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Geysers
are a post-eruptive phenomenon.
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The
Glorious Qur'an reads:
"æÇáÈÍÑ
ÇáãÓÌæÑ" (ÇáØæÑ: 6)
"And
by the sea that is set on fire" (At-Tur: 6)
This
Qur'anic verse comes in the context of an oath to emphasize the special
significance of the subject matter by which the oath is given, as Allah (all
glory be to Him) is definitely above the need to give such an oath.
Searching
for Meanings
Now,
what is the special significance of the sea that is set on fire? Both water and
fire are incompatible, as water quenches fire, and fire sets water to boiling
and evaporation. How then can an ocean full of water be set on fire? Such
incompatibility has driven early commentators on the Holy Qur'an to suggest that
this could only happen on the Last Day, depending on another Qur'anic verse
where such an event is explicitly described (LXXXI: 6). Nevertheless, the
context in which the oath "by the sea set on fire " and 5 preceding
verses describe realities that are all currently existing in our present day
work, and hence another linguistic meaning for the adjective "al-masjour"
other than "set on fire" was earnestly searched for.
Among
the linguistic meanings derived from such an adjective is: "full of water
and restrained from further encroachment over the nearby continental
masses". This is correct, because the largest quantity of fresh water today
(77% of all water on land) is entrapped in the form of very thick ice sheets in
the two Polar Regions as well as in the form of ice caps to highly elevated
mountains. For such a great mass of ice to melt, an increase of only 4° - 5° C
in the temperature of the lower atmosphere above the average summer temperatures
is needed. In such a case, this melt can raise the water level in present day
seas and oceans by more than 100m, which is enough to drown most of the present
day plains where the majority of human settlements exist. Nevertheless, Earth
scientists have recently discovered that all of the present day oceans and some
seas (such as the red Sea and the Arabian Sea) are physically set on fire, while
others (such as the Mediterranean, the Black and the Caspian Seas) are not.
The
Phenomenon of Mid-oceanic Volcanism
As
mentioned previously, more than 64,000
km of mid-ocean ridges have - so far - been mapped around mid-ocean rift
valleys. These oceanic ridges are basically composed of volcanic basaltic rocks
that have been spouting out from the oceanic rift zones (at temperatures of
about 1000° C or even more). Such intensive oceanic volcanicity builds up the
mid-oceanic ridges and spreads them out laterally, by the phenomenon known as
sea-floor spreading. As they are constantly fed by fresh basaltic flows, new
slabs of the oceanic crust are built on both sides of the rift zones.
Mid-oceanic volcanism evolves from fissure volcanism that emanates from the
mid-oceanic rift systems where the oceanic crust is rifted and the opposite
sides of the rift zone are pushed aside by the emanating magma. Basaltic flows
and eruptions, fed from elongated secondary magma chambers below the center of
the mid-oceanic ridge, pour out along the ridge axis. Sea-floor basalt from the
surface of the oceanic crust, (which is about 7km thick on the average) normally
consists of:
0-1
km of sediments (top)
1 km of pillow lava basalts
5 km of gabbro sills fed by dikes (bottom)
Post-eruptive
phenomena that can result from interaction of phreatic waters with buried hot
rocks include the following (cf. Emiliani, C., 1992, p 203):
-
Hot
springs, which are formed when phreatic water is heated and mineralized in
contact with hot rocks.
-
Geysers,
which are periodic eruptions of boiling hot water (200°C or even more) due
to circulation with superheated waters at depth, which are in direct or
indirect contact with hot rocks (1000°C or even more).
-
Fumaroles,
which are gaseous exhalations of water vapor enriched with SO², H²S, HCI,
and HF (in order of abundance).
-
Solfataras,
which are fumaroles rich in sulfur compounds.
Most of the current volcanic activity at the bottoms of seas and oceans has been
going on for the past 20-30 million years, although some have persisted in their
activity for 100 million years or even more (e.g. the Canary Islands). During
such long periods of activity, the formed volcanic cones were gradually carried
away for several hundreds of kilometers from the constantly renewed plate edge.
Consequently, such drifting volcanic cones became out of reach of the magma body
that used to feed them and hence, faded out and died. The current floor of the
Pacific Ocean contains a great number of submerged, subdued volcanic craters (guyots),
besides a large number of violently active volcanoes (e.g. the ring of fire).
Form
the above mentioned discussion it is obvious that all seas and oceans that are
currently experiencing sea-floor spreading are physically set on fire, while
closing seas are not. Such fire on the seabed is in the form of very hot
basaltic flows and other magmatic extrusions pouring out from the rift valley
systems that rupture the Earth's lithosphere. Such rifts run for terms of
thousands of kilometers across the globe, in all directions, to a depth of
65-150 km where it connects the seabed with the extremely hot plastic, semi -
molten (asthenosphere) and hence cause such seas to be physically set on fire.
This
most striking fact of our planet was not known until the very late sixties and
early seventies of this century. The explicit Qur'anic precedence with such a
very striking, but deeply hidden fact of our seas and oceans is a clear
testimony that this Glorious Book is the word of The Creator, in its Divine
Purity.
Read
also:
Dr. Zaghlool El-Naggar is a Fellow of the Islamic Academy of Sciences. Member of the Geological Society of London, the Geological Society of Egypt and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Fellow of the Institute of Petroleum, London. Prof. Naggar is the author/co-author of many books and more than 40 research papers in the field of Islamic Thought, Geology, General Science and Education. He was awarded by the Ministry of Education in Egypt the top “Secondary Education Award” as well as the seventh Arab Petroleum Congress Best Papers Award in 1970. Elected a member of the IAS Council (1994 and 1999), Prof. Naggar is currently working at the Arab Development Institute.
