Page 219 - For Men of Understanding

of timber floating on water. Thick pieces of timber float higher above the
water surface than thin pieces and similarly thick sections of the earth's crust
will float on a liquid or plastic substratum of greater density. Airy was sug-
gesting that mountains have a deep root of lower density rock which the
plains lack. Four years after Airy published his work, J.H Pratt offered an alter-
native hypothesis... By this hypothesis rock columns below mountains must
have a lower density, because of their greater length, than shorter rock
columns beneath plains. Both Airy and Pratt's hypothesis imply that surface
irregularities are balanced by differences in density of rocks below the major
features (mountains and plains) of the crust. This state of BALANCE is
described as the concept of ISOSTASY. (M. J. Selby, Earth's Changing Surface,
(Oxford: Clarendon Press: 1985), 32.)
Today, we know that the rocky external layer of the Earth's surface is riven
by deep faults and split into plates swimming above the molten lava. Since the
Earth revolves very quickly around its own axis, were it not for the fixing effect
of the mountains, these plaques would shift. In such an event, soil would not col-
lect on the Earth's surface, water would not accumulate in the soil, no plants
could grow, and no roads or houses could be built. In short, life on Earth would
be impossible. Through the mercy of Allah, however, mountains act like nails,
and to a large extent, prevent movement in the Earth's surface.
This vital role of mountains, which has been discovered by modern geologi-
cal and seismic research, was revealed in the Qur'an centuries ago as an exam-
ple of the supreme wisdom in Allah's creation.
... [He] cast firmly embedded mountains on the Earth so that it would
not move under you... (Surah Luqman: 10)

DUALITY IN CREATION
Glory be to Him Who created all the pairs: from what the earth pro-
duces and from themselves and from things unknown to them. (Surah
Ya Sin: 36)

While "male and female" is equivalent to the concept of "pair," "things
unknown to them," as expressed in the Qur'an, bears a broader meaning. Indeed,
we encounter one of the meanings pointed to in the verse in the present day.
The British physicist Paul Dirac, who discovered that matter was created in pairs,
won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1933. This finding, known as "parity," revealed
the duality known as matter and anti-matter. Anti-matter bears the opposite char-
acteristics to matter. For instance, contrary to matter, anti-matter electrons are pos-
itive and protons negative. This fact is expressed in a scientific source as follows:
... every particle has its antiparticle of opposite charge... [T]he uncertainty rela-

Recent Scientific Findings and the Qur'an 217