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The verse no 109 in chapter 18 of the Holy Quraan it says :
"Say
thou (o' our prophet Moh'd) 'should the sea become ink (to write) the
words of my lord, the sea will certainly be exhausted
ere the words of my Lord are exhausted, and though we bring
the like of that (the seas) to add thereto.' " [
Pooya Ahmed Ali Translation ]
(Quraan 18:109)
This emphasizes
the immensity of knowledge. If all the oceans of the world
were turned into ink, you could not exhaust the knowledge of
god's creation in recording it, even if you doubled the
quantity of the said water. To the laymen, this may sound to
be a hyperbole, but when the mind attuned to scientific
thinking compares the size of earth with, on the other, with
the immensity of the physical universe, whose
confines have not yet been reached by any telescope, you
will realize that the Quraan has not indulged in any
hyperbole.
The largest telescope, viz
the 200 inch one at Mount Palmor in California, can see
innumerable galaxies stars up to a distance of two
billion light years and there is no sign of an end of the
universe yet. If you further consider;
(a) the velocity of light is 186,000miles per
second
(b) that a light year is the distance reached by a ray
of light travelling at that speed for a whole year
(c) that our own particular galaxy contains 200 billion stars, the
total mass of which over 100 billion times that our solar
system, of which the earth itself is tiny part and
(d) that there are innumerable such galaxies up to the point
that the Palmor telescope can see, you will agree that the
size of the universe (and therefore the amount
of scientific knowledge which still lies beyond our
ken) has certainly not been over estimated by the Quraan.
Using the best 'guestimate'
for the average density of matter in space, the
present conclusion is that the radius of the universe
is two hundred thousand billion miles expressed
mathematically as 2 x 1,023 miles. Compare this with the
average of 2 miles depth of water over the surface of
the earth, which it self has a bare 4,000 miles of radius -
a mere speck of dust in the cosmos, and then try to imagine
how.
Now let us
travel in the reverse direction, i.e. inwards into the atom, which
was supposed for a long time, to be the smallest (and
therefore indivisible) piece of matter into which
any element could be subdivided. Eventually it was found
as a result of nuclear research, that it
comprised 3 sets of particles viz, electrons, protons
and neutrons, held together by gravitational and/or other
forces in such wise that the electron revolved round a
nucleus comprising the other two in the manner of planets revolving
round the sun. The distance between elements, the revolving
electrons and the nucleus, was scale for scale, of the
same order as between a planet and a sun. The different
elements had different numbers of electrons, protons,
and neutrons, and a periodic table was made out ranging
from hydrogen, which had only one electron, to nobelium, the
heaviest element so far discovered, which had 102. The
simplest or the smallest atom is that of hydrogen,
with only one proton and one electron and no neutrons.
.
| Notes:
Note
that elements 113, 115, and 117 are not known, but
are included in the table to show their expected
positions. There are unconfirmed reports for the
observation of elements 114 (ununquadium), 116 (ununhexium),
and 118 (ununoctium) and so these elements are also
included. Note that the reports for 118 have been
retracted, presumably maning 116 as well since that
is a decay product of 118. |
Taking the mass
of the electron as 1, the masses of the proton and the
neutron have been found to be 1,836 and 1,939 respectively.
Hence, practically the whole of the mass of the element is
concentrated in the nucleus. The atom cannot, therefore,
be considered as indivisible, as implied by its etymology.
So you see that, in addition to the world outside, the
bounds of which we have not yet been able to fathom, there
is probably an equally unfathomable world in the inside of
the atom, about which science is practically ignorant,
though hotly engaged in discovering new things everyday.
This then,
is the basic model of the atom viz., a positively charge
nucleus taking up very little room (about 1/100,000 that
of the whole atom), surrounded by a froth of negatively
charged electrons, revolving the empty space of the
atom, but containing practically none of its mass. For
this extra ordinary pioneering work on the ultimate
nature of the matter, Ernest Rutherford, later, Lord
Rutherford received The Nobel Prize in 1996, when
actually I had the honour of being his student.
As this is
not a lecture on nuclear physics, which has in the last
half century, grown as voluminous as, if not more than,
classical physics, I do not wish to over burn it
with more technical matter than is absolutely necessary
for the thesis I am leading up to. Well, present day
scientists believe that the proton-neutron model of the
nucleus is not likely to be seriously upset in the
future, but you never know. Newton's famous Law of
Gravity, which
constituted the foundation of all modern mechanics, was
considered the last word of physics for over two centuries, when
Einstein upset them by his Theory of Relativity.
So you
never can tell or be sure which way the cat will jump in
the field of science, at a future date. I may
mention in passing that, as a result of his
life-long work in the formulation of the so-called
Newton's Law of Motion, which revealed an inner unity
actuating all planetary and terrestrial bodies, which
were apparently moving hither and thither in utter
confusion, he (Newton) became a Unitarian in religion,
in other words, a protagonist, thus "hitching his
wagon" to star in prophetic revelation, or in the of
Quraan.
For a long
time, it was believed that the electrons, the protons,
and the neutron were the only subatomic particles that
existed. But while studying the mysterious cosmic rays
from space (associated with the name of Millken),
which had been first discovered in 1911 on a balloon flight high up in the atmosphere, scientists
have since discovered that they comprise particles
which were electrons, but with a positive instead of a
negative electric charge, an anti electron, to say,
and so they call it a positron, now watch the fun! As
soon as the positron encountered an electron, the two
annihilated each other, leaving pure energy in the
form of 'gamma' rays in their place. This confirmed
Einstein's remarkable suggestion that matter could be
converted into energy and vice versa. Later on, a
scientist (who won The Nobel Prize) detected the
reverse phenomenon, viz, gamma rays suddenly
disappearing and giving rise to an electron positron
pair.
But there
is more to come, scientists
discovered that, in addition to the anti electrons, there
were also such particles as the anti protons and the
anti neutrons. Naturally, some intriguing thoughts
arose from the discovery that three chief particles
making up matter all had anti particles. Were
particles and anti particles created in equal numbers
at the beginning of the universe? If so, did the
universe contain worlds, remote from ours, which were
made up of anti particles. Such a world would be like
ours and would follow exactly the same laws, with only
one trifling difference, viz, the plus and minus signs
would be reversed. It would a mirror image of our
world. Of course, if the two worlds ever came together,
matter encountering anti matter, they would
instantly destroy each other. Some of the descriptions
in the Quraan about the Day of Judgment might well be
proven
to be true, or rather more understandable after
scientific knowledge has advanced a little more. We are still groping in the
dark.
These descriptions
occur at many places in the Quraan one is enough by
the day of illustrations.
"And
the mountains shall vanish if they were a mirage"
(Quraan 78:20) "And
( they will find ) the mountains set in motion, as if
they are a mere vapour [mirage*]"
[Pooya Ahmed Ali Translation]
(Quraan 78:20)
Astronomers
have lately taken to looking speculatively at
distant galaxies to see if they can find some such clue. An
individual galaxy composed of anti matter would
not betray itself in any way that we could recognize. But
two colliding galaxies might. And indeed some
astronomers have actually found evidence of
this in certain galaxies, which they think, may
represent a collision of matter with a small
cloud of anti matter, or vice-versa. An astronomer
has suggested that the original
cosmic egg, from which the universe was born, may
have been formed of equal parts of matter and
anti matter, which promptly split into two universes,
one made of normal matter and the other of
anti-matter, and which were pushed by some sort of
repulsion between them. If anti-matter, why not anti gravity?
So somewhere, beyond our reach or observation,
there may be an anti-universe made up mostly of anti
matter. There are more things in heaven and earth than
are known to our philosophy or science.
The
discovery of anti-particles did not disturb the
physicist. On the contrary, it was a welcome
confirmation of the supposed symmetry of the
universe. What did disturb them was a succession of
discoveries showing that the electron, the proton
and the neutron and their anti's, were not the only "elementary
particles" they had to worry about. A
fantastic new crop of particles materialized before
the physicist had time to digest the ones they
already knew of.
Now we shall
not take you through the labyrinthine ways, in which
these discoveries came to be made. Radio activity
played a large role in this. Suffice it to say that
up till now, 29 to 30 particles and anti particles have
been discovered or predicted with different
densities and varying stability, of which you may
perhaps like to remember the proton, the neutron and
the anti-neutron, because they have what would
undoubtedly surprise you, a zero mass. How can a
particle have a zero mass? But such is the fact, and
according to the Corpuscular Theory of Light,
the corpuscles are supposed to be
photons which have no mass. Anyway, you
must cultivate an open mind and be prepared to accept
that what may at first appear unbelievable, whether it is
based on scientific investigation or prophetic
revelation. Some people believe in the one and
some in the other, depending on which of the two
opposing camps they attach themselves to
viz, religion or science. The true scientist,
however, keeps an open mind and believes in
both.
Now see
what has happened. All down the ages, philosophers
and scientists were agreed that all matter
could be subdivided till we reached the atom, which
was supposed to be indivisible. Modern science
has blown up this myth and we are given a
definite structure of the atom as a forth of
electrons and nucleus about 1/100,000 of the
size of the atom, comprising protons and neutrons. But
what about the structure of the nucleus itself? How
are protons and the neutrons held together?
 What
about the space between them? A popular model of the
nucleus likens it to the atom as a whole, picturing
nucleus within the nucleus, liken it as occupying
shells and sub-shells. How can there be room for
independent shells of nucleons in the tiny,
highly packed nucleus? Well, however it is managed,
the evidence suggests that there is a lot of
empty space inside the nucleus itself. Actually, a
scientist has lately found that the nucleus
consists of a high density core, surrounded by a skin
of gradually increasing density but occupying only
about one-eighth of its volume. Very well, but what
about the structure of the core? I am afraid we
find ourselves where we were before we succeeded in
opening the atom. Instead of the atom, we now have
the core. What next? Just as we don't know what is
beyond two hundred thousand billion, billion miles
outwards into the universe, we don't know what is
inside the central core, which occupies only
1/800,000 of the volume of the atom. The mystery
remains unsolved. And so it will be forever and
ever, and the immensity of undiscovered knowledge
will grow greater and greater, as predicted by the
Quraan.
We have
reached the point that the mass of the atom is
concentrated in the core of the nucleus, and
occupying about one 800,000th of the volume of the atom, the
rest of which is vacant space filled by a froth of
electrons and nucleons of comparatively low mass. It
is now open to speculation whether, either further
scientific investigation may not find the core as
consisting mainly of vacant space, at the
heart of which most of the atom's mass is
concentrated. So we have the atom, which
has a nucleus, which in turn has a core, which may
have a heart, which later on may be found to have a
heart of hearts, and so on infinitum, till we
get to what we may, for want of a more
expressive word, call the soul. But can we be sure
that we have at last reached the "soul of
the matter" ? The mystery only
deepens the
further we investigate inside the atom, or see beyond
the confines of the presently discovered universe, by
inventing telescopes of higher and higher
penetration.
When
we read about all of this, sometimes people feel "sick
and tired". But here in this topic, the owner is trying
to prove that the infinitude is the word
of scientific knowledge, but so far he has touched
only one or two aspects of one of physical sciences. There
still remains the much vaster bulk of the
chemical, the biological, the medical, the mental
and the moral sciences, not to speak of Christian
science, black magic, spiritualism, occultism,
palmistry, homeopathy and other such border line
sciences to which the unscientifically minded
scientists even deny the stature of science. The
Oxford dictionary includes political economy, philology,
philosophy, ethics, mathematics, literature,
history, even pugilism in the category of science,
which is taken in its broad sense of "an
organised body of knowledge that has been
accumulated on a subject".
It is
obvious therefore, that a talk of this nature cannot
do justice to the magnitude of the existing
knowledge, but it can
be said, without the risk of serious contradiction,
that in whichever field of science we go into
deeply enough, we end up with mystery, which
appears unsolvable. The absolute frontier of
knowledge is never reached. The horizon is for
ever
widening, but beyond it lies the midst of over an
deepening mystery.
As this
is not enough there are so many mysteries e.g. the
mystery of life after death, sex, heredity, animal instinct,
the
human mind, intuition and the Holy Prophet's
revelations. When the scientist or the philosopher
comes to the end of his tether and cannot see
through the impenetrable fog surrounding the
existing frontiers of knowledge, he starts guessing
and even parables.
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