BLACK HOLES: A GREAT OATH

In verse 75, the Arabic word for the expression translated as "the place where the stars fall" is "mevki." The same word also appears in verse 53 of Surah 18 (Al-Kahf), where it is used to describe the "fall" of the criminals into hell.

The root of this word is the Arabic "vakaa," and it is used in the Quran to mean "to fall, to occur, to happen." Stars live by detonating hydrogen bombs within themselves. In these explosions, some matter is converted into energy, and a very high temperature is released. You can obtain all the energy you would get by burning two million kilograms of coal by converting only one gram of matter into energy.

For example, in our Sun, a medium-sized star, four billion kilograms of matter are converted into energy every second. That is, in a small time span like one second, a temperature equivalent to eight million trillion tons of coal is released. A star uses only a small portion of its total matter as fuel, and when this fuel runs out, the stars die. The birth and death ordained by God for living beings are also ordained for stars. Every star certainly has an end.

THE FALL OF STARS AND THE GREAT OATH

In the Quran, many beings and events are highlighted by swearing oaths upon them. While attention is drawn to the places where stars fall, a special situation arises in the relevant verses. A special situation arises because, after swearing oaths upon the places where stars fall, it is stated in the next verse that this oath is a great oath. Because, although there are many oaths of this kind in the Quran, only here is the magnitude of this oath emphasized.

We will soon see the tremendous numerical values ​​that emerge in the death of stars that have exhausted their fuel. The fact that some of the greatest numerical values ​​of the universe emerge in the death of stars reveals how meaningful and appropriate the verse is when it says, "If you knew, this is indeed a great oath."

Everyone who deals with physics knows that one of the most interesting events in the universe is black holes. Large stars (those more than three times the size of our Sun) complete their lives as black holes. Having exhausted their energy, these stars contract violently. The giant star, reduced to a very small volume, possesses immense density and gravitational pull.

This gravitational pull is so intense that even light, traveling at 300,000 kilometers per second, cannot escape it, and black holes swallow even the light passing near them. This gravitational pull is created when a star collapses in on itself; however, many planets and stars subsequently fall into this intense gravitational field. In other words, black holes become "fall zones" for stars outside themselves. The existence of black holes, invisible to telescopes, can be understood from their ability to draw matter from surrounding stars into themselves like a vortex; they swallow every ray of light and star in their vicinity. Black holes, which are formed by the collapse of stars into themselves and then pull other stars into them with their gravity, are in perfect harmony with verses 75 and 76 of Surah Al-Waqi'ah.

At the time the Quran was revealed, the end of stars, their transformation into black holes, and the significance of this were unknown. The transformation of stars into black holes as they end, and all the stages they go through, are very interesting.

Some stars end through different processes. Some of them, after running out of fuel, first begin to grow, swell, and expand. The temperature, initially 15 million degrees, rises to 100 million degrees, and the star becomes a red giant or supergiant.

The area occupied by a supergiant is so large that it can easily contain more than 60 million stars like our Sun. (All these magnitudes are reminiscent of the "magnitude" mentioned in verse 76 of Surah Al-Waqi'ah, such as the magnitude of a black hole's gravitational pull.) Some red giants compress and become white dwarfs, and a small piece of them weighs millions of kilograms. Larger stars transform into neutron stars (pulsars).

In neutron stars, matter is much denser; a teaspoonful of matter can weigh as much as a billion tons. While all these incredible developments are happening every moment in the universe, we on Earth eat, sleep, exercise, run, and chat without being harmed by tremendous explosions, extraordinary gravitational forces, or high-temperature boilings... In short, we are living, or rather, we are being kept alive. In a very perfect way and with very precise calculations...