WikiIslam:Sandbox/EDIT THIS PART: Difference between revisions

Humans have always looked up at night and seen the stars lighting the sky. Folklore around stars, before our modern understanding of them as gigantic balls of gases, [https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-earthscience/chapter/nuclear-fusion/ creating light energy via nuclear fusion,]has been creative and varied.  

On a typical night it means you might see just a few meteors an hour streaking randomly across the sky. These are called sporadic meteors. At certain times of the year these numbers can increase to around 100 meteors an hour in events called meteor showers, as Earth ploughs through denser streams of particles in its orbit around the Sun.<ref>https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/what-causes-meteor-shower</ref>

{{Quote|{{Quran|55|33-35}}|O company of jinn and mankind, if you are able to pass beyond the regions of the heavens and the earth, then pass. You will not pass except by authority [from Allah]. So which of the favors of your Lord would you deny? There will be sent upon you a flame of fire and smoke, and you will not defend yourselves.}}Note that no astronauts or human-made robots leaving Earth have yet been hit by fire and smoke, both which cannot actually occur in space due to the lack of oxygen.<ref>https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24733000-900-lighting-fires-in-space-is-helping-us-make-greener-energy-on-earth/</ref>

Meteor showers were of unknown cause to 7th Century Arabs, as the later (than the Quran's writing) historian and geographer [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ya%27qubi Al-Ya'qubi] (d 897/8AD) reports several meteor showers that happened just before and during Muhammad's lifetime (In 571 AD and 609 AD), attributing them to shooting stars/planets striking devils, with the multitude of them potentially leading to the idea they are 'pelted from every side'. Further Muslim historians such as [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_%27Idhari Ibn 'Idhari] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Jawzi Ibn al-Jawzi] confirm this understanding, with a summary of their assessment of meteor showers held in this Royal Astronomical Society [https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?bibcode=1992QJRAS..33....5R&db_key=AST&page_ind=6&plate_select=NO&data_type=GIF&type=SCREEN_GIF&classic=YES publication]  

They are often not much larger than grains of sand and only become visible for a second when they burn up, generating light in the Earth's atmosphere. Many ancient people confused the two, as meteors look like stars that are streaking across the sky; this is why they were often called shooting stars or falling stars <u>(</u>''see: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-science-of-shooting-stars/ The Scientific American. The Science of Shooting Stars by Phil Plait. 2023.] for a further explanation of the science'').

Large increases in meteors occur on a predictable schedule each year as the Earth's orbit passes through the stream of particles and debris left in the wake of a number of comets (or in a few cases, of asteroids). They only burn in Earths atmosphere due to friction from travelling extremely fast in a vacuum which takes no energy, to being compressed by air in the atmosphere, rising the temperature and setting fire where there is oxygen.<ref name=":0">https://science.howstuffworks.com/question308.htm</ref> The most visible is usually the annual [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseids Perseid meteor shower] in August, which easily look like stars with flames being used a weapon in the sky. Meteor showers look like stars 'pelting' from every side. Also meteor paths are dictated by physics, so it is unclear how they could pursue a jinn/devil that moved out of it's directed course. 

If the flaming missiles mentioned by the Quran are to be identified with meteors burning up in the Earth's atmosphere, this would locate the eavesdropping devils (or jinn) in the upper atmosphere too, which leaves no way for the (extremely distant) stars to serve as guards in this process as outlined in the verses.   

Stars are an average 5 light years away from each other in our galaxy.<ref>https://public.nrao.edu/ask/what-is-the-average-distance-between-stars-in-our-galaxy/</ref> For context, a light year is the distance light travels in one year, which is 5.88 trillion miles/9.46 trillion kilometres.<ref>https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/faq/26/what-is-a-light-year/</ref> This again makes them an odd choice for a protection/guard, with trillions of miles/kilometers of mostly empty space between them.   

The results of many stellar size measurements over the years have shown that most nearby stars are roughly the size of the Sun, with typical diameters of a million kilometers or so.<ref>[https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-astronomy/chapter/diameters-of-stars/#:~:text=The%20results%20of%20many%20stellar,a%20million%20kilometers%20or%20so. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-astronomy/chapter/diameters-of-stars/]</ref> An example of a calculation to demonstrate the size of this, is the sun can fit around 22 billion billion billion (10^28) people in, with the full workings found in this Quora [https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-can-fit-in-the-sun answer] as an estimate. This of course makes them absurdly large to be used as an object to be thrown by angels at jinn, both of which are approximately human size and visit Earth.  

Also, stars do not actually 'burn' or cause flame which is caused by chemical burning on Earth needing oxygen.<ref>[https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24733000-900-lighting-fires-in-space-is-helping-us-make-greener-energy-on-earth/#:~:text=Fires%20can't%20start%20in,in%20strange%20and%20beautiful%20ways. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24733000-900-lighting-fires-in-space-is-helping-us-make-greener-energy-on-earth]</ref> Stars create energy via nuclear fusion instead with no flames.  

''Note: the claim that meteorites (Meteorites are 'space rocks', i.e. the debris that have made it all the way to Earth’s surface from meteors, not meteors themselves which are the burning objects and mostly come from comet debris) come from planets disintegrating is misleading. 99.8% percent of meteorites are believed to come from asteroids with the remaining small fraction (0.2%) of meteorites split roughly equally between Mars and the Moon.<ref>https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/meteors-meteorites/facts/</ref>''

The claim appears to be that stars create heavier elements<ref>https://new.nsf.gov/science-matters/stars-within-us</ref> which eventually go on to become the sources of debris which can become meteors.  

2. Meteors do not even come directly from stars, but rather form asteroids and comets either hitting earth or occasionally breaking into Mars or the Moon, with the debris getting burned up in Earths atmosphere (''again, see: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-science-of-shooting-stars/ The Scientific American. The Science of Shooting Stars by Phil Plait. 2023.] for a further explanation of the science''). It is only true to say all the elements which make up everything (and not just space debris) in the universe were once part of a star.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abul_A'la_Maududi Ala-Maududi] (d. 1979 AD) also wrote:{{Quote|{{cite web| url=https://myislam.org/surah-al-hijr/ayat-18/ | title= Tasfir Ala-Maududi 15.18}}|In Arabic the word shihab-i-mubin literally means a fiery flame. In Surah (Surah As-Saffat, Ayat 10), the same thing has been called shihab-i-thaqib (flame that pierces through darkness). <b>This may or may not necessarily be a meteor for it is just possible that it may be some type of rays such as cosmic rays or even a stronger type which we have not been able to discover as yet. </b>Anyhow, if the fiery flame that pursues Satans may be taken to be a meteor, a countless number of these can form a fortification around our sphere of the universe. Scientific observations made with the help of the telescope have shown that billions of these meteors are rushing from space in a mass of rainfall. towards the earth’s atmosphere. Such a scene was witnessed in an eastern pan of North America on November 13, 1833. This is so strong a fortification that it can prevent Satans from passing through any fortified sphere.}}''Note the meteor shower being referred to here Leonid Meteor Storm, where fragments of ice, rock, and dust left behind by the Comet Tempel-Tuttle. About every 33 years, the Leonid meteor shower intensifies, increasing the possibility of a dazzling display of lights.<ref>https://blog.newspapers.com/november-12-13-1833-the-night-the-stars-fell/</ref> This comes from a predictable pattern of material left behind by the comet entering earths atmosphere and burning up,<ref>https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/leonid-meteor-shower-when-and-where-see-it-uk</ref> they do not actually form a flame in space which is impossible due to there being no oxygen.<ref>[https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24733000-900-lighting-fires-in-space-is-helping-us-make-greener-energy-on-earth/#:~:text=Fires%20can't%20start%20in,in%20strange%20and%20beautiful%20ways https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24733000-900-lighting-fires-in-space-is-helping-us-make-greener-energy-on-earth/]</ref>''

Two other alternative interpretations popular in modern times<ref>https://www.facebook.com/100PROOFSGODEXISTS/photos/are-meteors-or-shooting-stars-used-as-missiles-for-the-devilsjinn-answer-no1-qur/1438650339514784/</ref> are that the Quran is referring to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_mass_ejection coronal mass ejections] (large eruptions of charged matter from the sun or other stars), or [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray cosmic rays] (high energy, sub-atomic particles travelling through interstellar space). However, coronal mass ejections move slowly in cosmic terms, disperse over distance and do not come from surprise directions ([https://quran.com/en/as-saffat/8 Quran 37:8] states that the devils are pelted from every side, and pursued by a piercing flame if they escape with anything they overheard). Cosmic rays do not emit light as they travel through space and therefore nor could these be the flaming missiles of fire and smoke in the Quran.

On a separate note, though stars are described as an ornament or beauty for the sky in {{Quran|37|6}}, and {{Quran|67|5}}, there are an estimated minimum c.100 septillion stars in the known universe, but only a few thousand are actually visible to the naked eye.

There is also nothing said of their function of holding planetary systems together,<ref>https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/how-do-stars-form-and-evolve/</ref> which could have easily been done by differentiation of fixed stars from moving stars, and shown genuine scientific foreknowledge.