255) "It is He who created you from dust, then from a sperm drop, then from a blood clot, then He brings you forth as a child, then.....(Quran).

Here is a relevant verse from the Qur'an, cited by Nasir-i Khusraw, hujjat-i Khurasan in his Khawaan al-Ikhwaan : "It is He who created you from dust, then from a sperm drop, then from a blood clot, then He brings you forth as a child, then lets you reach your age of full strength, then lets you become old - though some of you die before - and then lets you reach the appointed term; and that haply you may find the intellect (la'allakum ta'qilun)."(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet)

Space dust

Blowing in the wind

Oct 11th 2007
From The Economist print edition

The building blocks of planets and people come from black holes

WHEN the writer of Genesis said man was made of dust, he spoke true. And not just man. The whole Earth was made from dust particles in orbit around the primitive sun, as were all the other solid objects in the solar system. But how did the dust itself come into existence?

That is a puzzle. Modern space dust blows off stars that formed about 10 billion years ago. These stars would have been too young to have shed much of the stuff by the time that the solar system formed, 4.5 billion years ago. The universe's primordial dust must therefore have come from somewhere else—and a team of researchers led by Ciska Markwick-Kemper of the University of Manchester think they know where. The answer is from black holes.

The black holes in question are at the centres of quasars. These formed shortly after the universe began and they came to the attention of earthling astronomers because quasars are powerful radio sources. The radio waves (and lots of other radiation) are the result of matter being drawn into the black hole and releasing energy as it falls. But not all this matter is swallowed. Some is baked, transformed and spat out again. It was this transformation that interested Dr Markwick-Kemper.

Suspecting that it might be the source of primordial dust, she recruited a space telescope called Spitzer to look at a quasar called PG 2112+059 in more detail. Spitzer is tuned to pick up infra-red radiation—the sort of radiation emitted by dust that has been heated. And the details of the spectrum of infra-red radiation given off by a speck of dust will betray its composition.

Dr Markwick-Kemper and her colleagues report their findings in a forthcoming edition of Astrophysical Journal Letters. The dust around PG 2112+059 contains large quantities of rock-forming minerals, including crystalline forms of silica (essentially, small sand grains), a form of aluminium oxide called corundum (better known on Earth as the principal ingredient of rubies and sapphires) and a form of magnesium oxide called periclase (which is present in marble).

These minerals must have been produced by the quasar, Dr Markwick-Kemper argues, because their crystal structures would not survive long in the hostile conditions of outer space. Cosmic rays would zap them into an amorphous, glass-like state. Moreover, corundum and periclase have not been detected in space dust before. Their association with the quasar is therefore strong evidence that this is the object that created them. A human being may still be a handful of dust. But that dust has had an exciting history.


Easy Nash aka easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)