Descriptions:
Think of a book that mentions about a fact that science was able to discover only 100 years ago more than 1.400 years ago. Think of a man that mentions about a fact that science was able to discover only recently more than1.400 years ago. Can anybody doubt that this book is a divine book and this person is an extraordinary person?
The Quran mentions more than 1.400 years ago that the universe is expanding. The following is stated in verse 47 of the chapter of adh-Dhariyat:“With the power and skill did We construct the Firmament: for it is We Who create the vastness of Space.” The Arabic phrase لَمُوسِعُونَ إِنَّا means we are expanding it; the word مُوسِعُونَ is derived from the verb أَوْسَعَ (to expand). The letter “lam” (l) at the beginning of this word is used to emphasize the noun or the adjective it precedes and it means a lot or very much. Accordingly, this phrase means:“We are expanding the universe a lot.”
After analyzing the verse of the Quran informing us about the expansion of the universe, we will examine what science says about it:
There was only one view that prevailed regarding the issue up to the beginning of the 20th century. This view stated that the universe had a static structure and that it has existed like that since the beginning of the universe. No scientist mentioned the expansion of the universe until the 20th century; let alone mentioning, nobody even imagined it.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Russian physicist Alexander Friedmann and Belgian cosmologist George Lemaitre calculated theoretically that the universe was moving continuously and expanding. This fact was proved through observation in 1929.
While examining the sky through a giant telescope, the American astronomer, Edwin Hubble, discovered that stars and galaxies continuously moved away from one another. Stars and galaxies moved away not only from us but also from one another. In the following years, it became certain through observations that the universe was expanding. A universe in which everything continuously moves away from one another means a universe that is continuously expanding.
In order to understand the expansion of the universe better, we can think as follows: Suppose that the universe is the surface of an inflated balloon. The points on the phone move away from one another; similarly, the objects in the universe move away from one another as the universe expands.
When this scientific fact was not known by anyone and when people thought the sun was as small as an apple, the Quran mentioned this fact centuries ago and it stated clearly that the universe was expanding.