The Qur’an An Abiding Wonder
The Qur’an: The Book of God
~ 51 ~
galaxies of stars, cosmic dust, meteorites and
asteroids. The present outward motion of the
galaxies is a result of this explosion. According to
the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
(1984), this is ‘the theory
now favoured by most cosmologists.’ 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 centre, 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
Qur’an should state in Surah 51, verse 47, ‘The
heaven, We have built it with power. Truly, We are
expanding it.’ Now science has revealed that since
the universe came into existence 90 thousand
