Particles or Waves Striking the Shore
What are the properties of the light that makes it possible for us to see the world?
Or rather, that part of it in which we live?
Scientists seeking an answer to that question have been unable to reach a clear and definitive conclusion,
despite all their years of research.
The main subject of debate with regard to light is whether the light particles known as photons
are emitted as particles or as waves.
In crude terms, does light travel from one place to another like particles?
Or else like waves striking the shore?
Light can sometimes be observed to move like the waves that form on the surface of the water
when someone throws a stone into a swimming pool,
and at other times it seems to possess the property of a material particle,
striking at intervals like raindrops beating against the window pane.
The interesting situation applies not just to light, but also to the electron,
one of the fundamental sub-particles of the atom.
The electron also exhibits both particle and wave characteristics.
This situation caused great confusion in the scientific world.
This confusion was resolved as follows, according to the words of the famous professor of conceptual physics,
Richard P. Feynman.
Now we know how the electrons in light behave, but what can I call it?
If I say they behave like particles, I give the wrong impression.
Also, if I say they behave like waves,
they behave in their own inimitable way,
which technically could be called a quantum mechanical way.
They behave in a way that is like nothing that you have ever seen before.
An atom does not behave like a weight hanging on a spring and oscillating,
nor does it behave like a miniature representation of the solar system
with little planets going around in orbits,
nor does it appear to be somewhat like a cloud or a fog of some sort surrounding the nucleus.
It behaves like nothing you have ever seen before.
There is one simplification at least.
Electrons behave in this respect in exactly the same way as photons.
They are both screwy, but in exactly the same way.
How they behave, therefore, takes a great deal of imagination to appreciate,
because we are going to describe something that is different from anything you know about.
Unable to account for this behavior of electrons, scientists gave it a new name,
Quantum Mechanical Motion.
Professor Feynman describes the perfection here by saying,
Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, but how can it be like that?
Because you will get down the drain into a blind alley from which nobody yet has escaped.
Nobody knows how it can be like that.
However, what Feynman mentions here as a blind alley is not in fact so.
The reason why some people are still totally baffled is that despite all the manifest evidence,
they still refuse to accept that a sublime creator brought these extraordinary systems and balances into being.
Yet the position is crystal clear.
Allah created the universe out of nothing, based on flawless balances and with no previous model.
The answer to the question that Darwinists cannot escape, that they are unable to understand,
that certain scientists keep asking them in the words,
but how could this have happened, lies in the fact that Allah is the creator of all things,
and that being came into existence through his commanding it to be.
Allah has revealed this certain truth in the Quran.
The originator of the heavens and earth, when he decides on something,
he just says to it, be, and it is.
Duck.
Let's pray.