun runs to its resting place. That is the decree of the Almighty, the All-Knowing. (Surah Ya Sin, 38)
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| A photograph of the Sun taken by NASA. The bright areas on the Sun are those regions where the magnetic field is strongest. |
The Sun has been emitting heat for around five billion years as a result of the constant nuclear reactions taking place on its surface. At a moment determined by Allah in the future, these reactions will eventually come to an end - and the Sun will lose all its energy and finally go out, extinguished like a light bulb which runs out of power. In that context, the above verse may be a reference to the Sun's energy one day coming to an end. (Allah knows the truth.)
The Arabic word "limustaqarrin" in the verse refers to a particular place or time. The word"tajree" translated as "runs," bears such meanings as "to move, to act swiftly, to move about, to flow." It appears from the meanings of the words that the Sun will continue in its course in time and space, but that this motion will continue until a specific, predetermined time. The verse "When the sun is compacted in blackness," (Surat at-Takwir, 1) which appears in descriptions of Doomsday, tells us that such a time will eventually come. Of course, the specific timing is known only to Allah.
The Arabic word "taqdeeru," translated as "decree" in the verse, includes such meanings as"to appoint, to determine the destiny of something, to measure." By this expression in verse 38 of Surah Ya Sin, we are told that the life span of the Sun is limited to a period of time ordained by Allah. Other verses of the Qur'an on the subject read:
Allah is He Who raised up the heavens without any support – you can see that – and then established Himself firmly on the Throne. He made the Sun and Moon subservient, each running for a specified term. He directs the whole affair. He makes the Signs clear so that hopefully you will be certain about the meeting with your Lord. (Surat ar- Ra'd, 2)
He makes night merge into day and day merge into night, and He has made the Sun and Moon subservient, each one running until a specified time. That is Allah, your Lord. The Kingdom is His. Those you call on besides Him have no power over even the smallest speck. (Surah Fatir, 13)
He created the heavens and the earth with truth. He wraps the night around the day and wraps the day around the night, and has made the Sun and Moon subservient, each one running for a specified term. Is He not indeed the Almighty, the Endlessly Forgiving? (Surah az-Zumar, 5)
The use of the word "musamman" in the above verses shows that the life span of the Sun will run for a "specified term."
Scientific analysis regarding the end of the Sun describes it as consuming four million tons of matter per second, and says that the Sun will die when that fuel has all been consumed.54 The heat and light emitted from the Sun is the energy released when matter is consumed: hydrogen nuclei turn into helium in the nuclear fusion process. The Sun's energy, and its life, will therefore come to an abrupt end once this fuel has been used up. (Allah knows the truth.) A report titled "The Death of the Sun" by the BBC News Science Department says:
... The Sun will gradually die. As a star's core crashes inwards, it eventually becomes hot enough to ignite another of its constituent atoms, helium. Helium atoms fuse together to form carbon. When the helium supply runs out, the centre collapses again and the atmosphere inflates. The Sun isn't massive enough to fully re-ignite its core for a third time. So it goes on expanding, shedding its atmosphere in a series of bursts... The dying core eventually forms a white dwarf - a spherical diamond the size of the Earth, made of carbon and oxygen. From this point on the Sun will gradually fade away, becoming dimmer and dimmer until its light is finally snuffed out.55
| PERIODIC TABLE |
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A documentary, also called "The Death of the Sun," broadcast by National Geographic TV, provides the following description:
It (the Sun) generates heat and sustains life on our planet. But like humans, the Sun has a limited lifespan. As our star ages, it will become hotter and expand, evaporating all of our oceans and killing all life on planet Earth... The Sun will get hotter as it ages and burns fuel faster. Temperatures will increase, eventually wiping out animal life, evaporating our oceans and killing all plant life... the Sun will swell and become a red giant star, swallowing up the nearest planets. Its gravitational pull will lessen and perhaps allow Earth to escape. By the end, it will shrink into a white dwarf star, emitting a weak glow for hundreds of billions of years.56
Scientists have only recently unraveled the structure of the Sun, thus discovering what goes on inside its burning mass. Before that, nobody knew how the Sun obtained its energy or how it emitted heat and light. The way that such a giant mass of energy would one day consume all its energy and expire was revealed fourteen centuries ago to mankind through Allah’s Final Messenger (pbuh.) Once again, the Qur'an its credentials as a source of sublime knowledge. That knowledge belongs to our Lord, Whose knowledge enfolds all things. It is revealed in another verse of the Qur'an thus:
... My Lord encompasses all things in His knowledge so will you not pay heed? (Surat al-An'am, 80)
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The Sun's Hydrogen and Helium Content
The Sun is made up of 70% hydrogen (H) and 28% helium (He) atoms.57 Other substances make up less than 2% of the Sun’s constitutions. One of the most astonishing facts about the Sun is this: six hundred million tons of hydrogen are converted into a mind-boggling 596 million tons of helium in the Sun every second. The remaining 4 million tons is given off as heat and light energy.58 In that sense, the first thing that comes to mind when the Sun is mentioned is the letters H (hydrogen) and He (helium) that stand for the Sun. All the 15 verses in Surat ash-Shams of the Qur'an (Shams meaning 'Sun'), end in the letters H and E. The Arabic equivalent of these letters are:
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The Arabic form of the verses in Surat ash-Shams and the final letters thereof can be seen below:
As can be seen, all the verses in Surat ash-Shams end in the letters He and Alif. The letter H stands for hydrogen and He for helium. No other Surah in the Qur'an ends in the letters HE in every verse from beginning to end. It is therefore extremely striking how only this Surah’s verses end with this particular sequence of letters. Surat ash-Shams's number – 91 - is also highly significant. Apart from hydrogen, there are ninety-one other elements in the Periodic Table, and these are made up of hydrogen elements. From hydrogen, the lightest element, to the heaviest – all of these are intra-atomic combinations of hydrogen atoms. For that reason, the H (hydrogen) atom in the Sun makes up the other ninety-one elements in nature. 59
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Almighty Allah has created all the details in nature, and is still creating them. All our knowledge about such details allow us to comprehend our Lord’s Omniscience. In one verse, we are told:
Allah, there is no god but Him, the Living, the Self-Sustaining. He is not subject to drowsiness or sleep. Everything in the heavens and the earth belongs to Him. Who can intercede with Him except by His permission? He knows what is before them and what is behind them but they cannot grasp any of His knowledge save what He wills. His Footstool encompasses the heavens and the earth and their preservation does not tire Him. He is the Most High, the Magnificent.(Surat al-Baqara, 255)
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Heart Massage
Many miraculous features of the Qur'an prove it is Allah’s Word. It contains scientific details, extraordinary scientific codes as well as many other features which categorically prove its divine status. In addition, information which could not have been scientifically proven during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad (saas) is found in abundance in Allah’s Holy Book. The fact that only 20th and 21st-century technology has confirmed some of the Qur’anic verses provides clear proof that the Qur'an cannot be the work of any human being.
One of the verses that may be referring to the future is verse 73 of Surat al-Baqara:
Remember when you killed someone and violently accused each other of it, and Allah brought out what you were hiding. We said, 'Hit him with part of it!' In that way Allah gives life to the dead and He shows you His Signs so that hopefully you will understand. (Surat al-Baqara, 72-73)
Among the meanings of the Arabic term "bibaadiha," translated as "with part of it" in the above verse, is "someone or some people." In the context of that meaning, the verse may be a reference to heart massage, striking the chest from above, which makes it possible to restart the heart if it has stopped beating. (Allah knows the truth.)
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| When the chest is struck from above during heart massage, the heart can start beating once again. The words “We said, ‘Hit him with part of it!’ In that way Allah gives life to the dead...” in the verse may be a reference to this effect of heart massage. (Allah knows the truth). |
In such a scenario, the person to whom the massage is administered has the characteristics of a dead body: loss of consciousness, debilitating respiratory problems and decreasing heartbeat. With our present-day knowledge, heart massage can be applied to someone whose heart has stopped, enabling heartbeat and vital functions to resume. Pressure is applied to the rib cage at specific intervals during heart massage. Then, the rhythmic contraction required for it to continue pumping blood can be re-established. In that context, the striking of a dead body in such a way as to restore it to life, as stated in the verse, may be suggestive of the heart massage technique. The Qur'an is the word of Almighty Allah, He Who creates all things from nothing - and Whose knowledge enfolds all things. Every verse of the Qur'an therefore contains information revealed with the wisdom of our Almighty Lord. In one verse, Allah refers to the Qur'an itself as follows:
... Will they not ponder the Qur'an? If it had been from other than Allah, they would have found many inconsistencies in it. (Surat an-Nisa', 82)
The Cloning of Living Things
[Satan said:] "I will lead them astray and fill them with false hopes. I will command them and they will cut off cattle's ears. I will command them and they will change Allah's Creation." Anyone who takes satan as his protector in place of Allah has clearly lost everything." (Surat an-Nisa', 119)
The above verse contains the expression "yubattikunna," which derives from the verb "battaka" meaning "to cut off or break off." The term "yughayyirunna"in the verse derives from the verb "ghayyara," meaning "to change, alter, impair a thing's original form." At the end of both verbs appears the confirmatory letter "nun." With these expressions, this verse of Surat an-Nisa' may, in one aspect, be pointing to the scientific activity of copying or cloning of organisms. (Allah knows the truth.) This is because cloning experiments are generally conducted with cells taken from an animal's ear. To put it another way, a replica of a living thing is produced along with the extraction of cells from tissue samples "cut from animals' ears," just as described in the verse.
A report by the German Federal Agricultural Research Center provides the following information:
The tissue collection phase is short and simple. Once an animal has been located and restrained, a tissue sample like an ear clipping can be collected within seconds. Furthermore, somatic cells can be collected from all species… For cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, camelids and llamas, a unified and identical procedure can be used by obtaining a tissue sample from the ear using notchers which are also used for setting earmarks… Clearly, for all species lymphocytes could be used, but somatic cells from ear clippings will be much easier to obtain and are therefore preferable.60
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| Snuppy, the cloned dog |
Some reports concerning organisms cloned by taking samples from ear tissue include:
- According to a report by Reuters dated 1 May, 2002, a research veterinarian at the University of Sao Paolo in Brazil, Jose Visintin, produced cloned embryos for the first time in the country by using cells taken from the ear of an adult cow.61
- According to a BBC report, South Korean scientists cloned a dog called Snuppy from cells taken from a three year-old Afghan hound. Researchers at Seoul National University extracted genetic material from the cells taken from the ear and placed it into an empty egg cell. An embryo was then obtained by stimulating the cell to divide.62
- Another BBC report said that a new clone had been produced using ear cells from an adult cow in research carried out by Dr. Jean-Paul Renard et al. at the Institute National de la Recherche Agronomique in France.63
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In the cloning process, DNA from a cell of the living thing planned to be copied is placed under the microscope and placed into an egg cell from another member of the same species. The DNA of the animal intended to be copied is used for this. An electric shock is then applied, which stimulates the egg cell to start dividing. The embryo continues to divide and is placed into the womb of a member of the species, and is then left to develop and be born.
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- According to information of the official Human Genome Project website, in February 2002, scientists from Advanced Cell Technologies (ACT), an American biotechnology company, carried out experiments on cloning a cow embryo using the skin cell of the donor cow's ear. 64
- A report by Associated Press, dated 24 January, 2000, announced that Japanese scientists
- had cloned the clone of a bull for the first time. In the re-cloning, skin tissue samples from
- the first generation cloned bull's ear were taken when it was four months old. These cells
- were then fused with an unfertilized egg from which the nucleus had been removed.65
- The way that changes in the Creation of living things are referred to in the Qur'an are highly significant. The expression "cutting off cattle's ears," at a time when no branches of science such as genetics or embryology existed, shows that the Qur'an has come down from the Sight of our Lord, Allah, Who is unfettered by time and space. We are also told at the end of the verse that these people will be disappointed when they alter what Allah has created. The verse may therefore be indicating that cloning will give rise to various problems for human beings. (Allah knows the truth.) Indeed, statements from the Genetic Science Learning Center of the University of Utah provide the following information:
When we hear of cloning successes, we learn about only the few attempts that worked. What we don't see are the many, many cloning experiments that failed! And even in the successful clones, problems tend to arise later, during the animal's development to adulthood.66
Information from the Human Genome Projects website takes this form:
Dolly, the first mammal to be cloned from adult DNA, [died on] Feb. 14, 2003. Prior to her death, Dolly had been suffering from lung cancer and crippling arthritis… More than 90% of cloning attempts fail to produce viable offspring… In addition to low success rates, cloned animals tend to have more compromised immune function and higher rates of infection, tumor growth, and other disorders. Japanese studies have shown that cloned mice live in poor health and die early… Appearing healthy at a young age unfortunately is not a good indicator of long term survival. Clones have been known to die mysteriously. For example, Australia's first cloned sheep appeared healthy and energetic on the day she died, and the results from her autopsy failed to determine a cause of death.67
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| Dolly, the first mammal to be cloned, died on February 14, 2003. |
In general terms, the risks arising from cloning experiments are as follows:
1) A high failure rate: The level of success is just 0.1%-3%. That means a failure rate of 970-999 for every 1000 experiments.68
2) Problems during development: Cloned animals that do survive generally have abnormally larger organs compared to the originals. This may lead to respiratory and circulatory difficulties, unhealthy kidneys and brains, and an impaired immune system.
3) Abnormal gene expression patterns: Although clones have the same DNA sequences as the originals, the cell nucleus in the clone does not have the same program as that in a natural embryo. To put it another way, the DNA cannot activate the right set of genes essential for the development of the clone at the right time. For example, cells of all kinds, nerve, bone, blood or skin for example, all have different programs but the genetic programs in the cloned embryo do not work as healthily as those in a natural embryo.
4) Telomeric differences: Chromosomes are shortened as cells divide. The reason for this is that DNA sequences at both ends of a chromosome, known as telomeres, are shortened during each DNA replication. As an animal grows older, the telomeres shorten as part of the natural aging process . Therefore, the copied life form has shortened chromosomes from the moment it is born, just as if it were actually older.
Genetic material taken from living cells is used in cloning experiments, but fertilization takes place artificially. The reproduction mechanism created by Allah is thus impaired with these methods, and unidentified diseases, developmental deficiencies and early deaths are encountered. Fourteen centuries ago, it was of course impossible to know that scientists would eventually engage in cloning and that they would encounter enormous problems despite the millions of dollars they spend on their projects. Once again, it is demonstrated in this verse that the Qur’an is a divine scripture.
The Contraction Motion That Facilitates Birth
The pains of labor drove her to the trunk of a date-palm. She said, 'Oh if only I had died before this time and was something discarded and forgotten!' A voice called out to her from under her, 'Do not grieve! Your Lord has placed a small stream at your feet. Shake the trunk of the palm towards you and fresh, ripe dates will drop down onto you.' (Surah Maryam, 23-25)
Modern medicine shows that squeezing an object during labor facilitates the baby's downward passage through the birth canal. The muscles used during contraction are the same as those that propel the baby outside the womb. Various methods are employed to achieve this, such as pulling on a cord suspended from the ceiling or on arms attached to the two sides of the bed. Also, the mother also has the option of holding onto and squeezing someone's hand.
A U-shaped bar, known as a "squat bar," is mounted onto the bed during labor and this is then used by the mother to quicken the delivery. Pulling on this bar facilitates the baby's departure from the womb, shortens the length of the birth canal, widens the mouth of the womb and reduces the need for many other devices and techniques during labor.69
This simple bar also helps the mother's squatting motions as she pulls herself up and down on it. It also means the mother remains immobile as the baby emerges. 70 In this position, the muscles needed to move the baby down the birth canal expend the minimum amount of energy. In addition, with the expansion of the pelvic bone, 30% more room is made available for the baby to pass through. With the expansion and contraction movement, the body's propulsive force is raised to the highest level and the baby is able to move smoothly during the birth process.
There is great wisdom in the way that, by means of Allah's angels, Mary shook the branches of the palm tree toward her. The Arabic word " huzzee" means "to shake fast, to move or to rock." It has been well-documented that dates facilitates the labor process and possess powerful and nutritious properties. But in addition, we must also note that as Mary (as) pulled the branches toward her to shake the dates from their branches must also have facilitated the birth and widened the birth canal. This technique applied in our own day by midwives all over the world, is yet another compelling proof that Allah supported Mary (as) with His compassion with the Wisest Counsel. It also proves, once again, that the Qur'an can only be a text sent by our Lord, the Omniscient.
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