Miracles Of The Qur'an, - The Expanding Earth

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It is He Who stretched out the earth and placed firmly embedded mountains and rivers in it and made two types of every kind of fruit. He covers over day with night. There are signs in that for people who reflect. (Surat Ar-Ra‘d, 3)
The Arabic term“madda al-arda”translated“as stretched out”in the above verse, means “to be covered, spread out, stretched, pulled out, expanded or opened.” The use of this word in the context of the earth in referring to the formation of mountains and rivers is exceedingly wise, because looking at the scientific explanation of the formation of the earth, it does indeed appear that mountains and rivers formed through the stretching and expansion of the earth.
This photograph taken by NASA from space shows the Gulf of Aqaba and the Suez Canal, to the east of the Sinai Peninsula. The Sinai Peninsula, the Dead Sea and the River Jordan constitute the northern part of the Great Rift Valley.
Present day science says that the earth had a very different appearance in the very earliest times compared to what it is now. In his bookDie Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane(The Origin of the Continents and Oceans) printed in 1915, the famous German scientist Alfred Lothar Wegener proposed that all the continents had originally been one single land mass. This great land mass later came to be known by the Greek namePangaea, meaning “all continents. 47Because the plates t ...The most evident expansion taking place on the sea bed is that between Arabia and Africa, where the continents are moving away from one another three or four times faster. When the expansion takes place on the continent, rather than on the sea bed, the result is constantly widening valleys such as the Great Rift Valley in the East Africa-Arabia regions.
A reconstruction from the time when there was only one large continent - Pangaea- about 300 million years ago.The Great Rift Valle ...
The bookThe Expanding Earthdescribes how it is not only mountains, but also certain river beds that formed due to the “expansion” of the earth:
In all cases the greatest stress occurred at the location of the earth's major rivers. This development suggests that the major riverbeds came into existence as a result of expansion rather than random erosion. Since the continents were fixed on an expanding surface, it may be logically deduced that expansion caused the land masses to stretch and, at the points of greatest tension, to break, thus forming the rivers. 52
In statements regarding the continent of North America, the Utah Geological Research Center says:
The ranges and basins have been forming for the past 10 to 20 million years in response to east-west stretching of the earth's crust.Stretchingcreates tension that is released by slow continuous movement or sudden movement along a fault (a break in the earth's crust), which causes earthquakes. During an earthquake, the mountains rise while the valleys drop along the faults. The stretching continues today. 53
Facts such as the expansion of the earth can only be established by comprehensive research and common data from various contemporary branches of science. For example, photographs taken by satellite, the product of 20th century technology, have confirmed the view that the continents were once complementary to one another. Highly accurate measurements have revealed that the expansion in the earth’s crust is continuing at a slow but specific rate. The presence of such special information in the Qur’an, at a time when nobody could determine anything about the continents and, what is more, about formations that took millions of years to develop, once again shows that it is the word of Allah. The way that the Qur’an, revealed 1,400 years ago, contains such profound information about the formation of the earth, is one of its scientific miracles.
The Sun Will Eventually Expire
And the Sun runs to its resting place. That is the decree of the Almighty, the All-Knowing. (Surah Ya Sin, 38)

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