God Arises
The Challenge of The Qur’an
~ 360 ~
Once the process of expansion had set in—about six
billion years ago—it had to continue, because the
more the celestial bodies moved away from the
center, the less attraction they exerted over one
another. Estimates of the circumference of the
original matter place it at about one thousand
million light years and now, according to Professor
Eddington’s calculations, the present circumference
is ten times what it was originally. This process of
expansion is still going on. Professor Eddington
explains that the stars and galaxies are like marks
on the surface of a balloon, which is continuously
expanding, and that all the celestial spheres are
getting further and further apart. Ancient man
supposed quite wrongly, that the stars were as close
to one another as they appeared to be. How
significant that the Quran should state in Sura 51,
verse 47, “The heaven, We have built it with power.
Verily we are expanding it.” Now science has
revealed that since the universe came into existence
90 thousand million years B.C., its circumference
has stretched from 6 thousand to sixty thousand
million light years. This means that there are
inconceivably vast distances between the celestial
bodies. And it has been discovered that they
