For a
long time European philosophers and scientists believed that the earth stood
still in the centre of the universe and every other body including the sun moved
around it.
In the
West, this geocentric concept of the universe was prevalent right from the time
of Ptolemy in the second century B.C. In 1512, Nicholas Copernicus put forward
his Heliocentric Theory of Planetary Motion, which asserted that the sun is
motionless at the centre of the solar system with the planets revolving around
it.
In 1609,
the German scientist Yohannus Keppler published the ‘Astronomia Nova’.
In this he concluded that not only do the planets move in elliptical orbits
around the sun, they also rotate upon their axes at irregular speeds.
With this
knowledge it became possible for European scientists to explain correctly many
of the mechanisms of the solar system including the sequence of night and day.
After
these discoveries, it was thought that the Sun was stationary and did not rotate
about its axis like the Earth. I remember having studied this fallacy from
Geography books during my school days. Consider the following Qur’aanic verse:
“It is He
Who created The Night and the Day, And the sun and the moon: All
(the celestial bodies) Swim along, each in its Rounded course.” [Al-Qur’aan
21:33]
The Arabic
word used in the above verse is yasbahûn . The word yasbahûn is derived
from the word sabaha. It carries with it the idea of motion that comes from
any moving body. If you use the word for a man on the ground, it would not mean
that he is rolling but would mean he is walking or running.
If you use
the word for a man in water it would not mean that he is floating but would
mean that he is swimming
Similarly,
if you use the word yasbah for a celestial body such as the sun it would
not mean that it is only flying through space but would mean that it is also
rotating as it goes through space.
Most of
the school textbooks have incorporated the fact that the sun rotates about its
axis. The rotation of the sun about its own axis can be proved with the help of
equipment that projects the image of the sun on the tabletop so that one
can examine the image of the sun without being blinded.
It is
noticed that the sun has spots which complete a circular motion once every 25
days i.e. the sun takes approximately 25 days to rotate around its axis.
In fact,
the sun travels through space at roughly 150 miles per second, and takes about
200 million years to complete one revolution around the center of our Milky Way
Galaxy.
“It is
not permitted To the Sun to catch up The Moon, nor can The Night outstrip the
Day: Each (just) swims along In (its own) orbit (According to Law).” [Al-Qur’aan
36:40]
This
verse mentions an essential fact discovered by modern astronomy, i.e. the
existence of the individual orbits of the Sun and the Moon, and their journey
through space with their own motion.
The ‘fixed
place’ towards, which the sun travels, carrying with it the solar system, has
been located exactly by modern astronomy. It has been given a name, the Solar
Apex.
The solar
system is indeed moving in space towards a point situated in the constellation
of Hercules (alpha Layer) whose exact location is firmly established.
The moon
rotates around its axis in the same duration that it takes to revolve around
the earth. It takes approximately 29½ days to complete one rotation.
One
cannot help but be amazed at the scientific accuracy of the Qur’aanic verses.
Should we not ponder over the question: “What was the source of knowledge
contained in the Qur’aan?”
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