The Cold Turnkey

THE MIRACLE IN THE IRON Iron is one of the elements highlighted
in the Qur’an. In Sura Hadid, meaning Iron, we are informed:
…And We sent down iron in which there lies great force and which
has many uses for mankind…. (The Qur’an, 57:25) The word “sent
down,” particularly used for iron in the verse, could be thought
of having a metaphorical meaning to explain that iron has been
given to benefit people. But when we take into consideration the
literal meaning of the word, which is, “being physically sent
down from the sky”, we realize that this verse implies a very
significant scientific miracle. This is because modern
astronomical findings have disclosed that the iron found in our
world has come from the giant stars in outer space. The heavy
metals in the universe are produced in the nuclei of big stars.
Our solar system, however, does not possess a suitable structure
for producing iron on its own. Iron can only be produced in much
bigger stars than the Sun, where the temperature reaches a few
hundred million degrees. When the amount of iron exceeds a
certain level in a star, the star can no longer accommodate it,
and eventually it explodes in what is called a “nova” or a
“supernova”. As a result of this explosion, meteors containing
iron are scattered around the universe, and they move through
the void until attracted by the gravitational force of a
celestial body. All this shows that iron did not form on the
Earth, but was carried from exploding stars in space via
meteors, and was “sent down to earth”, in exactly the same way
as stated in the verse: It is clear that this fact could not
have been scientifically known in the 7th century, when the
Qur’an was revealed.

THE PAIRS IN CREATION Glory be to Him Who created all the pairs:
from what the earth produces and from themselves and from things
unknown to them. (The Qur’an, 36:36) Although the concept of
”pair” or “couple” commonly stands for male and female, the
statement of ”from things unknown to them” has wider
implications. Today, one of the implications of the verse has
been revealed. The British scientist Paul Dirac, who proposed
that matter is created in pairs, was awarded the Nobel Prize for
physics in 1933. This discovery, called ”parité”, maintains
that matter is paired with its opposite: anti-matter.
Anti-matter carries the opposite properties to matter. For
instance, as opposed to matter, the electron of anti-matter is
positively charged and its protons are negatively charged. This
fact is stated in a scientific source in this way: …every
particle has its antiparticle of opposite charge… …and the
uncertainty relation tells us that pair creation and pair
annihilation happen in the vacuum at all times, in all places.8