The Universe, endless, wonderful and incredibly exciting.
Many times larger than the Earth, gigantic black holes whose structures defy the known
laws of physics, the nuclear reactor of the Sun, which is also the source of our life
giving energy, and billions of cities of stars that make up galaxies.
The Universe is truly unimaginably large and is full of wonders waiting to be discovered.
It is so vast that we cannot even properly determine the boundaries of the Universe.
According to the latest astrophysical research, the limits of the observable Universe are at
least 93 billion light years in diameter.
This is a number far beyond our comprehension.
Let's consider that light travels at a speed of 300,000 kilometers a second, a speed that
would allow one photon of light to travel around the world seven times in just a second.
93 billion light years.
While we are still not able to comprehend the meaning of this number, the situation is even
further complicated by another finding.
Every second, the Universe is expanding at an alarming rate, and this speed is gradually increasing.
In this episode of Miracle Planet, we will examine the expansion of the magnificent Universe and
our world's place within it.
We will also look at the beginning of it all, the Big Bang, which is the moment of birth of
our Universe and some of the amazing new discoveries of astronomy.
Scientific information is important for us.
Every new piece of information about the Universe we obtain allows us to widen our horizons a little
bit more.
By God's grace, as we expand our horizons and increase our knowledge, we grow more in awe of
our Lord's infinite wisdom, glory, and power.
Let's begin this episode of Miracle Planet.
Our Place in the Universe
If our minds are unable to really grasp the enormous scale of the Universe, how do we know
our place in it?
We can use the size of the world as a benchmark to help us understand the true magnitude of
the Universe.
For example, a point of reference might be that the diameter of the Sun is 103 times that
of the Earth.
Let's explain this using a comparison.
If we take the size of the Earth to be that of a marble, then the Sun becomes a sphere
twice the size of a soccer ball.
What is really striking here is the distance between them.
The above model, our Earth, the size of a marble, is 280 meters away from the Sun, the size of
two footballs.
If we apply this to our solar system, then we would need to place the planets kilometers
away.
We may conclude from this simulation that the solar system is truly huge.
However, compared to the size of the Milky Way galaxy in which it lies, the size of the
solar system is rather modest.
This is because the Milky Way galaxy contains around 250 billion stars, many of which are
even larger than the Sun.
The Milky Way is such a massive collection of stars that if you tried to cross it with the
jet plane, it would take you 100 billion years to go from one end to the other.
However, what is truly incredible is that the Milky Way galaxy is generally considered a small
place within space.
There are other galaxies in space.
In fact, it is estimated that there are somewhere between 200 and 300 billion of them.
And as more are continuously being discovered, the actual number remains unknown.
Our world was created as a very special place for life within a universe so vast that we cannot
reach its limits.
For us, the planet's thousands of meters high mountains, the wide plains and the enormous
oceans make the world seem huge.
But in comparison to the vast dimensions of space, it covers an almost negligible area.
When you consider the width of the universe and the size of celestial bodies, then the size
of the world is as tiny as a grain of sand in my hand.
Our goal is to envision a better view of our small position in the universe than the picture
of a pale blue dot that you now see on your screen.
Yes, as you may have guessed, that little blurred blue dot in the photograph shows our world all
alone in the vastness of space.
The Voyager 1 probe took the photograph from the staggering distance of 6.4 billion kilometers
away from the Earth.
The astronomer Carl Sagan made the following comments in his speech on this impressive photograph.
Consider again that dot, that's here, that's home, that's us.
On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being
who ever was, lived out their lives.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.
Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that in glory
and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturing, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position
in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.
We can better understand our position in the universe due to advances in science, and we
realize how we are mistaken to so greatly regard ourselves.
To be continued.
Hubble Ultra Deep Field Photograph
In 2004, we peered further back in time than ever before and captured the light from the
most distant galaxies in the universe.
There is another important image that helps us better understand the size of the universe,
a deep space photograph. Let's look at it together.
The image you can see on the screen was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope over a period
of 11 days.
The lens of this famous telescope was focused on Orion at a very small point of space just
below the Hunter constellation. The image taken by the telescope has become
one of the most talked about images of the skies in modern times.
Every tiny point of light in the image called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field is not a star.
In fact, it's a galaxy that contains hundreds of billions of stars. In effect, it's a portrait
of around 10,000 galaxies.
The most distant galaxies in that image are over 13 billion light years away. The Hubble
Telescope allows us to look back at almost the beginning of time itself and provides important
clues from deep space as to how the universe began.
Providing just the few examples we have seen of the glorious celestial bodies and wonders
of the universe are adequate to show the uniqueness of God's artistry in His creation. God invites
people to contemplate on the creation of the heavens in Surat An-Nazi'at in the Quran.
I seek refuge in God from the accursed Satan.
Are you stronger in structure or is heaven? God, He built it. He raised its vault high and
made it level.
The art of God's creation of the heavens is very great and magnificent. As mentioned earlier,
the universe is so overwhelmingly large that even comprehending the meaning of numbers used
to describe it such as billions of light years is difficult.
Yet there is one truth that we all know. The entirety of what we have mentioned above did
not exist 13.8 billion years ago. Matter was not in existence. Even time and space were not present.
Then, the universe and everything inside of it came into existence all of a sudden, meaning
that all were created.
The Big Bang.
Thank you.
Let us now return to the beginning of the universe 13.8 billion years ago and provide through
scientific inquiry an answer to the question, what happened at that crucial moment when
everything came into existence from nothing?
Let's watch.
The Big Bang was first proposed in the 1920s as a theory which showed that the universe
had a beginning by the Russian cosmologist and mathematician Alexander Friedman and the
Belgian physicist George Lemaitre.
The theory is widely accepted by scientists, especially physicists, due to the extremely
detailed evidence provided, infinite mass, zero volume, in short nothingness, and then
suddenly a moment of presence.
German science still cannot explain what happened in the first moment of creation, 10 to the
power of minus 43 seconds long.
This represents a very short amount of time.
10 to the power minus 43 or 0.42 zeros and a 1.
This period of 10 to the minus 42 seconds is known as Planck time.
This period, named after German scientist Max Planck, is so short that a special term is
required to express it.
What we know according to scientific evidence is as follows, stars, galaxies, and the building
blocks of our lives, the calcium in our bones and the iron in our blood, as well as other
elements in our bodies such as nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen, the atoms required for the air
that we breathe, and the water that we drink, everything, all have come into existence with
the moment of creation called the Big Bang.
The basis of everything we see is atoms and molecules.
Scientists have so far discovered 118 elements, and of these, 92 occur naturally.
When we consider the complexity of our surroundings, this is absolutely astounding.
At the same time, we know that beyond the Earth, everything we see in the universe is made
of the same 92 elements.
The steel, rubber, and glass in a car are made up of a number of different materials.
If we go deeper, we see that those materials are made of combinations of various elements
such as iron, silicon, chrome, and carbon.
Every atom of the car was created billions of years ago with the formation of the universe.
The atoms of every single element came into existence during the first minutes following
the Big Bang.
The raw materials of the technological gadgets we are using this moment, the parts that make
up our buildings, the leaves of every tree, the center of the Earth, the oceans, and people's
bodies.
For example, the water we drink is very old.
The hydrogen atoms here were formed following the Big Bang in an environment of unimaginably
high temperatures.
In other words, the hydrogen atoms in this water were created 13.8 billion years ago.
Now let's look at the evidence for the Big Bang that has led it to become accepted by the
global scientific community.
Proofs of the Big Bang
Expansion of the Universe
In 1929, in the California Mount Wilson Observatory, an American astronomer by the name of Edwin Hubble
made one of the greatest discoveries in the history of astronomy.
While he observed the stars with the giant telescope, he found out that the light from
them was shifted to the red end of the spectrum, and that this shift was more pronounced the further
a star was from the Earth.
This discovery had an electrifying effect in the world of science, because according to
the recognized rules of physics, the spectra of light beams traveling towards the point
of observation tend towards violet light, while the spectra of the light beams moving away
from the point of observation tend towards red.
During Hubble's observations, the light from stars was discovered to tend towards red.
This meant that they were constantly moving away from us.
For long, Hubble made another important discovery.
The stars and the galaxies were not only moving away from us, they were also moving away from
each other.
Only one conclusion could be reached from a universe where everything is moving away from
each other.
The universe is constantly expanding.
While science discovered the expansion of the universe in the 1920s, this truth was announced
by the Quran 1,400 years earlier.
I seek refuge in God from the accursed Satan.
As for heaven, we built it with great power and gave it its vast expanse.
Contrary to what materialists assume, the universe did not emerge because of some coincidences
in matter, but it came into existence with God's creation.
And definitely, the most accurate source of information on the origins of the universe is the Word of God.
Cosmic background radiation 1% of the static electricity found on your television comes from cosmic microwave background radiation left over from the Big Bang of 13.8 billion years ago.
How can that be?
Let's find out.
In 1948, George Gamow made a new proposal concerning the Big Bang.
According to Gamow, if the universe was formed by the Big Bang, then there must be radiation
left over from this explosion.
What's more, this radiation must be uniform throughout the universe.
It wasn't long until proof of the necessary existence of this radiation was found.
In 1965, two researchers named Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered these waves of radiation.
They called it cosmic background radiation and discovered that it had no particular source but was spread all over the universe.
It was a remnant of the first stages of the Big Bang and was a wave of heat that had spread evenly to everywhere in the universe.
Penzias and Wilson won the Nobel Prize for their discovery.
In 1989, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration launched the COBE satellite to study cosmic background radiation.
The advanced sensors on this satellite took only eight minutes to confirm the findings of Penzias and Wilson.
COBE had discovered proof of the Big Bang as the beginning of the universe.
The greatest astronomical discovery of all time, the Big Bang theory, has been decisively proven.
The COBE-2 satellite which was launched following COBE only further confirmed the calculations regarding the Big Bang that had already been made.
A picture of the Big Bang.
Whichever direction we look in space, we can detect light that has been traveling to us from the beginning of the universe, nearly 13.8 billion years ago.
However, while the radiation mentioned earlier cannot be seen by the human eye, it can't easily be detected by radio telescopes.
On the screen you can see a map showing the radiation in the universe from the Big Bang when the universe was only 380,000 years old.
The image taken by the European Space Agency Planck satellite of the traces of this cosmic radiation was obtained after 16 years of hard work.
It shows us the remaining echoes of the birth of the universe.
The initial findings of the Planck mission showed us clusters of distant galaxies that had never been seen before and radiation that still exists after the Big Bang, thus unearthing further clues as to how the universe began.
Proportion of hydrogen to helium
Another further item of proof for the Big Bang is the amount of hydrogen gas compared to the amount of helium gas in space.
It is understood from recent measurements that the proportion of hydrogen to helium gas in the universe corresponds to the theoretical amount that has been calculated to have remained after the Big Bang.
If the universe had had no beginning and had therefore been in existence forever, hydrogen within it would have been completely burned up and have been converted into helium.
What do the scientists say?
All of this strong evidence has led to firm acceptance of the Big Bang theory by the scientific community.
It is now when concluded by science that the universe began and was formed by the Big Bang.
Even materialist scientists who have objected to the Big Bang theory have had to admit that the universe was created in a moment from nothing.
Perhaps the most important of these is the famous physicist Sir Fred Hoyle.
Hoyle has said the following about the implications of the Big Bang.
The Big Bang theory holds that the universe began with a single explosion.
Yet an explosion merely throws matter apart, while the Big Bang has mysteriously produced the opposite effect, with matter clumping together in the form of galaxies.
Another intricate feature of the order in the Big Bang is the speed of the explosion.
Paul Davies, a renowned professor of theoretical physics, stated that
The pace of expansion after the Big Bang is incredibly fine-tuned and he reached the conclusion that this phenomena could have only been precisely calculated.
Careful measurement puts the rate of expansion very close to a critical value, at which the universe will just escape its own gravity and expand forever.
A little slower and the cosmos would collapse, a little faster, and the cosmic material would have long ago completely dispersed.
If the explosion after the Big Bang had been even a little faster, then the cosmic material would have long ago completely dispersed.
If the expansion rate had differed from its actual value by more than 10 to the minus 18th, one contrillionth of a second, then there would have been no universe.
If the density of the universe was a little bit more, in that case the universe would not be expanding, but contracting, ultimately diminishing to a single point.
If the initial density had been a little bit less, then the universe would be rapidly expanding, but in this case, atomic particles would not be attracting each other.
And no stars and no galaxies would ever have formed.
And no start.
So please feel free.
Of course not.
See you World of Warwick XX
No.
Nouri moi.
Love from the Grっちon.
Perfect systems we can observe in the universe, the stars, the earth, the people living on
the surface of the earth, trees, animals, flowers, and all other life. All of this could never have been
formed following any type of random explosion with atoms coming together on their own. Everywhere
we look, we see proofs of our Lord's presence and his superior power. The Quran tells us how the
universe came out of nothing. I seek refuge in God from the accursed Satan. He is the originator of
the heavens and the earth.
Matter and time have been brought into existence by the Creator, who is independent of all these
concepts and has infinite power. The Creator is God, the Lord of the heavens and the earth.
At a time when humanity had only limited knowledge about the universe 14 centuries ago, the Quran gave
this information about the universe in line with the Big Bang Theory, that it came into being from
a minute entity that expanded after being separated.
I seek refuge in God from the accursed Satan.
Do those who are unbelievers not see that the heavens and the earth were sewn together,
and then we unstitched them, and that we made from water every living thing? So will they not have faith?
The original word, Rakht, which is translated as joined together in the verse, means anything close, solid, impervious, united together in a solid mass. That is, it is used for two different pieces that form an entity, and one of them breaks through the other and makes its way out. Indeed, it is used for two different pieces that form an entity, and one of them breaks through the other and makes its way out.
Indeed, when we are reminded of the first moment of the Big Bang, we see that the point called the cosmic egg contained all the matter in the universe. Everything, the heavens and the earth, that were not created yet, were contained in this spot in a state of rock.
Afterwards, this cosmic egg exploded, causing its matter to fatah, separating one from the other, and in the process created the structure of the whole universe.
Have a look around, and you will see that all is in a state of perfect peace, stability, and perfection. This is because everything on earth is not there by chance. Nothing is out of control, or has developed unconsciously.
Everything is connected with a wonderfully proportionate and remarkable order, because it belongs to our Lord, who created a magnificent and miraculous artistry out of one explosion.
Allah informs us in the Quran, I seek refuge in God from the accursed Satan. To him is due the primal origin of the heavens and the earth.
That brings us to the end of this episode. Goodbye until next time. Goodbye.
Goodbye.