Sana Khan Nadeem
STARS shine and we enjoy them watch
ing. Twinkle Twinkle little star is the fa
mous of all time rhyme for kids including their lullaby. Stars are huge, huge than our sun , majority of them. Stars are celestial bodies made up of hydrogen and helium that produces light and heat. Science has revealed many of truths hidden under the cycle of myths. But do we know that some stars are “dark”? Dark like we could call them the “black holes” as they have been given the name. Let’s discuss what exactly they are. Black holes are formed when a star is dying. Scientists think that the smallest of the black holes was formed at the time of the beginning of the universe. “Stellar”, kind of black holes, are made when the centre of a very big star falls in upon itself. This causes SUPERNOVA (an exploding star that blasts part of the star into space).
These black holes could be small or big. Small as a size of one atom. And as big as a size of 20 times the mass of a sun , usually called “stellar black holes “. Mass is the amount of matter or “stuff” in an object. There may be many Stellar black holes in Earth’s galaxy (the milky way). Then there are super larger black holes. They are “super massive” having mass of more than one million suns together. According to the research, every large galaxy contains a super massive black hole at its centre. In this regard, our galaxy, the Milky Way, has a super massive black hole called “Sagittarius A”.
Sagittarius A* is the black hole at the centre of the milky way galaxy. A black hole is not able to be seen because of a strong gravity pulling all of the light into the middle of the black hole. But using satellites and telescopes, scientists can view how strongly gravity affects the stars and the gas around the black hole. Black holes do not move around space eating other stars, planets or moon. Earth can not be pulled into the black hole because no black hole is close enough to our solar system. The Sun even cannot be a black hole in future as the Sun is not a big enough star to make a black hole.
Albert Einstein was the scientist who first predicted about the existence of black holes in 1916 in his theory of “relativity”. Though the name “black holes” was coined many years later the theory, by John Wheeler, an American Astronomer in 1964. The first physical black hole was spotted in 1971. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration in 2019, released the first ever image of a black hole to the public. Whilst the telescope was examining the event horizon (area past which nothing can escape), the EHT saw the black hole in the centre of the galaxy. That image maps the sudden loss of photons (particles of light).
SURAH At-Tariq refers to a”‘ piercing star”: “(I swear) by Heaven and the Tariq! And what will convey to you what the Tariq is? The Star Piercing (the darkness)!” (Qur’an, 86:1-3) . The term used in the verse is ‘althaqibu,’ meaning piercing, opening a hole, penetrating and passing through, from the root ‘thaqaba,’ meaning ‘hole.’ The word used in scientific publications when black holes are being described is ‘puncture.’ There is a considerable wisdom in the use of this word to describe the features of black holes in the Qur’an. The fact that this property of stars is mentioned in the Qur’an is important evidence that the Qur’an is indeed the very word of Allah. This Islamic perspective of black holes has opened the area of research for the scientists of the world.
