340)Existential Wonderment: Huge star exploded 7.5 billion yrs ago, Earth was created 5 billion yrs ago: light from the star arrived here Mar 19 '08!!

I blogged about this event a few posts ago(March 22nd 2008):

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/03/335star-explodes-75-billion-light-years.html ,

but upon thinking more about it I cannot get it out of my mind. It is, in fact, mind-blowing for me that light from an exploding star 40 times larger than our Sun left the scene of the explosion 7.5 billion years ago, or two and a half billion years before our Earth came into existence, and only just reached us here on Earth on March 19th 2008 of the Common Era!! NASA captured that momentary flash of light 7.5 billion years old on one of its telescopes, as seen in this picture:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080328.html


This is how it was described on the NASA website:


"Never before has anything so far away come even close to naked-eye visibility. The explosion was so far away that it took its light 7,500,000,000 (7.5 billion) years to reach Earth! In fact, the explosion took place so long ago that Earth had not yet come into existence":

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift/bursts/brightest_grb.html

The above event in nature is a juicy piece of knowledge for someone like me who blogs about science and religion. Coming face to face with a flash of light, a physical substance, older than my terrestrial home, the Earth, fills me with a sense of existential wonderment and bewilderment. It touches on the subjects of time, space, distance, movement, light, creation, knowledge, intellect, religion, tawhid, monotheism, monorealism and the marvels and mercy of Allah's dynamic creation. It made me read again and think about, carefully, from top to bottom, a collection of 65 excerpts and quotes I have painstakingly put together since March 2006:

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/02/327comprehensive-quotes-of-aga-khan-iv.html


Easy Nash

The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)