393)The Particle Zoo: The Building Blocks of All Matter; Quotes of Aga Khans IV and III and others.

"Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)

"Tarkib' is composition as in the compounding of elements in the process of making more complex things, that is, of adding together two things to form a synthesis, a compound. Soul composes in the sense of 'tarkib'; it is the animating force that combines the physical elements of the natural universe into beings that move and act. Incorporating is an especially apt word in this instance. It means to turn something into a body, as in 'composing'. But it is actually the conversion of an intellectual object, a thought, into a physical thing. Soul acts by incorporating reason into physical objects, the natural matter of the universe and all the things composed of it"(Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani,10th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist, d971CE, from the book, 'Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani: Intellectual Missionary', by Paul Walker)

"In sum the process of creation can be said to take place at several levels. Ibda represents the initial level - one transcends history, the other creates it. The spiritual and material realms are not dichotomous, since in the Ismaili formulation, matter and spirit are united under a higher genus and each realm possesses its own hierarchy. Though they require linguistic and rational categories for definition, they represent elements of a whole, and a true understanding of God must also take account of His creation. Such a synthesis is crucial to how the human intellect eventually relates to creation and how it ultimately becomes the instrument for penetrating through history the mystery of the unknowable God implied in the formulation of tawhid."(Azim Nanji, Director, Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, U.K., 1995)

"Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation"(Aga Khan IV, AKU, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)

The above are 4 quotes taken from:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html



The Particle Zoo
By Stephen Ornes
Friday, June 27th, 2008

Particles are the building blocks of matter, and matter makes up everything you can see. The Earth and moon are matter. So is your body, your computer’s screen, even the air you breathe. Which means they’re all made of particles. Lots and lots of particles, of all different kinds, stuck together.

Atoms, which used to be considered the smallest unit of matter, are made from particles too. Just how small is an atom? That’s a tricky question, since different atoms have different sizes and atoms are mostly empty space. But here’s one way to think about it: Let’s say you wanted to fill up a baseball-sized bowl with gold atoms. You’d need roughly twice as many of these atoms as it would take to fill an Earth-sized bowl with baseballs.

Particles that are even smaller than an atom are called “subatomic.” The main subatomic particles that make up atoms are protons, electrons and neutrons. But some of these particles are also made of even smaller particles. Protons and neutrons, for example, are made of subatomic particles called “quarks.” There are six kinds of quarks, each with a weird name: up, down, strange, charm, top and bottom.

Dozens of types of subatomic particle exist, and scientists suspect there may be still more to discover. When a new type emerges, scientists tend to give them pretty odd-sounding names. To date, we’ve got bosons, fermions, leptons, muons, pions, neutrinos, photons, gluons, and gravitons.

Neutrinos are unusually weird because they have almost no mass and they fly through space at almost the speed of light. Three types exist: muon neutrinos, electron neutrinos and tau neutrinos.

And the strangest particle of all: the tachyon. It’s considered “hypothetical,” which means it might not even exist. If it does, it can go faster than the speed of light and travel back in time.

No wonder some physicists refer to these — the smallest inhabitants of our universe — as their “particle zoo.”



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)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql)(Prophet Muhammad, circa 632CE)