44:37 "Among His signs are the
night and the day, as well as the sun and the moon; (therefore) adore not the sun or the
moon, but prostrate yourselves in adoration before God, who has created them- if it is Him
alone whom you worship."
We can not possibly appreciate the true majesty and the
greatness of God. We can and and we must try , however, to appreciate some of His glory
and majesty, as much as each one of us can, by the signs we see all around us, by the
signs that He has specially created for this purpose and for us; for all those who do
believe in Him and His absolute Oneness with certainty, for all those who do not associate
any thing and any other being with God, for all those who call on no one but God, for all
those who invoke God and God's name alone. There are indeed signs for people of
intelligence and understanding.
It was only in the 1800's that scientists began to
suspect the Milky Way (our own galaxy) was not the entire universe. It was only in the
1920's that scientists finally did recognize that universe consisted of many galaxies.
Today we know our universe contains at least 100 billion galaxies, each averaging about
100 billion stars. Assuming the sun to be an average star (many are far bigger while some
are smaller,) it is big enough to contain 1 million earth within its volume. If we imagine
the sun to be the size of a dime, on this scale, the nearest star would be well over a
mile away; a typical distance among stars. Thus it is that two galaxies of 100 billion
stars may collide and yet there would be very few collisions among their stars.
The sun is essentially the only source of light and
energy in the entire solar system. It provides us and the rest of the solar system with
energy and it keeps itself alive, prevents its own total collapse; counteracting the ever
constant pressure of gravity by burning about 600 million tons of hydrogen every second.
It has done this for about 4.5 billion years, yet it has used up only about 4% of its
hydrogen reserve, converting it to helium. Through this process it loses about 200 billion
tons of its weight every day. At this rate it could continue to shine for another 100
billion years, although other factors limit the life of stars the size of sun to about 10
billion years.
Next time you feel the warmth of sun's rays it is well
to remember that although those particular rays left the surface of the sun about 8
minutes ago they actually left the center of sun many 1000's of years ago. They underwent
almost countless number of collisions; many trillions of times per second almost the
entire way up to the surface where at last they could fly away nearly uninhibited, all
according to design of God.
As impressive as these numbers are, they describe only
an average star. Only few weeks ago ( September 1997) scientist discovered what they
describe as one of the biggest stars. This newly discovered star has a radius of 90 to 140
million miles compared to radius of only about 430,000 miles for the sun. If this star
were located where the sun is, it would engulf planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.
Because of its tremendous size it needs much more energy to fight gravity, stay alive and
prevent its collapse. In only six seconds it burns as much hydrogen as the sun does in an
entire year. It must be pointed out there are, of course, many millions stars of similar
size, this was discovered only because of its relative close proximity to earth.
These are mind boggling numbers, no doubt, but God
continues to overwhelm us with signs of His power. New research about "gamma ray
bursts", essentially powerful bursts of radiation coming from all directions,
confirms that in all likelihood they come from the edge of the universe. These signals
usually last for only a few seconds but what is so unusual and difficult to explain is
that they appear so powerful that whatever their source may be, in those few seconds, they
emit as much power as 10000 stars like the sun do in their entire life of many billions of
years.
Glory be to God
- Hossein Kowsari
