The Solar System

Solar System

Author: Zahid Ikram
Videos and Animations: www.youtube.com/zee1707

Dear readers,

Peace be upon you. In this article you will explore our Solar System in accordance with the Scientific Observation and Quran (Holy Book of Islam).

All are welcome to read and comment on this subject. You may send your feedback to me at zee1707@gmail.com

Thank you!

Last update by: 30 Aug 2009. More references, images and scientific definitions & explanations added

Imagine a time very V-E-R-Y long ago, almost 5 billion (5,000,000,000) years in the past. Our Earth did not yet exist. There were billions of stars in the sky in all directions, but our Sun was just beginning to take shape as a huge, glowing hot disk made of trillions of tons of hydrogen, helium and all 90 elements in nature. Surrounding our infant Sun was a much larger cloud of these same gases, space dust, rocks and ice many billions of kilometers/miles across called a Nebula cloud. Although all elements are present in a nebula, the bulk of it is hydrogen atoms, the most common element in the universe.

Quran: 25: 61-62

سُوۡرَةُ الفُرقان
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيم

ِ تَبَارَكَ ٱلَّذِى جَعَلَ فِى ٱلسَّمَآءِ بُرُوجً۬ا وَجَعَلَ فِيہَا سِرَٲجً۬ا وَقَمَرً۬ا مُّنِيرً۬ا (٦١) وَهُوَ ٱلَّذِى جَعَلَ ٱلَّيۡلَ وَٱلنَّهَارَ خِلۡفَةً۬ لِّمَنۡ أَرَادَ أَن يَذَّڪَّرَ أَوۡ أَرَادَ شُڪُورً۬ا (٦٢)

Blessed be He Who hath placed in the heaven mansions of the stars, and hath placed therein a great lamp and a moon giving light! (61) And He it is Who hath appointed night and day in succession, for him who desireth to remember, or desireth thankfulness. (62)

اور (خدا) بڑی برکت والا ہے جس نے آسمانوں میں برج بنائے اور ان میں (آفتاب کا نہایت روشن) چراغ اور چمکتا ہوا چاند بھی بنایا (۶۱) اور وہی تو ہے جس نے رات اور دن کو ایک دوسرے کے پیچھے آنے جانے والا بنایا۔ (یہ باتیں) اس شخص کے لئے جو غور کرنا چاہے یا شکرگزاری کا ارادہ کرے (سوچنے اور سمجھنے کی ہیں) (۶۲)

Quran: 21: 30

سُوۡرَةُ الاٴنبیَاء
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

أَوَلَمۡ يَرَ ٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُوٓاْ أَنَّ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٲتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضَ ڪَانَتَا رَتۡقً۬ا فَفَتَقۡنَـٰهُمَا‌ۖ وَجَعَلۡنَا مِنَ ٱلۡمَآءِ كُلَّ شَىۡءٍ حَىٍّ‌ۖ أَفَلَا يُؤۡمِنُونَ (٣٠)

Have not those who disbelieve known that the heavens and the earth were of one piece, then We parted them, and we made every living thing of water? Will they not then believe? (30)

کیا کافروں نے نہیں دیکھا کہ آسمان اور زمین دونوں ملے ہوئے تھے تو ہم نے جدا جدا کردیا۔ اور تمام جاندار چیزیں ہم نے پانی سے بنائیں۔ پھر یہ لوگ ایمان کیوں نہیں لاتے؟ (۳۰)

An artist’s painting of what our early Solar System may have looked like billions of years ago, at the birth of the Sun

Over time, the force of gravity shaped this young Sun into a huge, rotating hot sphere in the center of the nebula that eventually flared into the bright hot star we know today. Gravity also organized the nebula around the Sun into smaller clumps of matter that became the planets, dwarf planets, moons, comets and asteroids that populate our night sky today. We call this “Solar System.”

The Solar system you may have learned about in earlier years has changed significantly in the last few years as new discoveries have been made. Today, our Sun is a mature star surrounded by 8 full-sized planets, 4 “dwarf” planets, (including 3 Plutoid planets), 170 moons and over a trillion asteroids (space rocks) and comets (space ice balls) Orbiting around the Sun.

Until recently, a planet was defined simply as any space object big enough to be shaped as a sphere that orbits (circles) the Sun.
A moon is a space object that orbits a planet (moons can be any shape). However, in the last few years, space scientists found several new large spherical objects beyond the orbit of Pluto that technically qualified as planets as well. They expect to find dozens more. There was also the problem of Pluto. Although named a “planet” in 1930, it is small and it orbits the Sun in an unusual orbit. As a result, new definitions for “a planet” were proposed by Astronomers and in 2006, the definition of a planet changed.

According to the new “official” definition,

**A Planet must**

(1) Orbit the Sun,

(2) Be shaped by gravity into a round sphere, and

(3) Its gravity must have cleared away other objects in its vicinity.

Under that new definition, Pluto was no longer a “regular” planet because it does not meet the 3rd criteria. Instead, it was newly classified as a “dwarf” planet. At the time, at least two other round objects in the Solar System also qualified as dwarf planets. They were “Ceres”, a big round asteroid orbiting the Sun in the Asteroid Belt, and “Eris”, a newly discovered object bigger than Pluto, orbiting the Sun beyond Pluto in a place called the “Kuiper Belt”.

In June 2008, the International Astronomical Union further complicated the issue by creating yet another planet class. Round objects at or beyond the orbit of Neptune would not only be dwarf planets but should also become be considered “Plutoid” dwarf planets. Thus, Pluto and Eris would now be considered “Plutoid” dwarf planets. Ceres would remain just a “Dwarf Planet”.

In July 2008, a third Plutoid dwarf planet was added to the list. Named Makemake, it is a methane rich world about ¾ the size of Pluto that orbits the sun beyond Pluto. Discovered in 2005, it is named after a god worshipped by the peoples of Easter Island in the Pacific.

Scientists have found evidence of over 290 planets (so far) orbiting other stars, and estimate that 50% of all stars may have their own solar systems. Some may look a lot like ours. However, although scientists have been searching for over 40 years, we have yet to discover any life outside of the planet Earth. It may be that we have just not looked in the right places. It may also be possible that we are alone in this vast universe, millions of species riding a lonely journey together on spaceship Earth. If true, then Earth is indeed a special place and its life forms share a rare and special kinship.

Our Solar System is located in one spiral arm of a giant pinwheel of almost 500 billion individual stars we call the Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way is in turn, only one of 500 billion or more estimated galaxies in our universe.

There are many hints in Quran about the existence of Life other than earth.

Quran: 38: 66

سُوۡرَةُ صٓ
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

رَبُّ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٲتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضِ وَمَا بَيۡنَہُمَا ٱلۡعَزِيزُ ٱلۡغَفَّـٰرُ (٦٦)

Lord of the heavens and the earth and all that is between them, the Mighty, the Pardoning. (66

جو آسمانوں اور زمین اور جو مخلوق ان میں ہے سب کا مالک ہے غالب (اور) بخشنے والا

Quran: 57: 1-3

سُوۡرَةُ الحَدید
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

سَبَّحَ لِلَّهِ مَا فِى ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٲتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضِ‌ۖ وَهُوَ ٱلۡعَزِيزُ ٱلۡحَكِيمُ (١) لَهُ ۥ مُلۡكُ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٲتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضِ‌ۖ يُحۡىِۦ وَيُمِيتُ‌ۖ وَهُوَ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَىۡءٍ۬ قَدِيرٌ (٢) هُوَ ٱلۡأَوَّلُ وَٱلۡأَخِرُ وَٱلظَّـٰهِرُ وَٱلۡبَاطِنُ‌ۖ وَهُوَ بِكُلِّ شَىۡءٍ عَلِيمٌ (٣)

All that is in the heavens and the earth glorifieth Allah; and He is the Mighty, the Wise. (1) His is the Sovereignty of the heavens and the earth; He quickeneth and He giveth death; and He is Able to do all things. (2) He is the First and the Last, and the Outward and the Inward; and He is Knower of all things. (3)

جو مخلوق آسمانوں اور زمین میں ہے خدا کی تسبیح کرتی ہے۔ اور وہ غالب (اور) حکمت والا ہے (۱) آسمانوں اور زمین کی بادشاہی اسی کی ہے۔ زندہ کرتا اور مارتا ہے۔ اور وہ ہر چیز پر قادر ہے (۲) وہ (سب سے) پہلا اور (سب سے) پچھلا اور (اپنی قدرتوں سے سب پر) ظاہر اور (اپنی ذات سے) پوشیدہ ہے اور وہ تمام چیزوں کو جانتا ہے (۳)

Quran: 22: 18

سُوۡرَةُ الحَجّ
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيم

أَلَمۡ تَرَ أَنَّ ٱللَّهَ يَسۡجُدُ لَهُ ۥ مَن فِى ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٲتِ وَمَن فِى ٱلۡأَرۡضِ وَٱلشَّمۡسُ وَٱلۡقَمَرُ وَٱلنُّجُومُ وَٱلۡجِبَالُ وَٱلشَّجَرُ وَٱلدَّوَآبُّ وَڪَثِيرٌ۬ مِّنَ ٱلنَّاسِ‌ۖ وَكَثِيرٌ حَقَّ عَلَيۡهِ ٱلۡعَذَابُ‌ۗ وَمَن يُہِنِ ٱللَّهُ فَمَا لَهُ ۥ مِن مُّكۡرِمٍ‌ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يَفۡعَلُ مَا يَشَآءُ (١٨)

Hast thou not seen that unto Allah payeth adoration whosoever is in the heavens and whosoever is in the earth, and the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and the hills, and the trees, and the beasts, and many of mankind, while there are many unto whom the doom is justly due. He whom Allah scorneth, there is none to give him honour. Lo! Allah doeth what He will. (18)

کیا تم نے نہیں دیکھا کہ جو (مخلوق) آسمانوں میں ہے اور جو زمین میں ہے اور سورج اور چاند ستارے اور پہاڑ اور درخت اور چار پائے اور بہت سے انسان خدا کو سجدہ کرتے ہیں۔ اور بہت سے ایسے ہیں جن پر عذاب ثابت ہوچکا ہے۔ اور جس شخص کو خدا ذلیل کرے اس کو عزت دینے والا نہیں۔ بےشک خدا جو چاہتا ہے کرتا ہے (۱۸)

Quran: 62:1

سُوۡرَةُ الجُمُعَة
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

يُسَبِّحُ لِلَّهِ مَا فِى ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٲتِ وَمَا فِى ٱلۡأَرۡضِ ٱلۡمَلِكِ ٱلۡقُدُّوسِ ٱلۡعَزِيزِ ٱلۡحَكِيمِ (١)

All that is in the heavens and all that is in the earth glorifieth Allah, the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One, the Mighty, the Wise. (1)

جو چیز آسمانوں میں ہے اور جو چیز زمین میں ہے سب خدا کی تسبیح کرتی ہے جو بادشاہ حقیقی پاک ذات زبردست حکمت والا ہے (۱)

Milky Way Galaxy, our solar system is in the red mark.

We are about 2/3rds out from the center of the Milky Way in one of the spiral arms. Our entire Solar System is flying through space, orbiting the center of the galaxy at the incredible speed of over 900,000 km/hr (560,000 miles/hr). So, even while you think you are standing still on Earth, you are moving at very high speeds. It’s a good thing we have Earth’s gravity holding onto us. In fact, all the stars you see in the sky are orbiting the Milky Way at similar speeds, like a high-speed merry-go-round in space.

Quran: 85:1

سُوۡرَةُ البُرُوج
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

وَٱلسَّمَآءِ ذَاتِ ٱلۡبُرُوجِ (١)

By the heaven, holding mansions of the stars, (1)

آسمان کی قسم جس میں برج ہیں (۱)

Quran: 15:16

سُوۡرَةُ الحِجر
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيم

وَلَقَدۡ جَعَلۡنَا فِى ٱلسَّمَآءِ بُرُوجً۬ا وَزَيَّنَّـٰهَا لِلنَّـٰظِرِينَ (١٦)

And verily in the heaven we have set mansions of the stars, and We have beautified it for beholders. (16) ِ

اور ہم ہی نے آسمان میں برج بنائے اور دیکھنے والوں کے لیے اُس کو سجا دیا (۱۶)

The scale of our universe is almost beyond our capability to understand. You will find it soon.

The size of our local Solar System is also very difficult to grasp. Models and sketches show the Sun and planets to be close to each other so that you can see them all together. They are NOT! Imagine the Sun to be shrunk to the size of a big beach ball sitting on the goal line of a football field. The Earth would be the size of a small marble, placed at the opposite goal posts 100 yards (90 meters) away. Pluto would be a tiny pea located 3 miles (4.7 km) away at the other end of town. Thus, distances between planets are a LOT bigger, and the planets are a LOT smaller than you can imagine.

Quran: 16:12

سُوۡرَةُ النّحل
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيم

وَسَخَّرَ لَڪُمُ ٱلَّيۡلَ وَٱلنَّهَارَ وَٱلشَّمۡسَ وَٱلۡقَمَرَ‌ۖ وَٱلنُّجُومُ مُسَخَّرَٲتُۢ بِأَمۡرِهِۦۤ‌ۗ إِنَّ فِى ذَٲلِكَ لَأَيَـٰتٍ۬ لِّقَوۡمٍ۬ يَعۡقِلُونَ (١٢) ِ

And He hath constrained the night and the day and the sun and the moon to be of service unto you, and the stars are made subservient by His command. Lo! herein indeed are portents for people who have sense. (12)

اور اسی نے تمہارے لیے رات اور دن اور سورج اور چاند کو کام میں لگایا۔ اور اسی کے حکم سے ستارے بھی کام میں لگے ہوئے ہیں۔ سمجھنے والوں کے لیے اس میں (قدرت خدا کی بہت سی) نشانیاں ہیں (۱۲)

Let’s Explore Our “new” Solar System

It is laid out in order in this scaled image. That large yellow fireball on the left is the Sun. Those four round objects next to it are the inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars), which we are visiting today. The new “dwarf planet” is Ceres and the four giant planets are next (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune). The tiny spheres on the right are the “dwarf Plutoid planets”, Pluto, followed by Makemake and Eris. The moons, asteroids and comets have not been added to the graphic.

Quran: 7:54

سُوۡرَةُ الاٴعرَاف
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيم

إِنَّ رَبَّكُمُ ٱللَّهُ ٱلَّذِى خَلَقَ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٲتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضَ فِى سِتَّةِ أَيَّامٍ۬ ثُمَّ ٱسۡتَوَىٰ عَلَى ٱلۡعَرۡشِ يُغۡشِى ٱلَّيۡلَ ٱلنَّہَارَ يَطۡلُبُهُ ۥ حَثِيثً۬ا وَٱلشَّمۡسَ وَٱلۡقَمَرَ وَٱلنُّجُومَ مُسَخَّرَٲتِۭ بِأَمۡرِهِۦۤ‌ۗ أَلَا لَهُ ٱلۡخَلۡقُ وَٱلۡأَمۡرُ‌ۗ تَبَارَكَ ٱللَّهُ رَبُّ ٱلۡعَـٰلَمِينَ (٥٤) ِ

Al-Araf 7:54
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful

Lo! your Lord is Allah Who created the heavens and the earth in six Days, then mounted He the Throne. He covereth the night with the day, which is in haste to follow it, and hath made the sun and the moon and the stars subservient by His command. His verily is all creation and commandment. Blessed be Allah, the Lord of the Worlds! (54)

سورة الاٴعرَاف
شروع الله کے نام سے جو بڑا مہربان نہایت رحم والا ہے

کچھ شک نہیں کہ تمہارا پروردگار خدا ہی ہے جس نے آسمانوں اور زمین کو چھ دن میں پیدا کیا پھر عرش پر جا ٹھہرا۔ وہی رات کو دن کا لباس پہناتا ہے کہ وہ اس کے پیچھے دوڑتا چلا آتا ہے۔ اور اسی نے سورج اور چاند ستاروں کو پیدا کیا سب اس کے حکم کے مطابق کام میں لگے ہوئے ہیں۔ دیکھو سب مخلوق بھی اسی کی ہے اور حکم بھی (اسی کا ہے)۔ یہ خدا رب العالمین بڑی برکت والا ہے (۵۴)

Let’s compare the size of the earth with other planets

Now compare it with Uranus & Neptune

Now Earth against Sun

Sun

Our giant Sun is very active and violent as we will see shortly, but it is actually quite an ordinary yellowish star that we call a main sequence yellow dwarf star. If you look out into space, many of the other stars out there are a lot like our Sun

Compared to what we are familiar with, the sun is massively large. It contains 99.9% of all the mass of the Solar System and its diameter is approximately 860,000 miles (1,390,000 km). That is over 100 times bigger than the 8,000-mile diameter of Earth. 108 Earths could fit side by side across the Sun.

It was born almost 5 billion years ago as gravity pulled nebula space gases and dust together into a huge ball. Most of that matter consisted of hydrogen atoms. Through gravity, that sphere of gas was compressed so tightly and got so hot that the hydrogen atoms in the central core began to fuse together. This nuclear hydrogen fusion is the same kind of explosion as a hydrogen bomb.

Watch the Close up Video of Sun:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsLzZYEB9hY

Quran: 10:5-6

سُوۡرَةُ یُونس
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

هُوَ ٱلَّذِى جَعَلَ ٱلشَّمۡسَ ضِيَآءً۬ وَٱلۡقَمَرَ نُورً۬ا وَقَدَّرَهُ ۥ مَنَازِلَ لِتَعۡلَمُواْ عَدَدَ ٱلسِّنِينَ وَٱلۡحِسَابَ‌ۚ مَا خَلَقَ ٱللَّهُ ذَٲلِكَ إِلَّا بِٱلۡحَقِّ‌ۚ يُفَصِّلُ ٱلۡأَيَـٰتِ لِقَوۡمٍ۬ يَعۡلَمُونَ (٥) إِنَّ فِى ٱخۡتِلَـٰفِ ٱلَّيۡلِ وَٱلنَّہَارِ وَمَا خَلَقَ ٱللَّهُ فِى ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٲتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضِ لَأَيَـٰتٍ۬ لِّقَوۡمٍ۬ يَتَّقُونَ (٦)

It is He who made the sun a shining light and the moon a derived light and determined for it phases – that you may know the number of years and account [of time]. Allah has not created this except in truth. He details the signs for a people who know. Lo! in the difference of day and night and all that Allah hath created in the heavens and the earth are portents, verily, for folk who ward off (evil). (6)

وہی تو ہے جس نے سورج کو روشن اور چاند کو منور بنایا اور چاند کی منزلیں مقرر کیں تاکہ تم برسوں کا شمار اور (کاموں کا) حساب معلوم کرو۔ یہ (سب کچھ) خدا نے تدبیر سے پیدا کیا ہے۔ سمجھنے والوں کے لیے وہ اپنی آیاتیں کھول کھول کر بیان فرماتا ہے (۵) رات اور دن کے (ایک دوسرے کے پیچھے) آنے جانے میں اور جو چیزیں خدا نے آسمان اور زمین میں پیدا کی ہیں (سب میں) ڈرنے والوں کے لیے نشانیاں ہیں (۶)

In fact, the Sun (and all stars that we can see) is exploding internally, with billions of H-bomb type explosions going off every second in its central core. This results in enormous radiation energy and heat pouring out of the Sun at the speed of light, spreading through space in all directions.

Notice some dark orange/brown spots on the Sun? They are sunspots, giant storms of magnetic disturbance where flares and prominences (eruptions) tend to occur often. They are something like whirlpools on Earth. They are darker in color than the rest of the Sun because they are actually a bit cooler in temperature than their surroundings.

The number of these storms depends upon the Sun’s magnetic field. They come and go in cycles every 11 years. When sunspots are at their maximum number, there may be over a hundred individual storms raging on the Sun at one time. Incredibly, even the small spots are larger than Earth. The big ones could envelop 10 Earths.

Some of the radiation is deadly and can kill us instantly. Fortunately, Earth’s atmosphere protects us from most of it. Some radiation is good. The Sun’s heat is a form of radiation that strikes all of the planets and moons of the Solar System and warms them by different amounts. Life on Earth is possible because of it.

Quran: 21: 32

سُوۡرَةُ الاٴنبیَاء
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
وَجَعَلۡنَا ٱلسَّمَآءَ سَقۡفً۬ا مَّحۡفُوظً۬ا‌ۖ وَهُمۡ عَنۡ ءَايَـٰتِہَا مُعۡرِضُونَ (٣٢)

And we have made the sky a roof withheld (from them). Yet they turn away from its portents. (32)

اور آسمان کو محفوظ چھت بنایا۔ اس پر بھی وہ ہماری نشانیوں سے منہ پھیر رہے ہیں (۳۲)

Even though it is exploding, the Sun does not blast out into space like a firecracker going off inside a ball of Jell-O. The reason is gravity. Although it is blowing outward, gravity is grabbing those exploding gases and is pulling most of them back in as soon as they try to leave… keeping the Sun at a controlled, sustained size. This tug-of-war goes on year after year, century after century. It has been going on for 5 billion years, and will continue for over 5 billion more years and will blast as a supernova.

Watch this Video what if Sun goes Supernova http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HQp7Z0xLmg

سُوۡرَةُ التّکویر
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

إِذَا ٱلشَّمۡسُ كُوِّرَتۡ (١) وَإِذَا ٱلنُّجُومُ ٱنكَدَرَتۡ (٢)

When the sun is overthrown, (1) And when the stars fall, (2)

جب سورج لپیٹ لیا جائے گا (۱) جب تارے بےنور ہو جائیں گے

Quran: 13-2

سُوۡرَةُ الرّعد
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيم

ٱللَّهُ ٱلَّذِى رَفَعَ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٲتِ بِغَيۡرِ عَمَدٍ۬ تَرَوۡنَہَا‌ۖ ثُمَّ ٱسۡتَوَىٰ عَلَى ٱلۡعَرۡشِ‌ۖ وَسَخَّرَ ٱلشَّمۡسَ وَٱلۡقَمَرَ‌ۖ كُلٌّ۬ يَجۡرِى لِأَجَلٍ۬ مُّسَمًّ۬ى‌ۚ يُدَبِّرُ ٱلۡأَمۡرَ يُفَصِّلُ ٱلۡأَيَـٰتِ لَعَلَّكُم بِلِقَآءِ رَبِّكُمۡ تُوقِنُونَ (٢) ِ

13:2 It is Allah who erected the heavens without pillars that you [can] see; then He established Himself above the Throne and made subject the sun and the moon, each running [its course] for a specified term. He arranges [each] matter; He details the signs that you may, of the meeting with your Lord, be certain.

خدا وہی تو ہے جس نے ستونوں کے بغیر آسمان جیسا کہ تم دیکھتے ہو (اتنے) اونچے بنائے۔ پھر عرش پر جا ٹھہرا اور سورج اور چاند کو کام میں لگا دیا۔ ہر ایک ایک میعاد معین تک گردش کر رہا ہے۔ وہی (دنیا کے) کاموں کا انتظام کرتا ہے (اس طرح) وہ اپنی آیتیں کھول کھول کر بیان کرتا ہے کہ تم اپنے پروردگار کے روبرو جانے کا یقین کرو (۲)

As the Sun explodes internally, some of that energy causes its surface to erupt in periodic explosions of very hot gas. The guiding force behind these eruptions is magnetism (the Sun is very magnetically charged). These eruptions are called “Prominences”. They form loops on the Sun due to both gravity and magnetism.

The sun’s lower atmosphere, called the Chromospheres WHEW!

Sometimes, the eruption is so strong that the exploded material does not loop back to the Sun. Instead, it rockets out into space at 1 to 2 million km/hr. Eruptions that escape into space are called Solar Flares, or Coronal mass Ejections.
Watch the Close up Video of Sun:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsLzZYEB9hY

The explosions of hydrogen fusion occurring inside the Sun take place in its CORE. Surrounding the core is a large area of hot hydrogen gas called the Radiation Zone. Surrounding that zone is another layer called the Convection Zone. The top of that zone is the surface of the Sun, and is called the Photosphere.

Diagram of the layers of the Sun. Your teacher may provide you much more detail on these layers. If you are internet connected and have the time, many different websites describe the Sun in more detail.

Surprisingly, however, the surface of the Sun is not that hot. Because it is far from the 25 millionº central core and is exposed to the cold of space, the “surface” temperature of the Sun is only about 12,000 ° F (6600º C). That is only about 20 times hotter than your kitchen oven on broil.

Speed of light (abbreviated “c”). It is a whopping 300,000 km/s (186,000 miles/sec). If you were a ray of sunlight, you would leave the Sun at this speed. Nothing in the universe can travel faster than the speed of light.

It is the ultimate speed limit. The reasons are very complicated. However, even at light speed, it will still take you about 8 minutes to reach Earth. You have to think “Faster than Light (FTL)”.

If you were a ray of sunlight from our Sun, you would be headed directly ahead into that dark void of space filled with stars. Isaac Newton’s 1st Law of Motion tells us that unless you collided with something in your path, you would continue the journey straight ahead at light speed, essentially forever.

Even at this incredible speed, you would have to travel for … over 4.3 years, 24 hours a day, without sleep, before you would come close to the very nearest star Proxima Centauri you can see in front of you. The Sun itself would be just a tiny dim dot in space, lost behind you among all the other stars. Imagine spending 70 years of your life just waiting to reach … the very next star in front of you. Space is such a very BIG place.

One (1) ly = 9.46 x 10¹² km, or 5.87 x 10¹² miles. That is 9.46 trillion km (5.87 trillion miles). Obviously, that is a stupendous number. Written out, it is 9,460,000,000,000 km or 5,870,000,000,000 mi.

Please remember from the prior journey in past that the fastest speed ever achieved by human beings was 11 km/sec, the speed attained by the Apollo spacecraft.

Well, how many days, weeks, months or years would it take Apollo (or you) to reach the nearest star to Earth (aside from our own sun)? To calculate it, we first have to determine how far away the star is from us in kilometers. That’s easy. Proxima Centauri is about 4.23 LY away, and 1 LY = 9.46 x 10¹² km. So, the star is 4.23 x (9.46 x 10¹²) = 4.0 x 10¹³ km (40 trillion kilometers) (in miles, that’s 24.7 trillion miles (2.5 x 10¹³ miles)). Now, just divide the distance to the star in km by 11 km/sec (the speed of Apollo), and you’ll find the time it would take to get there in seconds. Convert that to years (I’ll leave that to you).

You should have discovered that to reach the nearest star to us at the fastest speed ever achieved by people, would take you … over 115,000 years! That is almost 6,000 generations … of your children, and grandchildren, and great grandchildren, and their children’s children’s children’s children … watching out your ship’s front window … living and dying … century after century, millennia after millennia. 115,000 years … just to reach the closest star to us. That is 20 times longer than all of human recorded history, back to the days of our most ancient civilizations … 20 times longer! If you left Earth at the time of the ancient Greeks 4,000 years ago, you would only be less than 4% of the way to the star by now.

سُوۡرَةُ المُلک
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيم

تَبَـٰرَكَ ٱلَّذِى بِيَدِهِ ٱلۡمُلۡكُ وَهُوَ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَىۡءٍ۬ قَدِيرٌ (١) ٱلَّذِى خَلَقَ ٱلۡمَوۡتَ وَٱلۡحَيَوٰةَ لِيَبۡلُوَكُمۡ أَيُّكُمۡ أَحۡسَنُ عَمَلاً۬‌ۚ وَهُوَ ٱلۡعَزِيزُ ٱلۡغَفُورُ (٢) ٱلَّذِى خَلَقَ سَبۡعَ سَمَـٰوَٲتٍ۬ طِبَاقً۬ا‌ۖ مَّا تَرَىٰ فِى خَلۡقِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ مِن تَفَـٰوُتٍ۬‌ۖ فَٱرۡجِعِ ٱلۡبَصَرَ هَلۡ تَرَىٰ مِن فُطُورٍ۬ (٣) ثُمَّ ٱرۡجِعِ ٱلۡبَصَرَ كَرَّتَيۡنِ يَنقَلِبۡ إِلَيۡكَ ٱلۡبَصَرُ خَاسِئً۬ا وَهُوَ حَسِيرٌ۬ (٤) وَلَقَدۡ زَيَّنَّا ٱلسَّمَآءَ ٱلدُّنۡيَا بِمَصَـٰبِيحَ وَجَعَلۡنَـٰهَا رُجُومً۬ا لِّلشَّيَـٰطِينِ‌ۖ وَأَعۡتَدۡنَا لَهُمۡ عَذَابَ ٱلسَّعِيرِ (٥) ِ

Blessed is He in Whose hand is the Sovereignty, and, He is Able to do all things. (1) Who hath created life and death that He may try you which of you is best in conduct; and He is the Mighty, the Forgiving, (2) Who hath created seven heavens in harmony. Thou canst see no fault in the Beneficent One's creation; then look again: Canst thou see any rifts? (3) Then look again and yet again, thy sight will return unto thee weakened and made dim. (4) And verily We have beautified the world's heaven with lamps, and We have made them missiles for the devils, and for them We have prepared the doom of flame. (5)

وہ (خدا) جس کے ہاتھ میں بادشاہی ہے بڑی برکت والا ہے۔ اور وہ ہر چیز پر قادر ہے (۱) اسی نے موت اور زندگی کو پیدا کیا تاکہ تمہاری آزمائش کرے کہ تم میں کون اچھے عمل کرتا ہے۔ اور وہ زبردست (اور) بخشنے والا ہے (۲) اس نے سات آسمان اوپر تلے بنائے۔ (اے دیکھنے والے) کیا تو (خدا) رحمٰن کی آفرنیش میں کچھ نقص دیکھتا ہے؟ ذرا آنکھ اٹھا کر دیکھ بھلا تجھ کو (آسمان میں) کوئی شکاف نظر آتا ہے؟ (۳) پھر دو بارہ (سہ بارہ) نظر کر، تو نظر (ہر بار) تیرے پاس ناکام اور تھک کر لوٹ آئے گی (۴)اور ہم نے قریب کے آسمان کو (تاروں کے) چراغوں سے زینت دی۔ اور ان کو شیطان کے مارنے کا آلہ بنایا اور ان کے لئے دہکتی آگ کا عذاب تیار کر رکھا ہے (۵)

Read the Article: How Big is Our Universe?

Mercury

Mercury is 0.489 au from your position near the Sun. An AU is an abbreviation for “Astronomical Unit”, which is a distance measurement Astronomers use to describe huge distances in space. It is defined as the distance from the Earth to the Sun. That distance (1 au) = 150,000,000 km, or about 93,000,000 miles. Since Mercury is 0.489 au from our position, it is 150,000,000 x 0.489 = 73,350,000 km, or about 45.6 million miles away.

Mercury is a very old world that formed 4.6 billion years ago, along with the rest of our Solar System. As you can see, it looks a lot like our Moon. To the best of our knowledge, it is a dead, small and rocky world. It is the closest planet to the Sun.

Mercury is called a terrestrial planet because it is made primarily of rock. Scientists believe it formed from the original nebula that the rest of the Solar System formed from. Its closeness to the Sun, however, forced any lighter elements and gases that might have been near it to be driven away by the Sun’s fierce radiation, pushed away by the “solar wind”. Mercury is also a small planet and its gravity is relatively weak. Consequently, Mercury has no real atmosphere of gas to call its own.

However, there is something unusual about Mercury. It is very dense. Its rocks are heavier than any other planet. That is probably due to the fact that its closeness to the Sun’s heat drove the lighter, more volatile elements away from it, allowing only the heavy elements to collect near it and form into a planet. Another possibility is that Mercury underwent a colossal collision with another planet eons ago, with the dense cores of the collision all that is remaining.

If true, then Mercury is much like Earth. Evidence suggests that Earth also experienced a colossal collision with a planet some 4.4 billion years ago. The result was the formation of a “new” Earth … and our moon.

Mercury is close enough to our Sun to get very hot on its sunny side (over 360° C or 680° F). It is hotter than the interior of your oven on broil. Because Mercury has no atmosphere, however, the heat from the Sun cannot circulate around the planet to help spread its heat (it just re-radiates back into space). So while it is a scorching oven on its sunny side, it cools very quickly and becomes very cold on its dark night side, plunging to temperatures as low as -160° C or -250° F.

As you can see, Mercury is tortured and cracked, and there are hills and cliffs. Mercury’s surface is also full of holes. They are impact craters, caused by asteroids (space rocks) crashing into the surface at high speed. Many craters are very old, having formed from impacts billions of years ago. If the impact was large, it triggered lava flows that filled in some of the other craters, creating “plains” (planita in Latin).

Mercury has no air or liquid water on its surface so there is nothing to erode, flood, blow sand into or fill in the craters. They still look like they did billions of years ago.

Although Mercury turns slowly, it travels through space very fast. In fact, it is circling the Sun once every 88 days (orbiting) at a speed of almost 50 km/sec (31 miles/sec). Picture it! If it flew close overhead and you were standing on Earth, it would whiz by from one horizon to the other in less than 1 second. Mercury’s name in fact is based upon a Roman and Greek God that was the fast messenger of all the Gods.

There is no God, But Allah.

Quran: 21:21-22

سُوۡرَةُ الاٴنبیَاء
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

أَمِ ٱتَّخَذُوٓاْ ءَالِهَةً۬ مِّنَ ٱلۡأَرۡضِ هُمۡ يُنشِرُونَ (٢١) لَوۡ كَانَ فِيہِمَآ ءَالِهَةٌ إِلَّا ٱللَّهُ لَفَسَدَتَا‌ۚ فَسُبۡحَـٰنَ ٱللَّهِ رَبِّ ٱلۡعَرۡشِ عَمَّا يَصِفُونَ (٢٢)

If there were therein Gods beside Allah, then verily both (the heavens and the earth) had been disordered. Glorified be Allah, the Lord of the Throne, from all that they ascribe (unto Him). (22)

سورة الاٴنبیَاء
شروع الله کے نام سے جو بڑا مہربان نہایت رحم والا ہے

اگر آسمان اور زمین میں خدا کے سوا اور معبود ہوتے تو زمین وآسمان درہم برہم ہوجاتے۔ جو باتیں یہ لوگ بتاتے ہیں خدائے مالک عرش ان سے پاک ہے (۲۲)

When all the planets formed as a Solar System, Mercury formed alone and has no moons.

Venus

Venus is very attractive from orbit, don’t you think. What is it really like?

Venus, named after the goddess of love and beauty in Greek and Roman mythology, is about the same size as Earth. It formed from the same nebula as the rest of the Solar System 4.6 billion years ago and is also a “terrestrial” planet (made mostly of rock). It is the brightest object in the night sky aside from the Moon.

It has a thick atmosphere and dense clouds, so many people at the beginning of the 20^th century thought it might rain there. Because it is closer to the Sun, astronomers also thought that it might be nice and warm, and a possible home to “life” in a hot, rainy tropical setting. There was even hope that maybe there were Venusians plants and animals.

Well, that dream was completely abandoned in the middle of the 20th century when the United States and Soviet Union both sent spacecraft to examine Venus. What we found was not a warm tropical world, but a broiling hellish world roasting at a temperature of 480° C (900° F). This is almost twice as hot as your oven on broil, so anything you set on the surface of Venus would cook and char very fast (a burger would turn black in less than 20 seconds). Venus is the hottest object in the entire Solar System, aside from the Sun itself. It is even hotter than Mercury. It is so hot that if you put a chunk of solid lead on its surface, the lead would melt and liquefy into a hot puddle.

The atmospheric pressure on the surface of the planet is 90 times thicker and heavier than it is on Earth. Its air weighs about what 10 fully loaded 18-wheel trucks would weigh, stacked one on top of the other, all sitting on your chest. Were you to land on Venus and step out of your spacecraft, you would be crushed instantly into a flat puddle by the weight of its air. The 900^o F heat would then boil and char your remains!

Venus’s super-dense atmosphere is made of about 96% CO₂. The CO₂ came from volcanoes that were very active for billions of years in the past, but do not appear to be active now.

Carbon Dioxide is a gas that has a particular ability to absorb heat. The more CO₂present, the hotter the air gets. The effect is known as the Greenhouse effect, (Warming that results when solar radiation is trapped by the atmosphere; caused by atmospheric gases that allow sunshine to pass through but absorb heat that is radiated back from the warmed surface of the earth) because CO₂ acts like the glass on a greenhouse. The Sun’s heat can get in but has a difficult time leaking back out again into space at night. This results in a chokingly hot, heavy blanket of gas that shrouds and wraps the planet like insulation, causing it to heat up as sunlight shines on it.

Because Venus is closer to the sun, it also gets more heat than Earth. As a result, it has a runaway greenhouse effect, an effect so severe that the planet is hot enough to melt lead.

If crushing atmosphere and broiling heat were not bad enough, Venus has no breathable oxygen, no surface water and no water clouds. Instead, its clouds are made of concentrated sulfuric acid droplets, a mist strong enough to burn your skin. The sulfur also came from volcanic eruptions long ago. The acid clouds are so thick that you cannot see the surface of Venus from space and you cannot see space from Venus. There is no such thing as a starry night on Venus, and there has not been for millions of years.

We think Venus once had traces of water and was not unlike Earth. What happened to it to turn it into the hellishly hot planet it is now? We need to answer that question because we are also changing our planet. Earth is becoming more like Venus every day. We are pumping enormous quantities of Carbon Dioxide into our atmosphere from the burning of oil, gasoline and coal, creating our own greenhouse effect. As a result, our planet is warming up. The years 2003, 2004 and 2005 were the warmest years ever recorded in all of human history. Our polar ice caps and mountain glaciers are melting. The oceans are warming and coral reefs are dying. Drought is beginning in some areas. Ferocious hurricanes born in warmer oceans are becoming much more frequent.

It is called Global Warming

and it has many people very worried. It may become the greatest threat to humans in all of our history.

If we keep it up, our planet will continue to warm. Could we someday begin to resemble Venus? The answer is probably no. We would not get that hot. However, we could pump so much CO₂ into the air that Earth warms up to levels that will make it tough to survive. Remember, we don’t have to warm to 900° F to ruin our garden world. Just a 10° rise will do it! In fact, an estimate by scientists in 2007 stated that fully half of all species on Earth may become extinct by the end of this century if we do not get global warming under control soon what a catastrophe that could be.

You can discover two fascinating things about Venus’s rotation.

First, it is very slow. It takes the planet a whopping 243 days to turn just once on its axis, making for a VERY LONG day and a very long night.

Secondly, Venus turns on its axis backwards (from right to left). This is called retrograde rotation, and is different from most of the other planets in our Solar System. Most are like the Sun and turn from left to right (called prograde rotation)

Retrograde rotation can occur two ways. First, Venus may have collided long ago with another planet or large moon, knocking it over and resulting in it rotating “backward”. Scientists also believe that planets without moons orbiting them have unstable rotations. Venus has NO moons. As they turn on their axis, such planets can wobble. Over thousands of years, that wobble can force the planet to flip upside down. Planets with moons tend to be more stable in their rotation axis, because the moon’s gravity helps to stabilize their spin. Earth, for example, has a large moon that keeps our axis from wobbling very much.

As the 2^nd planet from the sun, Venus orbits the Sun once every 225 days.

Quran: 31:20

سُوۡرَةُ لقمَان
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيم

أَلَمۡ تَرَوۡاْ أَنَّ ٱللَّهَ سَخَّرَ لَكُم مَّا فِى ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٲتِ وَمَا فِى ٱلۡأَرۡضِ وَأَسۡبَغَ عَلَيۡكُمۡ نِعَمَهُ ۥ ظَـٰهِرَةً۬ وَبَاطِنَةً۬‌ۗ وَمِنَ ٱلنَّاسِ مَن يُجَـٰدِلُ فِى ٱللَّهِ بِغَيۡرِ عِلۡمٍ۬ وَلَا هُدً۬ى وَلَا كِتَـٰبٍ۬ مُّنِيرٍ۬ (٢٠) ِ

See ye not how Allah hath made serviceable unto you whatsoever is in the skies and whatsoever is in the earth and hath loaded you with His favours both without and within? Yet of mankind is he who disputeth concerning Allah, without knowledge or guidance or a scripture giving light. (20)

کیا تم نے نہیں دیکھا کہ جو کچھ آسمانوں میں اور جو کچھ زمین میں ہے سب کو خدا نے تمہارے قابو میں کر دیا ہے اور تم پر اپنی ظاہری اور باطنی نعمتیں پوری کردی ہیں۔ اور بعض لوگ ایسے ہیں کہ خدا کے بارے میں جھگڑتے ہیں نہ علم رکھتے ہیں اور نہ ہدایت اور نہ کتاب روشن (۲۰)

Earth

For much of human history, people have dreamed of seeing the Earth from space. You are about to live that dream.

What a lonely place we occupy in space … a tiny speck of life in such a vast ocean of stars. How insignificant is humankind against the vista of the universe!

Quran: 21:31-33

سُوۡرَةُ الاٴنبیَاء
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

وَجَعَلۡنَا فِى ٱلۡأَرۡضِ رَوَٲسِىَ أَن تَمِيدَ بِهِمۡ وَجَعَلۡنَا فِيہَا فِجَاجً۬ا سُبُلاً۬ لَّعَلَّهُمۡ يَہۡتَدُونَ (٣١) وَجَعَلۡنَا ٱلسَّمَآءَ سَقۡفً۬ا مَّحۡفُوظً۬ا‌ۖ وَهُمۡ عَنۡ ءَايَـٰتِہَا مُعۡرِضُونَ (٣٢) وَهُوَ ٱلَّذِى خَلَقَ ٱلَّيۡلَ وَٱلنَّہَارَ وَٱلشَّمۡسَ وَٱلۡقَمَرَ‌ۖ كُلٌّ۬ فِى فَلَكٍ۬ يَسۡبَحُونَ (٣٣)

And We have placed in the earth firm hills lest it quake with them, and We have placed therein ravines as roads that haply they may find their way. (31) And we have made the sky a roof withheld (from them). Yet they turn away from its portents. (32) And He it is Who created the night and the day, and the sun and the moon. They float, each in an orbit. (33)

اور ہم نے زمین میں پہاڑ بنائے تاکہ لوگوں (کے بوجھ) سے ہلنے (اور جھکنے) نہ لگے اور اس میں کشادہ راستے بنائے تاکہ لوگ ان پر چلیں (۳۱) اور آسمان کو محفوظ چھت بنایا۔ اس پر بھی وہ ہماری نشانیوں سے منہ پھیر رہے ہیں (۳۲) اور وہی تو ہے جس نے رات اور دن اور سورج اور چاند کو بنایا۔ سب آسمان میں تیر رہے ہیں (۳۳)

The Earth also formed over 4.6 billion years ago as part of our Solar System. When it was very young, it was hot with thousands of volcanoes erupting millions of tons of lava. The atmosphere was an un-breathable mix of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, water vapor, sulfide gases, methane and ammonia. The sky was yellowish red and the rain had the acidity of lemon juice. Although there was water on the ground, it took many thousands of years for the oceans to fill in. Volcanoes and lava were everywhere. There was no life.

سُوۡرَةُ الحِجر
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

وَأَرۡسَلۡنَا ٱلرِّيَـٰحَ لَوَٲقِحَ فَأَنزَلۡنَا مِنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ مَآءً۬ فَأَسۡقَيۡنَـٰكُمُوهُ وَمَآ أَنتُمۡ لَهُ ۥ بِخَـٰزِنِينَ (٢٢) وَإِنَّا لَنَحۡنُ نُحۡىِۦ وَنُمِيتُ وَنَحۡنُ ٱلۡوَٲرِثُونَ (٢٣)

Al-Hijr 15: 22-23
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful

) And We send the winds fertilising, and cause water to descend from the sky, and give it you to drink. It is not ye who are the holders of the store thereof. (22) Lo! and it is We, even We, Who quicken and give death, and We are the Inheritor. (23)

اور ہم ہی ہوائیں چلاتے ہیں (جو بادلوں کے پانی سے) بھری ہوئی ہوتی ہیں اور ہم ہی آسمان سے مینہ برساتے ہیں اور ہم ہی تم کو اس کا پانی پلاتے ہیں اور تم تو اس کا خرانہ نہیں رکھتے (۲۲) اور ہم ہی حیات بخشتے اور ہم ہی موت دیتے ہیں۔ اور ہم سب کے وارث (مالک) ہیں (۲۳)

Today of course, Earth is the home and cradle of millions of species of living things. What makes life possible in part is that Earth occupies a position in our Solar System called the Zone of Habitation. It is a section of space not too close and not too far away from the Sun’s heat where liquid water can exist for at least a part of a year. Liquid water covers 70% of the planet.

سُوۡرَةُ الشُّعَرَاء
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيم

أَوَلَمۡ يَرَوۡاْ إِلَى ٱلۡأَرۡضِ كَمۡ أَنۢبَتۡنَا فِيہَا مِن كُلِّ زَوۡجٍ۬ كَرِيمٍ (٧)ِ

[026:007] Do they not look at the earth,- how many noble things of all kinds We have produced therein?

کیا انہوں نے زمین کی طرف نہیں دیکھا کہ ہم نے اس میں ہر قسم کی کتنی نفیس چیزیں اُگائی ہیں (۷)

سُوۡرَةُ الحِجر
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيم

وَإِن مِّن شَىۡءٍ إِلَّا عِندَنَا خَزَآٮِٕنُهُ ۥ وَمَا نُنَزِّلُهُ ۥۤ إِلَّا بِقَدَرٍ۬ مَّعۡلُومٍ۬ (٢١)ِ

[015:021-23] And there is not a thing but with Us are the stores thereof. And we send it not down save in appointed measure. (21

اور ہمارے ہاں ہر چیز کے خزانے ہیں اور ہم ان کو بمقدار مناسب اُتارتے رہتے ہیں (۲۱)

The Earth...its size is perfect. The Earth's size and corresponding gravity holds a thin layer of mostly nitrogen and oxygen gases, only extending about 50 miles above the Earth's surface. If Earth were smaller, an atmosphere would be impossible, like the planet Mercury. If Earth were larger, its atmosphere would contain free hydrogen, like Jupiter. (R.E.D. Clark, Creation (London: Tyndale Press, 1946), p. 20) Earth is the only known planet equipped with an atmosphere of the right mixture of gases to sustain plant, animal and human life.

سُوۡرَةُ الرَّحمٰن
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

وَٱلسَّمَآءَ رَفَعَهَا وَوَضَعَ ٱلۡمِيزَانَ (٧)
(6) And the sky He hath uplifted; and He hath set the measure, (7)

اور اسی نے آسمان کو بلند کیا اور ترازو قائم کی (۷)

The Earth is located the right distance from the sun. Consider the temperature swings we encounter, roughly -30 degrees to +120 degrees. If the Earth were any further away from the sun, we would all freeze. Any closer and we would burn up. Even a fractional variance in the Earth's position to the sun would make life on Earth impossible. The Earth remains this perfect distance from the sun while it rotates around the sun at a speed of nearly 67,000 mph. It is also rotating on its axis, allowing the entire surface of the Earth to be properly warmed and cooled every day.

And our moon is the perfect size and distance from the Earth for its gravitational pull. The moon creates important ocean tides and movement so ocean waters do not stagnate, and yet our massive oceans are restrained from spilling over across the continents.
The Wonders of God's Creation, Moody Institute of Science (Chicago, IL)

سُوۡرَةُ آل عِمرَان
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيم

ِ تُولِجُ ٱلَّيۡلَ فِى ٱلنَّهَارِ وَتُولِجُ ٱلنَّهَارَ فِى ٱلَّيۡلِ‌ۖ وَتُخۡرِجُ ٱلۡحَىَّ مِنَ ٱلۡمَيِّتِ وَتُخۡرِجُ ٱلۡمَيِّتَ مِنَ ٱلۡحَىِّ‌ۖ وَتَرۡزُقُ مَن تَشَآءُ بِغَيۡرِ حِسَابٍ۬ (٢٧)

[003:027] "Thou causest the night to gain on the day, and thou causest the day to gain on the night; Thou bringest the Living out of the dead, and Thou bringest the dead out of the Living; and Thou givest sustenance to whom Thou pleasest, without measure."

(۲۶) تو ہی رات کو دن میں داخل کرتا اور تو ہی دن کو رات میں داخل کرتا ہے تو ہی بے جان سے جاندار پیدا کرتا ہے اور تو ہی جاندار سے بے جان پیدا کرتا ہے اور توہی جس کو چاہتا ہے بے شمار رزق بخشتا ہے (۲۷)

سُوۡرَةُ الاٴنعَام
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيم

إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ فَالِقُ ٱلۡحَبِّ وَٱلنَّوَىٰ‌ۖ يُخۡرِجُ ٱلۡحَىَّ مِنَ ٱلۡمَيِّتِ وَمُخۡرِجُ ٱلۡمَيِّتِ مِنَ ٱلۡحَىِّ‌ۚ ذَٲلِكُمُ ٱللَّهُ‌ۖ فَأَنَّىٰ تُؤۡفَكُونَ (٩٥) ِ

[006:095] It is God Who causeth the seed-grain and the date-stone to split and sprout. He causeth the living to issue from the dead, and He is the one to cause the dead to issue from the living. That is God: then how are ye deluded away from the truth?

بے شک خدا ہی دانے اور گٹھلی کو پھاڑ کر (ان سے درخت وغیرہ) اگاتا ہے وہی جاندار کو بے جان سے نکالتا ہے اور وہی بےجان کا جاندار سے نکالنے والا ہے۔ یہی تو خدا ہے۔ پھر تم کہاں بہکے پھرتے ہو (۹۵)

سُوۡرَةُ یُونس
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيم

قُلۡ مَن يَرۡزُقُكُم مِّنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضِ أَمَّن يَمۡلِكُ ٱلسَّمۡعَ وَٱلۡأَبۡصَـٰرَ وَمَن يُخۡرِجُ ٱلۡحَىَّ مِنَ ٱلۡمَيِّتِ وَيُخۡرِجُ ٱلۡمَيِّتَ مِنَ ٱلۡحَىِّ وَمَن يُدَبِّرُ ٱلۡأَمۡرَ‌ۚ فَسَيَقُولُونَ ٱللَّهُ‌ۚ فَقُلۡ أَفَلَا تَتَّقُونَ (٣١) ِ

[010:031] Say: "Who is it that sustains you (in life) from the sky and from the earth? or who is it that has power over hearing and sight? And who is it that brings out the living from the dead and the dead from the living? and who is it that rules and regulates all affairs?" They will soon say, "God". Say, "will ye not then show piety (to Him)?"

(ان سے) پوچھو کہ تم کو آسمان اور زمین میں رزق کون دیتا ہے یا (تمہارے) کانوں اور آنکھوں کا مالک کون ہے اور بےجان سے جاندار کون پیدا کرتا ہے اور دنیا کے کاموں کا انتظام کون کرتا ہے۔ جھٹ کہہ دیں گے کہ خدا۔ تو کہو کہ پھر تم (خدا سے) ڈرتے کیوں نہیں؟ (۳۱)

سُوۡرَةُ الرُّوم
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

وَلَهُ ٱلۡحَمۡدُ فِى ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٲتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضِ وَعَشِيًّ۬ا وَحِينَ تُظۡهِرُونَ (١٨) يُخۡرِجُ ٱلۡحَىَّ مِنَ ٱلۡمَيِّتِ وَيُخۡرِجُ ٱلۡمَيِّتَ مِنَ ٱلۡحَىِّ وَيُحۡىِ ٱلۡأَرۡضَ بَعۡدَ مَوۡتِہَا‌ۚ وَكَذَٲلِكَ تُخۡرَجُونَ (١٩)

[030:019] It is He Who brings out the living from the dead, and brings out the dead from the living, and Who gives life to the earth after it is dead: and thus shall ye be brought out (from the dead).

وہی زندے کو مردے سے نکالتا اور (وہی) مردے کو زندے سے نکالتا ہے اور( وہی) زمین کو اس کے مرنے کے بعد زندہ کرتا ہے۔ اور اسی طرح تم (دوبارہ زمین میں سے) نکالے جاؤ گے (۱۹)

Did you know that space itself above Earth is very cold (about -260° F, or -160°C)? That’s because there is very little matter in space to absorb the heat (it’s a vacuum). Fortunately, the Sun provides enough heat to keep Earth warm. As a result, the water on our planet stays liquid almost all of the time, allowing clouds to form and rain to fall over the land.

سُوۡرَةُ الحِجر
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيم

وَإِن مِّن شَىۡءٍ إِلَّا عِندَنَا خَزَآٮِٕنُهُ ۥ وَمَا نُنَزِّلُهُ ۥۤ إِلَّا بِقَدَرٍ۬ مَّعۡلُومٍ۬ (٢١) وَأَرۡسَلۡنَا ٱلرِّيَـٰحَ لَوَٲقِحَ فَأَنزَلۡنَا مِنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ مَآءً۬ فَأَسۡقَيۡنَـٰكُمُوهُ وَمَآ أَنتُمۡ لَهُ ۥ بِخَـٰزِنِينَ (٢٢) وَإِنَّا لَنَحۡنُ نُحۡىِۦ وَنُمِيتُ وَنَحۡنُ ٱلۡوَٲرِثُونَ (٢٣) ِ

[015:021-23] And there is not a thing but with Us are the stores thereof. And we send it not down save in appointed measure. (21) And We send the winds fertilising, and cause water to descend from the sky, and give it you to drink. It is not ye who are the holders of the store thereof. (22) Lo! and it is We, even We, Who quicken and give death, and We are the Inheritor. (23)

اور ہمارے ہاں ہر چیز کے خزانے ہیں اور ہم ان کو بمقدار مناسب اُتارتے رہتے ہیں (۲۱) اور ہم ہی ہوائیں چلاتے ہیں (جو بادلوں کے پانی سے) بھری ہوئی ہوتی ہیں اور ہم ہی آسمان سے مینہ برساتے ہیں اور ہم ہی تم کو اس کا پانی پلاتے ہیں اور تم تو اس کا خرانہ نہیں رکھتے (۲۲) اور ہم ہی حیات بخشتے اور ہم ہی موت دیتے ہیں۔ اور ہم سب کے وارث (مالک) ہیں (۲۳)

سُوۡرَةُ المؤمنون
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيم

وَأَنزَلۡنَا مِنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ مَآءَۢ بِقَدَرٍ۬ فَأَسۡكَنَّـٰهُ فِى ٱلۡأَرۡضِ‌ۖ وَإِنَّا عَلَىٰ ذَهَابِۭ بِهِۦ لَقَـٰدِرُونَ (١٨) ِ

[023:018] And We send down water from the sky according to (due) measure, and We cause it to soak in the soil; and We certainly are able to drain it off (with ease).

اور ہم ہی نے آسمان سے ایک اندازے کے ساتھ پانی نازل کیا۔ پھر اس کو زمین میں ٹھہرا دیا اور ہم اس کے نابود کردینے پر بھی قادر ہیں (۱۸)

Liquid water is vital to all life because it is an ideal solvent. Foods and waste products easily dissolve in it, and it circulates nutrients through a living creature’s body or cells. We know of no life form that exists without water in some form.

Earth is a complex terrestrial planet. There is an Inner and Outer Core of hot, very dense metal taking up over 1/3 of the interior of Earth. Above the two metallic cores is rock … trillions of tons of it stretching all the way to the surface. It is called the “Mantle”. Much of it is molten … a red-hot material that pours out of volcanoes all over our planet from time to time as lava. The only place it has cooled enough to be solid is at the surface, called the Crust.

Water...colorless, odorless and without taste, and yet no living thing can survive without it. Plants, animals and human beings consist mostly of water (about two-thirds of the human body is water). You'll see why the characteristics of water are uniquely suited to life:

It has an unusually high boiling point and freezing point. Water allows us to live in an environment of fluctuating temperature changes, while keeping our bodies a steady 98.6 degrees.
Water is a universal solvent. This property of water means that thousands of chemicals, minerals and nutrients can be carried throughout our bodies and into the smallest blood vessels.
Water is also chemically neutral. Without affecting the makeup of the substances it carries, water enables food, medicines and minerals to be absorbed and used by the body.
Water has a unique surface tension. Water in plants can therefore flow upward against gravity, bringing life-giving water and nutrients to the top of even the tallest trees.
Water freezes from the top down and floats, so fish can live in the winter.
Ninety-seven percent of the Earth's water is in the oceans. But on our Earth, there is a system designed which removes salt from the water and then distributes that water throughout the globe. Evaporation takes the ocean waters, leaving the salt, and forms clouds which are easily moved by the wind to disperse water over the land, for vegetation, animals and people. It is a system of purification and supply that sustains life on this planet, a system of recycled and reused water.

What keeps Earth so hot inside? The answer is “radioactivity”. Radioactive elements are heavy elements in nature that collect mainly near the center of the Earth and are unstable. They go by names you’ve heard of … Uranium, Plutonium and Thorium to name a few. Over long periods measured in millions and even billions of years, these elements break apart into smaller pieces, giving off lots of heat and energy. The heat is enough to melt the interior of Earth.

That hot churning interior also cracks the Earth’s solid crust in over 30 places, like an eggshell cracking when you boil an egg. Each piece of crust (known as a tectonic plate) is in motion, floating on the molten interior rock below. As they float, the crystal plates collide in some places and pull apart in others, creating earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and even “tidal waves” or tsunamis (their scientific name).

As Earth turns on its axis each day, rotating once every 24 hours, all that molten, swirling metal inside our planet also rotates. One of the laws of Physics is that a spinning ball of metal will generate electrical and magnetic “fields” of energy. Earth’s hot spinning iron core creates its own magnetic force surrounding our planet.

This Magnetic Field extends thousands of miles into space and actually helps to protect Earth from the Sun. The Sun’s “solar wind” flies into space at enormous speeds. Some of it heads to Earth. When it hits our atmosphere near the poles, it makes the air actually glow with multi-colored fields of energy. The result is the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights. There is also a “Southern Lights” (Aurora Australis) over Antarctica, created in exactly the same manner.

Earth is the only place in the universe known to have life (so far). That makes it perhaps the most amazing planet in all of the cosmos. Our rich covering of planet life is particularly noticeable.

سُوۡرَةُ الرَّحمٰن
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيم

ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنُ (١) عَلَّمَ ٱلۡقُرۡءَانَ (٢) خَلَقَ ٱلۡإِنسَـٰنَ (٣) عَلَّمَهُ ٱلۡبَيَانَ (٤) ٱلشَّمۡسُ وَٱلۡقَمَرُ بِحُسۡبَانٍ۬ (٥) وَٱلنَّجۡمُ وَٱلشَّجَرُ يَسۡجُدَانِ (٦) وَٱلسَّمَآءَ رَفَعَهَا وَوَضَعَ ٱلۡمِيزَانَ (٧)ِ

[055: 001-007] The Beneficent (1) Hath made known the Qur'an. (2) He hath created man. (3) He hath taught him utterance. (4) The sun and the moon are made punctual. (5) The stars and the trees adore. (6) And the sky He hath uplifted; and He hath set the measure, (7)

(خدا جو) نہایت مہربان (۱) اسی نے قرآن کی تعلیم فرمائی (۲) اسی نے انسان کو پیدا کیا (۳) اسی نے اس کو بولنا سکھایا (۴) سورج اور چاند ایک حساب مقرر سے چل رہے ہیں (۵) اور بوٹیاں اور درخت سجدہ کر رہے ہیں (۶)اور اسی نے آسمان کو بلند کیا اور ترازو قائم کی (۷)

What a huge river system the Amazon is!! All that green is jungle, dense tropical forest housing over 50% of all life on Earth. Notice the enormous sandy river delta (where the Amazon enters the Atlantic Ocean)

سُوۡرَةُ الرّعد
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيم

وَهُوَ ٱلَّذِى مَدَّ ٱلۡأَرۡضَ وَجَعَلَ فِيہَا رَوَٲسِىَ وَأَنۡہَـٰرً۬ا‌ۖ وَمِن كُلِّ ٱلثَّمَرَٲتِ جَعَلَ فِيہَا زَوۡجَيۡنِ ٱثۡنَيۡنِ‌ۖ يُغۡشِى ٱلَّيۡلَ ٱلنَّہَارَ‌ۚ إِنَّ فِى ذَٲلِكَ لَأَيَـٰتٍ۬ لِّقَوۡمٍ۬ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ (٣) وَفِى ٱلۡأَرۡضِ قِطَعٌ۬ مُّتَجَـٰوِرَٲتٌ۬ وَجَنَّـٰتٌ۬ مِّنۡ أَعۡنَـٰبٍ۬ وَزَرۡعٌ۬ وَنَخِيلٌ۬ صِنۡوَانٌ۬ وَغَيۡرُ صِنۡوَانٍ۬ يُسۡقَىٰ بِمَآءٍ۬ وَٲحِدٍ۬ وَنُفَضِّلُ بَعۡضَہَا عَلَىٰ بَعۡضٍ۬ فِى ٱلۡأُڪُلِ‌ۚ إِنَّ فِى ذَٲلِكَ لَأَيَـٰتٍ۬ لِّقَوۡمٍ۬ يَعۡقِلُونَ (٤) ِ

[013:003-004] And it is He who spread out the earth, and set thereon mountains standing firm and (flowing) rivers: and fruit of every kind He made in pairs, two and two: He draweth the night as a veil o'er the Day. Behold, verily in these things there are signs for those who consider!
And in the Earth are neighbouring tracts, vineyards and ploughed lands, and date-palms, like and unlike, which are watered with one water. And we have made some of them to excel others in fruit. Lo! herein verily are portents for people who have sense. (4)

اور وہ وہی ہے جس نے زمین کو پھیلایا اور اس میں پہاڑ اور دریا پیدا کئے اور ہر طرح کے میوؤں کی دو دو قسمیں بنائیں۔ وہی رات کو دن کا لباس پہناتا ہے۔ غور کرنے والوں کے لیے اس میں بہت سی نشانیاں ہیں (۳) اور زمین میں کئی طرح کے قطعات ہیں۔ ایک دوسرے سے ملے ہوئے اور انگور کے باغ اور کھیتی اور کھجور کے درخت۔ بعض کی بہت سی شاخیں ہوتی ہیں اور بعض کی اتنی نہیں ہوتیں (باوجود یہ کہ) پانی سب کو ایک ہی ملتا ہے۔ اور ہم بعض میوؤں کو بعض پر لذت میں فضیلت دیتے ہیں۔ اس میں سمجھنے والوں کے لیے بہت سی نشانیاں ہیں (۴)

To the left (west) of the Amazon is one of the most massive and geologically active mountain ranges on Earth, the Andes. Notice that the Amazon River actually begins in the Andes and drains east across most of the flat lands of central South America.

Earth also has a frozen covering of ice at its Poles. What a scene (image has filtered out the clouds). The beauty of the sun glinting off the ice is stunning, isn’t it? That ice is over 2 miles thick.

سُوۡرَةُ البَقَرَة
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

ٱلَّذِى جَعَلَ لَكُمُ ٱلۡأَرۡضَ فِرَٲشً۬ا وَٱلسَّمَآءَ بِنَآءً۬ وَأَنزَلَ مِنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ مَآءً۬ فَأَخۡرَجَ بِهِۦ مِنَ ٱلثَّمَرَٲتِ رِزۡقً۬ا لَّكُمۡ‌ۖ فَلَا تَجۡعَلُواْ لِلَّهِ أَندَادً۬ا وَأَنتُمۡ تَعۡلَمُونَ (٢٢)

Al-Baqara 2:22
Who hath appointed the earth a resting-place for you, and the sky a canopy; and causeth water to pour down from the sky, thereby producing fruits as food for you. And do not set up rivals to Allah when ye know (better). (22)

جس نے تمھارے لیے زمین کو بچھونا اور آسمان کو چھت بنایا اور آسمان سے مینہ برسا کر تمہارے کھانے کے لیے انواع و اقسام کے میوے پیدا کئے۔ پس کسی کو خدا کا ہمسر نہ بناؤ۔ اور تم جانتے تو ہو (۲۲)

Thousands of years ago, Earth was much colder and 1/3 of the planet was covered in ice. As it melted, the depths of the oceans increased to today’s level. If the remaining ice on Earth ever melts completely from global warming, our oceans will rise over 90 meters (350 ft), drowning most of the coastlines and major cities of Earth. We will have to abandon them. As you watch Earth from orbit, therefore, realize your world is a dynamic but fragile planet. Unfortunately, Global Warming has begun on Earth from all the Carbon Dioxide we have released into our air. If we do not stop its buildup, those ice caps could melt.

Earth’s statistics: It is 12,756 km (7,923 miles) in diameter. It spins once in approximately 24 hours, and its orbital revolution around the Sun takes about 365 days (1 year). We have one moon.

سُوۡرَةُ حٰمٓ السجدة / فُصّلَت
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيم

سَنُرِيهِمۡ ءَايَـٰتِنَا فِى ٱلۡأَفَاقِ وَفِىٓ أَنفُسِہِمۡ حَتَّىٰ يَتَبَيَّنَ لَهُمۡ أَنَّهُ ٱلۡحَقُّ‌ۗ أَوَلَمۡ يَكۡفِ بِرَبِّكَ أَنَّهُ ۥ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَىۡءٍ۬ شَہِيدٌ (٥٣) ِ

Fussilat 41:53
We shall show them Our portents on the horizons and within themselves until it will be manifest unto them that it is the Truth. Doth not thy Lord suffice, since He is Witness over all things? (53)

ہم عنقریب ان کو اطراف (عالم) میں بھی اور خود ان کی ذات میں بھی اپنی نشانیاں دکھائیں گے یہاں تک کہ ان پر ظاہر ہوجائے گا کہ (قرآن) حق ہے۔ کیا تم کو یہ کافی نہیں کہ تمہارا پروردگار ہر چیز سے خبردار ہے

International Space Station (ISS)

سُوۡرَةُ یُوسُف
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

وَڪَأَيِّن مِّنۡ ءَايَةٍ۬ فِى ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٲتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضِ يَمُرُّونَ عَلَيۡہَا وَهُمۡ عَنۡہَا مُعۡرِضُونَ (١٠٥) وَمَا يُؤۡمِنُ أَڪۡثَرُهُم بِٱللَّهِ إِلَّا وَهُم مُّشۡرِكُونَ (١٠٦)

Yusuf 12:105-106
How many a portent is there in the heavens and the earth which they pass by with face averted! (105) And most of them believe not in Allah except that they attribute partners (unto Him). (106)

اور آسمان و زمین میں بہت سی نشانیاں ہیں جن پر یہ گزرتے ہیں اور ان سے اعراض کرتے ہیں (۱۰۵) اور یہ اکثر خدا پر ایمان نہیں رکھتے۔ مگر (اس کے ساتھ) شرک کرتے ہیں (۱۰۶)

The International Space Station is the most expensive object ever built by the human race. It has now cost the U.S. and several countries in Europe and Asia over $110 billion to put up there, and it takes millions of dollars to operate per day. A small crew of only two or three men and women from different nations work on the ISS conducting research.

Hubble Space Telescope (HST).

This instrument, the size of a school bus, in one of our best telescopes. It has opened up a new world of deep space to Astronomers. Due to its position far above the smog, dust and thickness of Earth’s atmosphere, the large mirror of the HST is able to detect dim light from further into space than any other telescope ever built. Consequently, its space pictures are astounding.

After the Big Bang the universe started to expand to its present form.

سُوۡرَةُ الاٴنبیَاء
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

Have not those who disbelieve known that the heavens and the earth were of one piece, then We parted them, and we made every living thing of water? Will they not then believe? (30)

Since special relativity states that matter cannot exceed the speed of light, in a fixed space-time, it may seem paradoxical that two galaxies can be separated by 93 billion light years in 13 billion years; however, this separation is a natural consequence of general relativity. Stated simply, space can expand with no intrinsic limit on its rate; thus, two galaxies can separate more quickly than the speed of light if the space between them grows.

Experimental measurements such as the redshifts and spatial distribution of distant galaxies, the cosmic microwave background radiation, and the relative percentages of the lighter chemical elements, support this theoretical expansion and, more generally, the Big Bang theory, which proposes that space itself, was created ex nihilo at a specific time in the past. Recent observations have shown that this expansion is accelerating, and that most of the matter & anti matter, energy and dark energy in the universe is fundamentally different from that observed on Earth and not directly observable. The imprecision of current observations has hindered predictions of the ultimate fate of the universe.

سُوۡرَةُ الرَّحمٰن
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيم

كُلُّ مَنۡ عَلَيۡہَا فَانٍ۬ (٢٦) وَيَبۡقَىٰ وَجۡهُ رَبِّكَ ذُو ٱلۡجَلَـٰلِ وَٱلۡإِكۡرَامِ (٢٧) ِ

Ar-Rahman 55:26-27
Everyone that is thereon will pass away; (26) There remaineth but the Countenance of thy Lord of Might and Glory. (27)

جو (مخلوق) زمین پر ہے سب کو فنا ہونا ہے )۲۶) اور تمہارے پروردگار ہی کی ذات (بابرکات) جو صاحب جلال وعظمت ہے باقی رہے گی (۲۷)

Read the Article: End of Times

Moon

سُوۡرَةُ إبراهیم
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيم

وَسَخَّرَ لَكُمُ ٱلشَّمۡسَ وَٱلۡقَمَرَ دَآٮِٕبَيۡنِ‌ۖ وَسَخَّرَ لَكُمُ ٱلَّيۡلَ وَٱلنَّہَارَ (٣٣) ِ

Ibrahim 14:33
And maketh the sun and the moon, constant in their courses, to be of service unto you, and hath made of service unto you the night and the day. (33)

اور سورج اور چاند کو تمہارے لیے کام میں لگا دیا کہ دونوں (دن رات) ایک دستور پر چل رہے ہیں۔ اور رات اور دن کو بھی تمہاری خاطر کام میں لگا دیا (۳۳)

سُوۡرَةُ یُونس
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيم

ِ إِنَّ فِى ٱخۡتِلَـٰفِ ٱلَّيۡلِ وَٱلنَّہَارِ وَمَا خَلَقَ ٱللَّهُ فِى ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٲتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضِ لَأَيَـٰتٍ۬ لِّقَوۡمٍ۬ يَتَّقُونَ (٦)

[010:005-006] It is He Who made the sun to be a shining glory and the moon to be a light (of beauty), and measured out stages for her; that ye might know the number of years and the count (of time). Nowise did God create this but in truth and righteousness. (Thus) doth He explain His Signs in detail, for those who understand.
Lo! in the difference of day and night and all that Allah hath created in the heavens and the earth are portents, verily, for folk who ward off (evil). (6)

سُوۡرَةُ الفُرقان
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيم

تَبَارَكَ ٱلَّذِى جَعَلَ فِى ٱلسَّمَآءِ بُرُوجً۬ا وَجَعَلَ فِيہَا سِرَٲجً۬ا وَقَمَرً۬ا مُّنِيرً۬ا (٦١)

وَهُوَ ٱلَّذِى جَعَلَ ٱلَّيۡلَ وَٱلنَّهَارَ خِلۡفَةً۬ لِّمَنۡ أَرَادَ أَن يَذَّڪَّرَ أَوۡ أَرَادَ شُڪُورً۬ا (٦٢) ِ

[025:061-062] Blessed is He Who made constellations in the skies, and placed therein a Lamp and a Moon giving light;

And He it is Who hath appointed night and day in succession, for him who desireth to remember, or desireth thankfulness. (62)

سُوۡرَةُ نُوح
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيم

وَجَعَلَ ٱلۡقَمَرَ فِيہِنَّ نُورً۬ا وَجَعَلَ ٱلشَّمۡسَ سِرَاجً۬ا (١٦) ِ

[071:016] "'And made the moon a light in their midst, and made the sun as a (Glorious) Lamp?

اور چاند کو ان میں (زمین کا) نور بنایا ہے اور سورج کو چراغ ٹھہرایا ہے (۱۶)

The official Latin name of the Moon is “Luna”. Nowadays, we add an “r” to it and use the word, “lunar” to refer to the Moon.

you are looking at the full lit face of the moon. Notice all the impact craters. They are holes in the rock surface caused by Asteroids smashing into the Moon’s surface over its long history. An asteroid is a big rock, left over from the formation of the Solar System. Asteroids orbit the Sun by the billions, just as planets do. You can even see the “splatter” of rock and dirt from the impacts as it was tossed out of the craters over the surface. Those light-colored splatter trails of rock are called “Rays.”

Earth used to look a bit like the Moon long ago, with thousands of craters. In fact, for every asteroid impact on the moon, Earth got hit by 20 times that number. Over time, however, our wind blown sand, rainfall, volcanic eruptions and erosion of dirt filled in all the holes. Today, we have only a few impact craters visible on Earth’s surface, representing recent impacts. On the Moon, however, there is no rain, mud or wind-blown dust to fill things in, so those craters are still there, some billions of years old. You’ve seen this already on Mercury. In fact, Mercury and the Moon look very similar.

There have been at least five major theories to explain the origin of the Moon. How did such a large object (1/4 the size of Earth) come to be positioned in orbit around Earth? The theory that appears to fit the evidence best is the Collision Theory, which proposes that about 4.4 billion years ago, not long after the Solar System formed, another young planet the size of Mars actually collided with the young Earth. Both planets broke into pieces. The rubble was so hot from the collision that it melted and was thrown up in space as trillions of tons of hot molten blobs. The debris formed a huge orbiting ring around what was left of Earth, similar to the ring around Saturn. Quickly the debris ring cooled and came back together under the force of gravity into a spherical shape to form the Moon. The Earth too recovered from the impact and reformed itself into a sphere by gravity, its surface cooling to form a new solid crust. Imagine what a collision it was!

After that impact, the Moon formed very close to Earth. In fact, it was only about 12,000 miles away shortly after its formation. Because of its nearness to Earth, it looked ENORMOUS in the sky, and the gravity from it was incredible. Twice a day, it would have pulled our young oceans into gigantic high tides estimated at over 1,000 ft high (300 meters) (compared to only 6 ft tides today).

Over time, the Moon has been slowly drifting away from Earth (by a few cm each year). Today, it is over 225,000 miles (365,000 km) away and its tidal gravity is much weaker. Our tides are only 6 feet high now, on average.

This collision created a hot molten interior inside the Moon not unlike that of Earth. As a result, there was extensive volcanic action that continued for 3 billion more years, ending within the last 1 billion years. Today, no volcanoes erupt and the interior of the Moon has cooled enough for all of its rock to be solid. However, the past eruptions did leave their marks.

Direct your attention to the almost black areas. As volcanoes erupted on the Moon, the lava spread out into vast molten lakes due to the moon’s lower gravity. As it cooled, it hardened into rock and turned dark. We call these frozen lava lakes “Mare,” which is Latin for “sea.” To early Astronomers using primitive telescopes, they looked like dark oceans. We now know they are not frozen water, but the name has stuck. In fact, the Apollo spacecraft that landed on the Moon chose these old solid volcanic lava flows to land on because they looked sturdy and reasonably empty of craters.

سُوۡرَةُ الانشقاق
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

وَٱلۡقَمَرِ إِذَا ٱتَّسَقَ (١٨) لَتَرۡكَبُنَّ طَبَقًا عَن طَبَقٍ۬ (١٩) فَمَا لَهُمۡ لَا يُؤۡمِنُونَ (٢٠)

Al-Inshiqaq 84:18-20
And [I swear by] the moon when it is full, you will mount up stage by stage! What is the matter with them, that they have no faith?

اور چاند کی (قسم) جب کامل ہو جائے (۱۸) کہ تم درجہ بدرجہ چڑھو گے (۱۹) تو ان لوگوں کو کیا ہوا ہے کہ ایمان نہیں لاتے(۲۰)

The first human beings to land on another world, landed on the Moon in July 20, 1969. The American Apollo 11 mission touched down on one of the dark Mare areas called “Mare Tranquillitatis”, or “Sea of Tranquility”. Shortly thereafter, Apollo 12 astronauts landed on Mare Insularum.

Inside Apollo 11 were three crewmen. The ship’s commander was Neil Armstrong. Command Module Pilot was Michael Collins. Lunar Module pilot was Buzz Aldrin.

Apollo 11 consisted of three separate parts. The big gray cylinder with the big engine was called the Service Module, and contained most of the equipment, tanks, fuel, engine, etc. The 3-man crew rode to and from the Moon in the gold “Command Module”, which was named, “Columbia”. It’s the one with the windows. To get down to the Moon and back, two of the crew rode inside the Lunar Module or LM. Its nickname was “Eagle”.

On July 20, 1969, the Lunar Module “Eagle” detached from the Command Module and carried Commander Neal Armstrong and Pilot Buzz Aldrin down to the surface of another world for the first time in history (Collins stayed in orbit). About 2 ½ hours after separation, the Eagle landed on a flat area of hard rock on the “Sea of Tranquility”, or “Mare Tranquillitatis” in Latin

As Commander Armstrong stepped off that bottom stair onto the surface of the moon, he said, “That is one small step for man … one giant leap for mankind”.

At 17:52:17, the Ascent stage will take off with the two Astronauts inside, leaving the Descent stage on the Moon forever.

Back up in orbit, the crew jettisoned the Ascent stage (no longer needed), which fell to the moon and crashed onto it. They then fired their big engine and returned to Earth in the Command/Service Module.

Five more Apollo crews landed on the moon over the next several years, doing research, riding in a moon “buggy” car and bringing back moon rocks for study. But what about future visits to the Moon? There are plans someday to establish a “base” on the Moon.

Indeed, the astronauts' spacecraft pass through each layer of the atmosphere one by one, and then begin to pass through the Moon's gravitational field. Thus, the Moon is reached by moving through individual layers. In addition, the swearing by the Moon in Surat al-Inshiqaq 18 further strengthens this emphasis, meaning that the verse may well be a sign that humanity will travel to the Moon. (Allah knows best.)

The Apollo 11 mission was the first manned mission to land on the Moon. It was the fifth human spaceflight of Project Apollo and the third human voyage to the Moon. Launched on July 16, 1969, it carried Commander Neil Alden Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin, Jr. On July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to land on the Moon, while Collins orbited above.

Shortly after landing, before preparations began for the EVA, Aldrin broadcast that:
This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.

He then took Communion privately. At this time NASA was still fighting a lawsuit brought by atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair (who had objected to the Apollo 8 crew reading from the Book of Genesis) which demanded that their astronauts refrain from religious activities while in space. As such, Aldrin chose to refrain from directly mentioning this. He had kept the plan quiet (not even mentioning it to his wife) and did not reveal it publicly for several years. (NOTE: Buzz Aldrin was an elder at Webster Presbyterian Church in Webster, TX. His communion kit was prepared by the pastor of the church, the Rev. Dean Woodruff. Aldrin described communion on the moon and the involvement of his church and pastor in the October, 1970 edition of Guideposts magazine and in his book "Return to Earth." Webster Presbyterian possesses the chalice used on the moon, and commemorates the Lunar Communion each year on the Sunday closest to July 20.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11
http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/2016D4A6-2558-4452-8101-31F9E8E2548A

Aldrin had brought with him a tiny communion kit, given him by his church that had a silver chalice and wine vial about the size of the tip of his finger. During the morning he radioed, "Houston, this is Eagle. This is the LM pilot speaking. I would like to request a few moments of silence. I would like to invite each person listening in, whoever or wherever he may be, to contemplate for a moment the events of the last few hours, and to give thanks in his own individual way."

"In the radio blackout," he wrote later, "I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup. Then I read the Scripture, 'I am the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit.' I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but at the last minute Deke Slayton had requested that I not do this. NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle with Madelyn Murray O'Hare, the celebrated opponent of religion, over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon at Christmas. I agreed reluctantly..." "Eagle's metal body creaked. I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility. It was interesting for me to think: the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements."

There are lots of news about the fake moon landing, if it true, surly God will expose it.

سُوۡرَةُ المجَادلة
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

(٦) أَلَمۡ تَرَ أَنَّ ٱللَّهَ يَعۡلَمُ مَا فِى ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٲتِ وَمَا فِى ٱلۡأَرۡضِ‌ۖ مَا يَڪُونُ مِن نَّجۡوَىٰ ثَلَـٰثَةٍ إِلَّا هُوَ رَابِعُهُمۡ وَلَا خَمۡسَةٍ إِلَّا هُوَ سَادِسُہُمۡ وَلَآ أَدۡنَىٰ مِن ذَٲلِكَ وَلَآ أَڪۡثَرَ إِلَّا هُوَ مَعَهُمۡ أَيۡنَ مَا كَانُواْ‌ۖ ثُمَّ يُنَبِّئُهُم بِمَا عَمِلُواْ يَوۡمَ ٱلۡقِيَـٰمَةِ‌ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ بِكُلِّ شَىۡءٍ عَلِيمٌ (٧)

Al-Mujadila 58:7

Hast thou not seen that Allah knoweth all that is in the heavens and all that is in the earth? There is no secret conference of three but He is their fourth, nor of five but He is their sixth, nor of less than that or more but He is with them wheresoever they may be; and afterward, on the Day of Resurrection, He will inform them of what they did. Lo! Allah is Knower of all things. (7)

کیا تم کو معلوم نہیں کہ جو کچھ آسمانوں میں ہے اور جو کچھ زمین میں ہے خدا کو سب معلوم ہے۔ (کسی جگہ) تین (شخصوں) کا کانوں میں صلاح ومشورہ نہیں ہوتا مگر وہ ان میں چوتھا ہوتا ہے اور نہ کہیں پانچ کا مگر وہ ان میں چھٹا ہوتا ہے اور نہ اس سے کم یا زیادہ مگر وہ ان کے ساتھ ہوتا ہے خواہ وہ کہیں ہوں۔ پھر جو جو کام یہ کرتے رہے ہیں قیامت کے دن وہ (ایک ایک) ان کو بتائے گا۔ بےشک خدا ہر چیز سے واقف ہے (۷)

Our entire Solar System is flying through space, orbiting the center of the galaxy at the incredible speed of over 900,000 km/hr (560,000 miles/hr). So, even while you think you are standing still on Earth, you are moving at very high speeds. It’s a good thing we have Earth’s gravity holding onto us. In fact, all the stars you see in the sky are orbiting the Milky Way at similar speeds, like a high-speed merry-go-round in space.

Can we fly out of our galaxy and beat the speed of 900,000 km/hr?

سُوۡرَةُ الرَّحمٰن
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

يَـٰمَعۡشَرَ ٱلۡجِنِّ وَٱلۡإِنسِ إِنِ ٱسۡتَطَعۡتُمۡ أَن تَنفُذُواْ مِنۡ أَقۡطَارِ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٲتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضِ فَٱنفُذُواْ‌ۚ لَا تَنفُذُونَ إِلَّا بِسُلۡطَـٰنٍ۬ (٣٣)

Ar-Rahman 55:33
O company of jinn and men, if ye have power to penetrate (all) regions of the heavens and the earth, then penetrate (them)! Ye will never penetrate them save with (Our) sanction.

اے گروہِ جن وانس اگر تمہیں قدرت ہو کہ آسمان اور زمین کے کناروں سے نکل جاؤ تو نکل جاؤ۔ اور زور کے سوا تم نکل سکنے ہی کے نہیں (۳۳)

If man does establish a base, it will be enormously expensive and there will be many problems to overcome. They include lower gravity (which causes human muscles and bones to weaken from lack of use), no atmosphere, no oxygen to breathe, no water to drink and nothing to eat. All of those materials have to be brought from Earth, which is a very expensive undertaking.

It rotates at the same speed that it orbits Earth once. That means the same side of the Moon is always facing Earth. It is called Synchronous Gravitational Lock. The view you see now is of the “back side” of the Moon, a side that has not faced the Earth for millions of years. In fact, humans did not know what it looked like until we sent spacecraft to orbit the Moon and take its picture in the 1960’s. There were even some people convinced that extraterrestrial aliens had set up bases on the far side of the Moon and were using them to launch scout ships to spy on Earth and even abduct people. Fortunately, no such bases were found.

As you may know, there are times when the Sun, Earth and Moon all line up in their orbits in a straight line. If the Earth is between the Sun and Moon, then it can block sunlight from hitting the Moon. This is called a “Lunar” eclipse. Conversely, if the Moon is between the Sun and Earth, it is the one that can block out the Sun from shining on Earth for a short period, and we have a “Solar” eclipse.

On Earth, lunar eclipses can cause the moon to turn a deep red-orange color. It has to do with light passing through our atmosphere. Have you ever seen a lunar eclipse personally?

Mars

Mars has always fascinated people on Earth. Because it has a reddish color, it was named “Ares” by the Greeks and “Mars” by the Romans, after their gods of war (it reminded them of blood!). It took the powerful telescopes of the 19^th and 20^th centuries and modern spacecraft to reveal its true features.

Mars formed at the same time as Earth. It has many similar features. It is ½ the size of Earth so its gravity is about ½ ours. It turns on its axis at about the same speed as Earth, so its day is also 24 hours (24.03 hrs). It takes about 2 years to circle the Sun once (1.9 yrs). Because Earth is covered in oceans, we have a limited dry land mass. The land mass of Mars is almost equal to that of Earth. On that land are mountains, flat plains, hills, canyons, etc., just like Earth.

Mars also has an atmosphere. Its air, however, is very thin. It is less than 1% the density of our air and is much too thin to breathe. It also has no free oxygen. Instead, Mars has a beige gray colored atmosphere made of mostly Carbon Dioxide gas (95%).

Mars has occasional wispy clouds. They only appear on in the morning and are very thin. Mostly, they are a frozen CO₂ fog with no trace of water. Without water clouds, there is no rain or snow anywhere. It has not rained on Mars for millions of years. Mars is absolutely bone dry, a parched desert.

Not only is Mars bone dry, it is also very cold. It is farther from the Sun than Earth, and its atmosphere is too thin to trap much heat. Average daily temperature is a bone-chilling
-80ºF (-60^o C). At night, the temperature plunges to -150°F (-100°C).

Because the air is too thin to block much of the Sun’s radiation, the surface of Mars is struck directly with severe amounts of very harmful solar Ultraviolet (UV), X-Ray and Gamma radiation. If it hit your unprotected skin, you would get terrible sunburn in minutes. If that were not bad enough, the very low air pressure would cause your body to swell very painfully, and would in fact kill you quickly.

Another problem is wind. On Mars, there are HUGE wind and dust storms that rage around the planet for weeks at a time. While they might not kill you, you would not want to be in one for more than a few seconds.

Long ago, it is certain that Mars had liquid water, lots of it, even small oceans and lakes. There is extensive evidence for water on Mars. There are old river valleys and channels and old lake and sea basins. In early 2005, two rover spacecraft on Mars found sedimentary rock that can only be deposited by water. Another spacecraft even photographed a frozen lake of water ice inside a crater on Mars.

However, there is no liquid water now on the surface of Mars. It is all gone,

(1) sunken into the soil,

(2) frozen into its polar icecaps or craters, and

(3) evaporated into space.

Two American robot space probes (Spirit and Opportunity) landed on Mars in January 2004 in part to search for water. Both are still operating, still conducting the search. Both have found evidence of past water on Mars.

To see some of that evidence, you have only to look at Gusev crater, the landing site chosen by NASA for the Mars Spirit Rover. It is an old impact site that was hit by a giant asteroid long ago. After forming, Gusev crater flooded, possibly with a big deep lake of water. Over time, water ate a canyon/channel into the side of the crater and a river flowed into or out of it, carving a very clear river valley.

Spirit in fact, is sitting in that crater, still searching for signs of past water.

Presently, the only water visible on Mar’s surface today is frozen in a few craters and on its ice caps.

Mars has some amazing surface features. One of the most impressive is Olympus Mons, a giant volcano that is 24 km high (over 14 miles), which is over twice as high as Mt. Everest on Earth.

The volcano is nearly 500 km (300 miles) wide from side to side (about the size of Arizona in the U.S.). Olympus Mons does not erupt lava now but in the distant past, it poured out a huge volume of lava. This mountain is in fact, the largest mountain and largest volcano in the entire Solar System.

Mars isn’t done impressing us yet. It also features the Valles Marineris, a huge 2,400 mile long canyon far bigger, deeper and longer than Earth’s Grand Canyon. The valley is known as a “Rift Valley”. It was not carved by water or ice but by the movement of the crust.

Beside the MER Spirit and Opportunity rovers currently exploring the surface of Mars, there are five other spacecraft orbiting the planet, taking photos and measurements with a variety of instruments.

Many countries on Earth are planning to colonize Mars someday. There are plans to change Mars into a planet similar to Earth, with a thicker atmosphere, liquid water, rain and snow, plants, crops, animals, people and towns. The process is called “Terraforming” and may be possible.

Mars has two natural moons.

They are small football shaped rocks a few km in size called Phobos and Deimos. Astronomers believe both of the moons are asteroids that came too close to Mars sometime in the past, and were captured by its gravity. They orbit quite close to Mars.

Beyond Mars

The space beyond Mars is a place to excite your imagination. It is a world of giant ringed planets that drift on a never-ending journey around the Sun, surrounded by pearly necklaces of moons. It has space rocks the size of countries on Earth, potato shaped asteroids and huge icy comets that drag long tails of glowing gas and that sometimes crash into Earth. Most of all, it is so very cold. Far from the life-giving warmth of the Sun, the outer solar system is a frozen one.

What is perhaps most incredible of all is that we humans have sent several spacecraft probes through the depths of the outer Solar System and have begun to discover its secrets.

The Asteroids

Try to understand how far away, If you were traveling in the Space Shuttle, it would take you almost two years to get there. The nearest star you see would take over 120,000 years to reach, even if you fired your engines at full throttle.

The temperature outside is also a bone-freezing -210° C (-350° F). Human beings can only withstand the cold and vacuum of space for a few seconds before dying.

Yet here, in this hostile, lonely, freezing place, a huge population of Solar System objects exists. They number in the billions and are very old. They are the Asteroids, space rocks that formed from the same nebula materials that created the Earth and Sun and all of the planets.

Until just recently,

A planet was defined simply as any space object big enough to be a sphere that orbits (circles) the Sun.

An asteroid was a space rock smaller than a planet orbiting the sun.

A moon was a space object that orbited a planet (moons can be any shape).

However, in 2004 - 2006, space scientists found several large spherical objects beyond the orbit of Pluto that technically qualified as planets as well. They expect to find dozens more. There was also the problem of Pluto. Although named a “planet” in 1930, it is very small and it orbits the Sun in an unusual orbit.

As a result, new definitions for “a planet” were proposed by Astronomers and in 2006, the definition of a planet changed. In July 2008, it changed again.

According to the new “official” definition,

A planet must

(1) Orbit the Sun,

(2) Be shaped by gravity into a round sphere, and

(3) Its gravity must have cleared away other objects in its vicinity.

Under that new definition, Pluto was no longer a “regular” planet because it does not meet the 3rd criteria. Instead, it was newly classified as a “dwarf” planet. At the time, at least two other round objects in the Solar System also qualified as dwarf planets. They were “Ceres”, a big round asteroid orbiting the Sun in the Asteroid Belt, and “Eris”, a newly discovered object bigger than Pluto, orbiting the Sun beyond Pluto in a place called the “Kuiper Belt”.

In June 2008, the International Astronomical Union further complicated the issue by creating yet another planet class. Round objects at or beyond the orbit of Neptune would not only be dwarf planets but should also become be considered “Plutoid” dwarf planets. Thus, Pluto and Eris would now be considered “Plutoid” dwarf planets. Ceres would remain just a “Dwarf Planet”.

In July 2008, a third Plutoid planet was added to the list. Named Makemake, it is an orange, methane covered world about ¾ the size of Pluto that orbits the sun between Pluto and Eris. Discovered in 2005, it is named after a god worshipped by the peoples of Easter Island in the Pacific.

The space rocks come in all sizes. They are made mostly of solid rock, with a coating of dust. Some are dark in color, others much lighter. Most have craters from other impacts. Because they are still close enough to the sun’s heat to evaporate water, and because their gravity is usually too low to hold onto much liquid or gas, most asteroids have little frozen ice on their surfaces. However, some of the bigger asteroids with significant gravity do have ice in quantity.

Asteroids exist in the Asteroid Belt, a large region of space between Mars and Jupiter.

In Asteroid Belt Millions of space rocks large and small orbit our Sun here. Some are hundreds of miles in diameter. Some are the size of large cities or big mountains. Most, however, are small, ranging from the size of buildings and cars to soccer balls and marbles.

They formed here at the birth of our Solar System 4.6 billion years ago. Over time, they might have come together by gravity to form another planet except … scientists believe that the presence of Jupiter’s gravity prevented a planet from forming.

The Belt is quite thin.

Let’s examine one of the Solar System’s larger asteroids

A funny-shaped asteroid named Gaspra is a large beige colored space rock about 9 km (5½ miles) wide.

Gaspra is a common asteroid. The Asteroid Belt is full of similar rocks, all moving at high speeds through the vast emptiness of space. However, it is not the biggest asteroid. Until recently, the biggest “asteroid” was named “Ceres”. At 900 km (580 miles) in diameter, it is spherical and orbits the sun here in the Asteroid Belt. Under the new “Dwarf Planet” definition, however, Ceres is now a Dwarf Planet”. The largest asteroid now is Vesta (560 km). Recently, even bigger objects have been discovered far beyond the orbit of Pluto. They also meet the new definition of dwarf planets.

Ceres may now be a “Dwarf Planet”, but it is essentially a big rock, pockmarked with thousands of holes called “Craters”. As you saw in Activity 3, these craters are caused by other asteroids and space rocks slamming into Ceres at high speed over billions of years and leaving dents in the surface.

Ceres is moving fast as its orbits the Sun. It is traveling over 11 miles/sec (18 km/s).

Occasionally, big asteroids collide with each other in space. When that happens, they can break into smaller pieces, or they can be knocked off their former course and head in a new direction. Both possibilities occur in space.

Once in a great while, an asteroid finds itself knocked into a new orbital path headed toward the Sun and planets of the inner Solar System, including Earth.

In the history of Earth, many asteroids have actually collided with our world. In fact, it is common. Every day, over 100 small space rocks the size of grapefruits or basketballs are captured by Earth’s gravity. If they are so captured, we call them meteoroids.

Most burn up and melt from friction as they enter and pass through Earth’s protective atmosphere. If they actually enter Earth’s atmosphere, we call them shooting stars or meteors.

Let’s visit another asteroid. It is an unusual one called Ida.

What a strange potato-shaped space rock Ida is. It is actually very big. It is 58 km long (about 36 miles) and 24 km (15 miles) wide. If it ever collided with Earth, it would extinguish all life on the planet.

Ida is an asteroid that has its own small moon orbiting it. In fact, over 60 asteroids having small moons have been located by Earth-based telescopes.

Al-Anbiya 21:32-33
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful

And we have made the sky a roof withheld (from them). Yet they turn away from its portents. (32)

سورة الاٴنبیَاء
شروع الله کے نام سے جو بڑا مہربان نہایت رحم والا ہے

اور آسمان کو محفوظ چھت بنایا۔ اس پر بھی وہ ہماری نشانیوں سے منہ پھیر رہے ہیں (۳۲)

5-10 bigger asteroid rocks, however, don’t completely melt and are able to reach the ground every day. If they do hit the ground, we call them meteorites. When they hit, they can leave holes or craters in the ground. Most meteorites go unnoticed, but one or two each year crash inside populated areas. They even hit houses and cars. No human has ever been killed by one that we know of, but several years ago, a dog was hit and killed by a meteorite, and a woman had one crash through her house roof and land in her lap (it bruised her legs badly, but she survived OK). In 1983, a piece of an asteroid slammed into the trunk of a car parked in a girl’s driveway in New Jersey, and in 2003, a meteorite crashed through the roof of a home in Texas and came to rest in the downstairs family room.

Every few million years, a “BIG” asteroid the size of a mountain falls to Earth like a giant cannon ball. When it hits, the damage can be horrible. The last such impact occurred about 100 years ago. In 1908, an asteroid or comet impacted an isolated area of Siberia (part of Russia). No one was living there at the time, but the impact destroyed thousands of square miles of forest, and killed thousands of animals and birds.

Saba 34:9
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful

Have they not observed what is before them and what is behind them of the sky and the earth? If We will, We can make the earth swallow them, or cause obliteration from the sky to fall on them. Lo! herein surely is a portent for every slave who turneth (to Allah) repentant. (9)

سورة سَبَإ
شروع الله کے نام سے جو بڑا مہربان نہایت رحم والا ہے

کیا انہوں نے اس کو نہیں دیکھا جو ان کے آگے اور پیچھے ہے یعنی آسمان اور زمین۔ اگر ہم چاہیں تو ان کو زمین میں دھنسا دیں یا ان پر آسمان کے ٹکڑے گرا دیں۔ اس میں ہر بندے کے لئے جو رجوع کرنے

والا ہے ایک نشانی ہے (۹)

Al-Naml 27:88
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful

And thou seest the hills thou deemest solid flying with the flight of clouds: the doing of Allah Who perfecteth all things. Lo! He is Informed of what ye do. (88)

سورة النَّمل
شروع الله کے نام سے جو بڑا مہربان نہایت رحم والا ہے

اور تم پہاڑوں کو دیکھتے ہو تو خیال کرتے ہو کہ (اپنی جگہ پر) کھڑے ہیں مگر وہ (اس روز) اس طرح اُڑے پھریں گے جیسے بادل۔ (یہ) خدا کی کاریگری ہے جس نے ہر چیز کو مضبوط بنایا۔ بےشک وہ تمہارے سب افعال سے باخبر ہے (۸۸)

Ash-Shura 42:5
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful
Almost might the heavens above be rent asunder

سورة الشّوریٰ
شروع الله کے نام سے جو بڑا مہربان نہایت رحم والا ہے

قریب ہے کہ آسمان اوپر سے پھٹ پڑیں

65 million years ago, an unnamed asteroid about the size of Gaspra (10 km) hit Earth in the Gulf of Mexico off the Yucatan Peninsula. It left a giant hole (crater) in the ground over 200 km (125 mi) wide and 12 km (8 miles) deep. At that time, there were no people. It was the age of the dinosaurs and giant reptiles ruled the land and the seas. The impact was so terrible that life on Earth changed forever.

First, a giant tidal wave (a tsunami), was thrown up to a height of 300 meters (1000 ft), and raced in all directions for thousands of miles, drowning everything in its path. That was nothing, however, compared to what happened next. The blast was so powerful that the crust of the Earth cracked and lava poured out underwater. Enormous amounts of melted rock, dust, steam and gases were thrown high into the air and spread by winds. These hot fragments fell back to Earth on forested areas and set them on fire. Within weeks, the skies over Earth darkened from ash, dust and smoke, and temperatures plunged as sunlight was blocked out. The rain became acidic from all the air pollution and the ozone layer that protects our planet from excessive UV radiation from the Sun was badly damaged, allowing harmful UV to reach the ground.

Within a few months, plant and animal life began to die from the darkness, cold, acid rain, radiation and lack of food. The dinosaurs never recovered and they all died out. It was the end of an era. In fact, it is estimated that over 70% of all life on Earth (plant and animal) was snuffed out by this collision. It was a true extinction level event (ELE). Our official name for it is the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction.

Al-Anbiya 21: 11-12
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful

How many a community that dealt unjustly have We shattered, and raised up after them another folk! (11) And, when they felt Our might, behold them fleeing from it! (12)

سورة الاٴنبیَاء
شروع الله کے نام سے جو بڑا مہربان نہایت رحم والا ہے

اور ہم نے بہت سی بستیوں کو جو ستمگار تھیں ہلاک کر مارا اور ان کے بعد اور لوگ پیدا کردیئے (۱۱) جب انہوں نے ہمارے (مقدمہ) عذاب کو دیکھا تو لگے اس سے بھاگنے (۱۲)

Occasionally, big asteroids collide with each other in space. When that happens, they can break into smaller pieces, or they can be knocked off their former course and head in a new direction. Both possibilitie

According to the new “official” definition,

A Planet must

(1) Orbit the Sun,

(2) Be shaped by gravity into a round sphere, and

(3) Its gravity must have cleared away other objects in its vicinity.

In July 2008, a third Plutoid dwarf planet was added to the list. Named Makemake, it is a methane rich world about ¾ the size of Pluto that orbits the sun beyond Pluto. Discovered in 2005, it is named after a god worshipped by the peoples of Easter Island in the Pacific.

وَٱلسَّمَآءِ ذَاتِ ٱلۡبُرُوجِ (﻿١﻿)

By the heaven, holding mansions of the stars, (1)

In fact, the Sun (and all stars that we can see) is exploding internally, with billions of H-bomb type explosions going off every second in its central core. This results in enormous radiation energy and heat pouring out of the Sun at the speed of light, spreading through space in all directions.

Watch this Video what if Sun goes Supernova http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HQp7Z0xLmg

The sun’s lower atmosphere, called the Chromospheres WHEW!

Diagram of the layers of the Sun. Your teacher may provide you much more detail on these layers. If you are internet connected and have the time, many different websites describe the Sun in more detail.

Mercury has no air or liquid water on its surface so there is nothing to erode, flood, blow sand into or fill in the craters. They still look like they did billions of years ago.

Venus is very attractive from orbit, don’t you think. What is it really like?

Venus’s super-dense atmosphere is made of about 96% CO2. The CO2 came from volcanoes that were very active for billions of years in the past, but do not appear to be active now.

Because Venus is closer to the sun, it also gets more heat than Earth. As a result, it has a runaway greenhouse effect, an effect so severe that the planet is hot enough to melt lead.

It is called Global Warming

and it has many people very worried. It may become the greatest threat to humans in all of our history.

You can discover two fascinating things about Venus’s rotation.

First, it is very slow. It takes the planet a whopping 243 days to turn just once on its axis, making for a VERY LONG day and a very long night.

Secondly, Venus turns on its axis backwards (from right to left). This is called retrograde rotation, and is different from most of the other planets in our Solar System. Most are like the Sun and turn from left to right (called prograde rotation)

اور ہمارے ہاں ہر چیز کے خزانے ہیں اور ہم ان کو بمقدار مناسب اُتارتے رہتے ہیں (﻿۲۱﻿)

Liquid water is vital to all life because it is an ideal solvent. Foods and waste products easily dissolve in it, and it circulates nutrients through a living creature’s body or cells. We know of no life form that exists without water in some form.

What a huge river system the Amazon is!! All that green is jungle, dense tropical forest housing over 50% of all life on Earth. Notice the enormous sandy river delta (where the Amazon enters the Atlantic Ocean)

To the left (west) of the Amazon is one of the most massive and geologically active mountain ranges on Earth, the Andes. Notice that the Amazon River actually begins in the Andes and drains east across most of the flat lands of central South America.

Earth also has a frozen covering of ice at its Poles. What a scene (image has filtered out the clouds). The beauty of the sun glinting off the ice is stunning, isn’t it? That ice is over 2 miles thick.

اور آسمان و زمین میں بہت سی نشانیاں ہیں جن پر یہ گزرتے ہیں اور ان سے اعراض کرتے ہیں (﻿۱۰۵﻿) اور یہ اکثر خدا پر ایمان نہیں رکھتے۔ مگر (اس کے ساتھ) شرک کرتے ہیں (﻿۱۰۶﻿)

The first human beings to land on another world, landed on the Moon in July 20, 1969. The American Apollo 11 mission touched down on one of the dark Mare areas called “Mare Tranquillitatis”, or “Sea of Tranquility”. Shortly thereafter, Apollo 12 astronauts landed on Mare Insularum.

As Commander Armstrong stepped off that bottom stair onto the surface of the moon, he said, “That is one small step for man … one giant leap for mankind”.

At 17:52:17, the Ascent stage will take off with the two Astronauts inside, leaving the Descent stage on the Moon forever.

Back up in orbit, the crew jettisoned the Ascent stage (no longer needed), which fell to the moon and crashed onto it. They then fired their big engine and returned to Earth in the Command/Service Module.

Five more Apollo crews landed on the moon over the next several years, doing research, riding in a moon “buggy” car and bringing back moon rocks for study. But what about future visits to the Moon? There are plans someday to establish a “base” on the Moon.

Can we fly out of our galaxy and beat the speed of 900,000 km/hr?

On Earth, lunar eclipses can cause the moon to turn a deep red-orange color. It has to do with light passing through our atmosphere. Have you ever seen a lunar eclipse personally?

Mars also has an atmosphere. Its air, however, is very thin. It is less than 1% the density of our air and is much too thin to breathe. It also has no free oxygen. Instead, Mars has a beige gray colored atmosphere made of mostly Carbon Dioxide gas (95%).

Not only is Mars bone dry, it is also very cold. It is farther from the Sun than Earth, and its atmosphere is too thin to trap much heat. Average daily temperature is a bone-chilling -80ºF (-60o C). At night, the temperature plunges to -150°F (-100°C).

Another problem is wind. On Mars, there are HUGE wind and dust storms that rage around the planet for weeks at a time. While they might not kill you, you would not want to be in one for more than a few seconds.

However, there is no liquid water now on the surface of Mars. It is all gone,

(1) sunken into the soil,

(2) frozen into its polar icecaps or craters, and

(3) evaporated into space.

Two American robot space probes (Spirit and Opportunity) landed on Mars in January 2004 in part to search for water. Both are still operating, still conducting the search. Both have found evidence of past water on Mars.

The volcano is nearly 500 km (300 miles) wide from side to side (about the size of Arizona in the U.S.). Olympus Mons does not erupt lava now but in the distant past, it poured out a huge volume of lava. This mountain is in fact, the largest mountain and largest volcano in the entire Solar System.

Mars has two natural moons.

They are small football shaped rocks a few km in size called Phobos and Deimos. Astronomers believe both of the moons are asteroids that came too close to Mars sometime in the past, and were captured by its gravity. They orbit quite close to Mars.

**A Planet must**

وَٱلسَّمَآءِ ذَاتِ ٱلۡبُرُوجِ (١)

Venus’s super-dense atmosphere is made of about 96% CO₂. The CO₂ came from volcanoes that were very active for billions of years in the past, but do not appear to be active now.

اور ہمارے ہاں ہر چیز کے خزانے ہیں اور ہم ان کو بمقدار مناسب اُتارتے رہتے ہیں (۲۱)

اور آسمان و زمین میں بہت سی نشانیاں ہیں جن پر یہ گزرتے ہیں اور ان سے اعراض کرتے ہیں (۱۰۵) اور یہ اکثر خدا پر ایمان نہیں رکھتے۔ مگر (اس کے ساتھ) شرک کرتے ہیں (۱۰۶)

Not only is Mars bone dry, it is also very cold. It is farther from the Sun than Earth, and its atmosphere is too thin to trap much heat. Average daily temperature is a bone-chilling
-80ºF (-60^o C). At night, the temperature plunges to -150°F (-100°C).