Sun Rotates

For a long time European philosophers and scientists believed that the earth stood still in the centre of the universe and other bodies including the sun moved around it. In 1543, Nicholas Corpernicus put forward his ‘Heliocentric Theory of Planetary Motion’, which stated that the sun is motionless at the centre of the solar system with the planets revolving around it.

In 1609, German scientist Johannes Kepler published the ‘Astronomia Nova’, in which he concluded that not only do the planets move in elliptical orbits around the sun, they also rotate upon their axes at irregular speeds. With this knowledge it became possible for scientists to explain correctly many of the mechanisms of the solar system, including the sequence of night and day.

After these discoveries, it was thought that the sun was stationary and did not rotate about its like the earth.

However, the rotation of the sun about its own axis has been proved recently with the help of an equipment that projects the image of the sun on the top of a table, so that one can examine the image of the sun without being blinded. It is noticed that the sun has spots which complete a circular motion once every 25 days i.e. the sun takes approximately 25 days to rotate round its axis.

The sun travels through space, roughly at the speed of 240 km/sec and takes about 200 million years to complete one revolution around the centre of our Milky Way.

Consider the following verses of the Holy Qur’an:

“And He (God) it is Who created the night and the day, and the sun and the moon, gliding smoothly in its orbit.”

[Al Qur’an 21:33]

“It is not for the sun to overtake the moon, nor can the night outstrip the day. All of them float smoothly in an orbit.”

[Al Qur’an 36:40]

These verses mention an essential fact discovered only recently by modern astronomy i.e. the existence of the individual orbits of the sun and the moon and their journey through space with their journey through space their own motion.

The ‘fixed place’ towards which the sun travels carrying with it the solar system has been located precisely by modern astronomy. It has been given the name ‘The Solar Apex’. The solar system is indeed moving in space towards a point situated in the constellation of Hercules (alpha lyrae). It whose exact location is now firmly established.

One cannot help but be amazed at the scientific accuracy of the verses of the Holy Qur’an. Should we not ponder over the question: ‘What is the source of knowledge contained in the Qur’an?’