The Holy Qur’an describes this phenomena in two places. Qanat as-samawatu wal-ardu ratkhan fa-fataqnaan. That is the one place where black hole phenomena has been explained. In the old commentaries you will find the word ratkhan translated as a sort of nebula, a cloud or smoky, large, huge, shapeless, smoky appearance. This is also correct.
But the true meaning of ratkhan is exactly the opposite. And the Arabic dictionaries explain it as something so tightly sewed that nothing can escape. So both these stages of universe which have been scientifically proved have been discussed, have been mentioned in the Holy Qur’an under the one single word. And the most beautiful thing about the Holy Qur’an is that it has the maximum economy of words and maximum meaning can be drawn from those words.
So qanata ratkhan means the heaven and earth. Both were at one stage like a small ball with which the children play which is sewn so tightly that nothing within can escape. And entirely everything is enclosed therein. And secondly it says that both the skies and heavens were in a state of nebula to which we gave shape later on. So fataq is also applicable to both these meanings of the word ratkhan. Fataq means to break open suddenly. And fataq also means to make distinctions so that things precipitate and appear to be distinct from each other.
So how beautiful is the language of Holy Qur’an that in one short sentence it explains the entire phenomena of creation. So ratkhan is the thing which is in one sense the black hole. Because the definition of black hole is this that nothing can escape it. No radiation, no sound, no news. So much so that nobody knows what is inside and what the size is. The size has been calculated by some scientists, some mathematicians to be the tiniest that you can imagine. But it is just a guesswork. Nobody can say with definiteness how tiny that black hole is.
But they can say this much that the entire universe can be contracted to that size. And that size once it’s contracted encompasses everything and doesn’t exclude anything. With the result that it is a thing without property. There is no chemical property or physical property or any other property which you can ascribe to that thing called black hole. And if you define nothingness, that is exactly the lack of property. Anything which has no property does not exist. So it is a form of non-existence. Some people, sometimes scientists have gone so far as to opine that that black hole disappears on one planet, in one dimension and reappears as a universe in another dimension of which we have no concept. So they have been offering very interesting possibilities but we are not concerned with them. We are concerned with the total disappearance of the universe into a black hole which is so tightly stored that no property can be observed from outside or permitted to be observed from outside.
Then the Holy Quran says in another verse mentions the phenomena of recreation, re-creation of the universe and also the phenomena of its re-disappearance. Now first it is mentioned as disappearance. It says that The second verse is about hand, free right hand. Now that has been mentioned but there is another verse or another meaning I remember but I don’t remember the verse. It says that, in the second verse here, it says that like this we will repeat. And there is another in my right hand, I will hold. In the previous part of this verse, the word Aydin has been mentioned.
As if I will have the universe wound round my hand, my right hand. No, no, no, that’s different. In this context, you remember the verse preceding this? No, the verse preceding this one. Previous to this, preceding this. Anyway, even this part will serve our purpose. When you go, kindly refer to the Holy Quran and give me the whole verse. Allah says That a day will come when we will wrap round the whole universe like the person who rolls his scroll. Qutub is the scroll of the old days.
Books were written on long stripes and they were not the shape of the books we have today. They were long stripes which were rolled like a film. So, the Holy Quran says that a time would come when we will roll the whole universe. It will be rolled and packed into a small size, but the phenomena is mentioned as rolling. Like a film, like ordinary picture film, it is rolled, exactly the same phenomena is mentioned. No, no, that I know. That is a different verse. I have got that in mind, but I am not referring to that at present, please. So, this phenomena, if you study the phenomena of black hole coming into being and look at the pictures which have been created by scientists, you will be surprised that when the binary stars collapse onto each other or one part of the binary star begins to shift on the other and then it turns into a dwarf and that dwarf collapses ultimately into a black hole. This whole phenomena in these various stages has been described by scientists.
And in the last states they say that when the matter from outside world is detected by a black hole, it does not fall in any other way, but like a sheet. And that sheet does not strike directly, but gets rolled round, exactly as the Holy Quran has described this phenomena. It is the most fantastic thing, the Holy Quran is. A beautiful picture has been created by scientists and it is manifested in the scientific magazines and books. It is for anybody to see that, illustrated by a scientist. This verse is exactly the picture of what happens according to the knowledge of the advanced scientists today. Then it says, Now this is again the most beautiful part of this verse. It says that this has happened before and we brought you into creation. So we are talking of the end, which was once, but there was a beginning to it. And we are just discussing that. We will repeat the same phenomena and that universe which has disappeared by the process of rolling, will ultimately reappear.
So we don’t know how many times the universe has been wound round in sheets, in the form of sheets and disappeared into black holes. But we know that this has happened before according to the Holy Quran. And the scientists are now conjecturing their possibility. They don’t know as yet. But they know that this universe can go into nothingness again. The whole universe. And some say that because it’s… The Innala Musyon is a different phenomena. It says that because it’s expanding and there is an end to that expansion. And ultimately it will reach a state where it will start recontracting. And when it begins recontracting, then there is a greater possibility of a large black hole forming, which are already… many black holes are forming already. So they are getting together and the black hole becomes so powerful as to reabsorb the entire universe ultimately. So in those two short verses, Allah has described the whole phenomena.
