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Scientists are now certain that the universe came to being by a big bang
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In the Holy Quran we read:
"Ãæáã íÑ
ÇáÐíä ßÝÑæÇ Ãä ÇáÓãÇæÇÊ æÇáÃÑÖ
ßÇäÊÇ ÑÊÞÇ ÝÝÊÞäÇåãÇ.." a
(ÇáÃäÈíÇÁ:30)
"Haven't
the unbelievers seen that the heavens and the earth were joined together
(in one singularity), then we clove both of them asunder.” (21:30)
This
verse
reflects the unity of creation as a dominating factor in the
orderly form of the universe throughout its evolutionary history
from one stage to another.
However, long before
discovering the established phenomenon of the red shift, and its
logical consequence of describing our universe as an expanding
one, scientists used Einstein's theory of general relativity to
extrapolate back in time and came to the striking conclusion
that the universe had actually emerged from a single,
unbelievably small, dense, hot region (the Hot Big Bang Model of
the universe).
Formation of the Universe
George Gamow formally
proposed the model in 1948, after a lengthy discussion on other
models of the universe by a number of scientists (e.g. Albert
Einstein, 1917; William de Sitter, 1917; Alexander Friedmann,
1922; George Lemaiyre, 1927, etc.). Lemaitre is credited for introducing the idea of the
"primeval atom", where galaxies originated as
fragments ejected by the explosion of this atom.
In 1948, George Gamow
modified Lemaitre's hypothesis into the "Big Bang
theory" of the origin of the universe. In this theory,
Gamow proposed that the universe was created in a gigantic
explosion, whereby the various elements observed today were
produced within the first few minutes after the Big Bang, as the
extremely high temperature and density of the universe would
fuse subatomic particles into the chemical elements.
More recent calculations indicate that hydrogen and helium were the
primary products of the Big Bang, with heavier elements being
produced later within stars. The extremely high density within the "primeval
atom" would cause the universe to expand rapidly. As it expanded, the smoky cloud of hydrogen and helium
thus formed would cool and condense into nebulae stars,
galaxies, clusters, super clusters, black holes, etc.
This explains the original
singularity of the universe; its explosion to a huge cloud of
smoke from which the different heavenly bodies were formed by
separation into eddies of various masses followed by
condensation. The condensed bodies were arranged into stellar
systems, clusters, galaxies, supergalaxies, etc., and the formed
galaxies started to drift away from each other, causing the
steady expansion of the universe.
The
Glorious Quran describes these three successive stages in the
verses (21: 30), (41: 11) and (21: 104). The first and the third
of these verses are discussed above, while the second reads:
"Ëã
ÇÓÊæì Åáì ÇáÓãÇÁ æåí ÏÎÇä ÝÞÇá áåÇ
æááÃÑÖ ÅÆÊíÇ ØæÚðÇ
Ãæ ßÑåðÇ ÞÇáÊÇ ÃÊíäÇ ØÇÆÚíä"a
(ÝÕáÊ)
"Then
He (Allah) turned to the sky while it was smoke, and ordered it
the earth to come into being willingly or unwillingly, they
answered: we do come in willing obedience*" (41: 11)
Big Bang Evidence
As the universe expanded,
the residual radiation (radiant heat) from the big bang continued
to spread outwardly and to cool down gradually until about the 3K
(= - 270°C) of today. This relic radiation was detected by radio
astronomy in 1964, thus providing direct material evidence for
"The Big Bang Model".
Further evidence in
support of this model is provided by the chemical composition of
the observed universe. This
amounts to about 74% hydrogen and 24 % helium (by mass), with only
traces of other elements that in total amount to about 2%. All the
recorded hydrogen in the observed universe and almost all the
recorded helium are primordial, although some helium is currently
produced by nuclear fusion of hydrogen in the sun as well as in
other stars. Nevertheless, the total mass of hydrogen produced by
the process of nuclear fusion within all the stars since the
beginning of creation amounts to only a small
percent.
It is calculated that when
the universe was 3 minutes old, its temperature must have been 109
°C (cf. Ohanian, 1985, p. D-6). At such a high temperature, hydrogen was subject to nuclear
fusion, leading to the formation of helium. Theoretical
calculations show that the fusion reactions led to an abundance of
about 75% hydrogen and 25% helium, which is a remarkable agreement
with the observed abundance. This further confirms the Hot Big Bang model for the
creation of the universe. The
Hot Big Bang model has steadily and successfully battled other
explanations for the origin of the universe, and the model has
been gradually refined with time.
Hot to Cold
The "Hot Big Bang Model" for the origin of the universe
envisages a beginning from an extremely small, hot, dense initial
state some 10-15 billion years ago. This initial, minute body
exploded and started to expand, forming the still expanding, vast,
cold universe of today. The
model predicts the formation of nuclei, the relative abundance of
certain elements, and the existence and exact temperature of the
cosmic microwave background radiation (or the glow of radiation
left over from the initial explosion, which is currently
permeating the universe).
The prediction of the
cosmic background radiation made by Ralph A. Alpher of Union
College and Robert Herman of the University of Texas at Austin was
confirmed by Arno Penzias and Robert W. Wilson of Bell
Laboratories in 1964.
Despite its success, the
Hot Big Bang Model leaves many features of the universe
unexplained. For
example, the universe today includes a vast number of regions that
could never have been in causal contact at any stage in their
entire history. These regions are moving away from one another at
such a rate that any information, even traveling at the speed of
light, could not cover the distance between them. This
"horizon problem" makes it difficult to account for the
striking uniformity of the cosmic background radiation (cf. J.J.
Halliwell, 1991, p. 76). Other unexplained features in the Hot Big Bang Model
include the "flatness problem", the origin of large
scale structures such as galaxies, galactic clusters and super
clusters, etc.
The Inflationary Universe
In 1980, Alan H. Guth of
M.I.T. suggested a further refinement of the
Big Bang model that he called "the inflationary universe
scenario". In
this scenario, the universe is believed to have started with a
very brief, but exceedingly rapid period of expansion (for about
10-30
second), in which matter consisted of scalar-field particles
(white in the Hot Big Bang model, the matter content of the
universe is presumed to have been a uniformly distributed plasma
or dust).
As mentioned by J.J.
Halliwell (1991), the origin of the universe in the inflationary
scenario can be explained as follows: by following the expansion
of the universe backward in time, the size of this vast, complex
universe tends towards zero. Here the strength of the gravitational field and the energy
density of matter tend towards infinity. This means that the universe appears to have emerged from a
singularity; a region of infinite curvature and energy density at
which the known laws of physics break down. These conditions are a
consequence of the famous " singularity theorems",
proved in 1960 by Stephen W. Hawking and Roger Penrose of the
University of Oxford. These theorems showed that under reasonable
assumptions any model of the expanding universe extrapolated
backward in time will encounter an initial singularity.
The
singularity theorems do not imply, however, that a singularity
will physically occur. Rather,
the theory predicting them - classical general relativity - breaks
down at very high curvatures and must be superseded by the quantum
theory. Near a
singularity, space - time becomes highly curved; its volume
shrinks to very small dimensions, and here only the quantum theory
can be applied.
Quantum
cosmologists began a few decades ago (since the 1960s) to address
the problems of the origin and evolution of the universe in a more
subtle way than that proposed by classical astronomy.
Quantum
cosmology attempts to describe a system - fundamentally - in terms
of its wave function. Yet
many conceptual and technical difficulties arise. At the
singularity, space becomes infinitely small, and the energy
density infinitely great. To look beyond such a moment requires a complete, manageable
quantum theory of gravity, which is currently lacking.
Whether to
accept the Hot Big Bang model of the universe, or its modified
inflationary scenario explanations on the basis of conventional or
quantum astronomy, the established fact is that our universe
emerged from a single, infinitesimally small, dense, hot source. To agree or differ on the events that unfolded since that
moment, including the formation of matter, followed by its
coalescence into galaxies, stars, planets and chemical systems,
does not change the fact of the one singularity from which our
universe was created.
The Quranic precedence with this fact at a time
when nobody had the slightest knowledge of it, or even for several
centuries after the revelation was received, is indeed most
striking. The objective notion to this Quranic verse in the right
context of a science course can indeed be spirit lifting and
enlightening for the younger Muslim generations of students and
faculty.
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.
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